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Authors: Torrie Robles

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BOOK: Accidentally Perfect
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When I turned eighteen, my father bought me the house that I live in now.  Two years later he passed away from cancer.  He never told anyone.  He just lived through it.  But he wanted to make sure that I had somewhere to call home.  I think he knew that as soon as he was gone, the relationship I had with my mother would be a difficult one.  It didn’t get any better when I found that my father only left ten percent of his estate to my mother and the rest
to
me.  I was left control of the cattle business, the land in Oklahoma and everything else that was involved.  She has always felt that she was shafted by my father.  I signed over an additional twenty percent of my father’s estate to her just to try to shut her up, but it didn’t make her happy. 

I never wanted any of it.  About seven years ago they found that there was oil on the land that my father’s family owned.  I didn’t know what to do with
it; I was tired of the attorneys calling me and hassling
me about what to do.  I was
young,
and I was still having a hard time with my father’s death and school.  
Finally,
I signed over control to a cousin of my fathers.  He and his son are taking care of everything.  Whatever I make, I have assigned to a trust for my girls.  I don’t need all that money, but I am glad that it’s there for them.

In the nine years my father has been gone,
my mother has been through one man after another. 
Finally,
about two years ago she settled down and is now remarried.  I think she is starting it all over again; trying to get her name out there.  Trying to make something of
herself
, maybe something more than what she actually is.  I try to stay out of it.  I try to keep the girls out of it.  

Right,
after my father died I met Stella.  We were taking some of the same
classes,
and it was like she was a gift from heaven.  I no longer felt totally alone.  Stella did the best she could.  She should win a medal for being the best, best friend in the world.  Knowing that the only man that ever loved me was gone was still hard.  My mother tried to find replacements, but there is no comparison to any of them that she brought
to
me.  I didn’t even want to try to find solace within my mother when it came to my father.  There was no reason for
me to.
I knew it wouldn’t be there. So it became me and Stella. 

Two years after my father passed I found Brad.  I threw myself into him.  We were both in
college; he was going to get his teaching credentials;
I was going to get my nursing degree. I was set on living my life for me.  I was living in the beautiful home my father bought
me,
and I was finally living my life.  I wasn’t under my mother’s thumb. 

Only about two years into my relationship with Brad,
I found out I was pregnant.  I was nowhere near where I wanted to be educational wise to start a family and my relationship with Brad was not where I wanted it to be.  When we found
out,
we were having twins we got married.  My mother made it seem like I was out to destroy her.  She didn’t come to the ceremony. It was just small at a little church in town.   Being pregnant with twins, trying to go to school and everything else was too much.  I dropped out while Brad continued his education.  I had the girls when I was only thirty weeks along.  They were so
small,
but I fell in love with them instantly.  I named them Amanda Lane and Adele Love.  They were both born with my red hair, something that I proudly inherited from my father.

I stayed with the girls for the first year taking classes online when I could. Then I went back to school full time.  I worked non-stop on getting back on track for my nursing degree.  I know that I slacked in the wife department, but my focus was on the girls and school. I wanted to be something.  I wanted to make something of myself.  I just didn’t want to be just a mother or a wife.  I didn’t want to be like my mother who lived off of a man’s name.  So I did.  When the girls were three and a
half,
and I was almost finished with school when I found a note on my windshield one day telling me that my husband had been having an affair.  I confronted
Brad,
and he didn’t deny it, so I kicked him out.  I never gave him a second chance. I was pretty sure
then,
and I am still pretty sure that I was never in love with him.  Maybe I love him because he gave me my girls, but I was never in love with him.  So after the fiasco of the divorce and everything that entailed, I accomplished my goal; I became a
nurse, and I am happily working in the oncology department at Mt. Siani
.”  That was it.  That was my story and the entire time I spoke Nathan never once interrupted me, questioned me and
he
never once stopped running his fingers through my hair. 

“You amaze me, baby.  I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you were something else. 
Something that I never wanted to live without.
  I felt your energy, I felt who you are, but never in my wildest dream would I have thought you were going to be the strongest woman in my life. I am proud to be your husband.”  He kisses me on the head and gives me a squeeze. 

 

“I don’t think it’s
strength, Nate.  I think it’s me proving that I am something.  My dad was the only one in my life that made me feel like I meant something.  Not having him, not having my rock around anymore totally sucks.  I know it’s been nine years, but I was a lot worse off than what I used to be, believe it or not.”

She is amazing.  She has no idea how amazing she is. 
There
is so much more to her than I thought.  There is so much more depth to this woman who stole my heart at the
toss
of her crimson hair.  It seems every time she opens her mouth I fall deeper and deeper for her.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone who hung the moon.  My mom was that for me.”

“Okay lover boy, let me hear what made you, you.”

“Well, let’s start off by, I cannot stand my father.  Being in the same room as him makes my skin crawl and my blood boil.  My father, I guess, is like your mother; an opportunist.”   

“It sounds like they were made for each other.”

“You aren’t kidding.  My mother, Juliana Rose Whitmore, was a natural beauty. My God, I thought no one would ever resemble her beauty, both inside and out.  The moment I saw you, you took my breath away.  It was then that I finally found the same true beauty, just as I saw
in
my mother. And hearing your story only adds to what I already believed.”  I lean down and place a kiss on her forehead. “My mother came from old
money
when I mean old, I mean like Vanderbilt old.  She and her family were always the who’s who of New York social elite. The money didn’t matter to her.  She was just good and honest, wholesome.   I think that was the one thing I admired most about her; the money didn't phase
her like it doesn’t seem to phase you,
and I’ve never really cared about it. It was always more my father's thing. It always seemed to matter to him.  It still does.

My mom was young, probably too young to see what type of man my father was.  I think being admired by an older man was something that intrigued my mom. She was eighteen when she turned my father’s head; ten years his junior. I know that he knew from the beginning
who she really was.
There weren’t that many people who didn’t know my mother’s family. But she was in love. 

About a year into their relationship,
she got pregnant with me.  My grandfather never cared for my father.  He felt that his daughter could do
better,
and I agree with him.  From what I heard my father never gave her the love that she deserved.  She was head over heels in love with my father.  He saw her as his meal ticket.  She was barely three weeks pregnant with me when he asked her to marry him; only a couple of days after she
had discovered
she was pregnant.  He didn’t want to wait.   He didn’t allow her to have the wedding that she should have had. He didn’t even give her an opportunity to miscarry. Within a month of his proposal they married.  My grandfather had them live at the family’s estate while she was pregnant.  My father didn’t look after her how he should have.  He was too busy
schmoozing his new found friends.

After I was born,
my father didn’t get any better.  My mom was lonely and tired.  I guess I wasn’t the easiest baby.  I cried all the time.  My grandparents hired a nanny to help her when they weren’t able to support her.  My father never offered any help to my mother.  After a
while,
my father started to make waves for my grandparents.  Telling them they had no right to involve themselves with his family; that he was the head of
it, and he made the rules where my mother and I
were concerned.  From what I hear, my grandfather made it a point to let my father know that he was no man at all, nor did he have a household to be
ahead
of.  The next day my father took me and my mother from her family home.  She wasn’t happy because she wanted to stay, but he wouldn’t allow it. 
Eventually,
my mother talked my father into allowing her father to purchase a home for them.  My father couldn’t afford much of anything since he only worked at the base level of one of my mother’s family’s companies.  Mailroom I believe.  They lived in a rundown apartment for a year until the waters were smoothed enough to allow my father
to swallow
his pride and agreed to have my grandfather buy the home. 

The years past and when I was five my mother had my little sister.  Both my sister and
I
were the apples of my mother’s eyes.  She loved
us...
we were her everything.  She was happy being a mother to us.  My father worked day and night trying to prove himself to my grandfather. 
Eventually,
he worked his way up the ladder.  The next twenty years my father proved over and over again that his career was more important than we were.  My grandfather seemed to have
a lose
-lose situation on his hands.   By him keeping my father busy in the company he made
it, so my father was never around, but my grandfather thought by keeping him working and busy, my mother would be happier since my father was never there anyway

My grandparents were killed one winter night.  They were mugged and stabbed right there in front of their home in the city. I believe that my father had something to do with it.  I think he believed that if they were
gone
if my grandfather was gone, then he would be the head of the company.  That he would rule everything that my mother’s company built.  That wasn’t the case.  It was handed down to my mother, and she was a natural at it.  She was a fair boss and took right to everything my grandfather had built.  I was in my teens by
then; my sister was growing up,
and she was becoming a wonderful young lady.  My mother was so worried that she
lacked in her role as a mother
since she was now heading into the office when she was needed.  My grandfather built his company so that it ran itself.  She just saw to the small things. 
Nothing in too much detail.
 

My father was furious.  He could not stand that he had been overlooked.  He started to take it out on my mother.  He started to flaunt relationships in front of her.  He even had me
tag along
one night when he wined and dined some young thing at one of our families restaurants.  That was the last nail in the coffin for me.  That was the night I knew I never wanted to be like my father.  I never wanted the corporate world.  I wanted to protect and serve my country, so that’s what I did.  I told my mother I was joining the Army.  She was scared for me, to be in the danger zone and not knowing if I would
survive
if I would come home to her.  My father was mad that I wasn’t taking up for my mother so she could be in the company less.  I wasn’t sure if he thought I would side with him and get my mother to hand over everything to him or not.  After I
had graduated,
I left for basic training. 

It wasn’t long after I joined that I figured out where I belonged. .  I was assigned to  special
forces,
and I lived my life all over the world.  I enjoyed what I did.  I made sure that I always kept in touch with my mother and sister.  I never reached out to my father; I never felt the need to.  From what my sister would tell me, my father seemed to be living less and less in the family home and more and more in different apartments we owned throughout the city. 

BOOK: Accidentally Perfect
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