Chapter 62: Get Away from Her
"His beloved wife is dying! He is drifting apart from his child just like how you did. I couldn’t save Mother, but I have to chance to help them before they turn into us."
Adeline’s words hung in the air like a dagger. Her father, stared at her in stunned silence, unable to respond immediately.
She had never spoken to him like that before, the pain in her voice struck him deeper than he had expected. She was only a child, he thought. He didn’t expect that she remembered everything.
He wished to forget the mistakes of his past, but he couldn’t just ignore them. His children remember it, they couldn’t just forget it. He had to come face to face with this issue and not avoid it.
"I- I’m sorry Adeline." His voice softened, and he slumped into the chair.
No matter how hard he tried to push it down, the memories resurfaced. His late wife, the one he had loved so deeply, yet had failed to save.
He had poured himself into his work, into the affairs of the Empire, all the while drifting further and further from the family that had once been his world.
The guilt gnawed at him, a weight he had carried for so many years. He hadn’t just lost his wife, he lost himself.
But now, hearing his daughter’s words... "I couldn’t save Mother." He didn’t know what more to feel guilty of, abandoning his children or making his daughter feel she couldn’t save her mother...
It wasn’t her fault... He could never blame her... He failed as a father.
Benedict’s father was in danger of becoming what he had become—a man who let his family slip away, too blinded by pride and sorrow to reach out.