Ch. 86 Daddy

David Ateara was my father. Oh. My. God.

•PTaT•

"I'm just a poor boy! No-bod-y loves me!" Daddy looked at me in the mirror, and made a funny face while he sang. "He's just a poor boy from a poor fam-i-ly!" I liked this music. It was funny.

"This is so not an appropriate song for Iris to be listening to..." He was dancing and hitting his hands on the steering wheel.

He stopped singing and looked at her. "She looks likes she's enjoying it enough to me." He laughed.

"More! More!" I yelled from my seat and clapped my hands. I accidentally kicked his seat as I was swinging my red shoes to the beat of the music. "Oops. Sah-wee!" Daddy didn't get mad. He just made another silly face at me, and I laughed.

"See? She loves Queen...She is her father's daughter, after all." Daddy was smiling. I loved to see Daddy so happy.

"Yeah ok...I don't let my kids listen to this junk, though. It rots their brains." Sarah wasn't fun like Daddy.

"I feel sorry for poor Rachel and Rebecca then." Daddy made another funny face at Sarah this time, and she laughed too.

Baby Jakey wiggled in his seat and made a spit bubble. He was always doing that. He was so funny. I grabbed his little hand and held it. "I want to see Ray-tull an' Beck-uh!" I yelled again from my seat.

"Ok, ok! Sheesh. So much attitude from the peanut gallery back there! We're almost there, Iris. So, what's Billy doing today?"

"He should be picking the girls up from school about now. Thanks again for taking me to Jacob's doctor appointment last minute. Billy wanted to be there with us earlier, but the shop has been really busy lately. All those hours make for good money but not so great for having family time..." Sarah said.

"I hear ya...and don't worry about it. After all the times you've been there for Iris and me, it's nothing, the least I could do."

•PTaT•

The memories flowed freely as water now that whatever dam in my mind had broken down. I allowed myself to just exist, floating aimlessly through the plane of neutrality. I wasn't hiding from anything, not really, but I needed the time alone to think all of this through.

•PTaT•

"Daddy!" The sun was shining when I left my classroom. I ran fast as soon as I saw him because I was so excited to tell him about school today. The teacher let us play in a big bucket of rice. It was the best!

"Iris!" Daddy smiled and picked me up, spinning me around in a big bear hug. He was so warm. I loved him so much.

•PTaT•

My sense of self felt off, untethered to any truth, like I might really drift away, broken in a million fragmented pieces of myself, lost to this mysterious void and never to be whole again.

My thoughts were flipping so quickly through the mental images assaulting my mind that I felt dizzy, a sensation I thought I would never experience again after being changed.

First I would see a just a color—a flicker of a picture. Then there would be a face, two faces, three faces...Each passing thought became a new memory, each new memory a piece of myself breaking away...

•PTaT•

"Look, Daddy! Look!" I jabbed my finger at the big fin sticking out of the water. There was a dolphin. He was going to miss it! "Look!"

"What is it?" He looked at me, but his face wasn't right. He looked tired. Why did he sound sad?

"Doh-fun! Look, Daddy! In da wah-der!"

"Yes...I see it...Wow..." He wasn't even looking. He needed to look. He loved dolphins. He would smile if he would just look at it instead of his boring book.

"It's D'ere! Loooook!" I ran closer to the water and squeezed my toes in the sand. It tickled my feet, and I laughed.

"Yes, Iris. The water...it's pretty..." He kept looking at his book. "...three moons...with the wings of a thunderbird..." He was reading his book again.

He still looked so sad. Maybe I scared him because I was yelling too much. "Daddy?" I made my voice quiet so he wouldn't be scared.

"Iris Elizabeth Ateara, I'm busy! I can't look right now. Please stop!" When Daddy yelled like that, my throat felt like it had a ball stuck in it, and my eyes started crying. Why was he being so mean?

•PTaT•

I was not Iris Elizabeth McGee...Shit. I never had been. I had always been Iris Elizabeth Ateara. I let that fact simmer in my mind. Holy fucking shit.

•PTaT•

"Yes!" Daddy was with Billy in the living room, yelling at the T.V. again. He was watching a bunch of people in matching clothes standing around in the grass. It looked boring. There were lots of other people yelling at them on the T.V. too and a little man with a whistle. That part looked fun.

"Food's almost ready." Sarah said when she came in the room. She makes the best food. I hoped it was her noodle soup tonight. "David? Will you help me get the pitcher down for the lemonade? It's on the top shelf..."

"Yeah." Daddy followed her into the kitchen.

Yummy, lemonade! I was really thirsty, so I walked in the kitchen too. I stopped because Daddy was whispering. He looked sad, and Sarah looked sad too. They were hugging.

"It's going to be ok. I'll figure this out. I have to..."

"Daddy?"

"I—Iris? Oh, sweetie, go back out and play with Jake. I think he dropped his cup out of the playpen. Can you get it for him, please?" Daddy said in a funny voice.

"I'm thirsty."

"Ok...umm...ok, I'll bring the lemonade for you when it's done."

"I—" I wanted something to drink.

"Iris. Now."

"O...k..." I was crying. I didn't like it when Daddy and Sarah were together. He was always mad with her.

"Sweetie—" Daddy said, but then Sarah was talking to him.

"David..." Sarah was whispering again when I walked back out.

"Sarah?" Billy called, and she came back out of the kitchen again.

"The food is done. Come on, Iris." She gave me a mean look.

•PTaT•

Sarah? Sarah Black? And David? What the ever living hell was this shit?!

My whole life had been a lie, a distortion of reality, a farce. What even was reality at this point? Was anything real? Was anything true?

Just as my mind prepared for a meltdown and I allowed all my anxiety and panic to consume me, another voice, the wonderfully familiar sound of smooth velvet, pushed its way to the forefront of my thoughts. It was the sound of my love. I knew his voice wasn't real, not in the way that it would be if he were actually with me here, but even just the memory of his nearness calmed me. It said, "Deep breaths, Iris, my love. You are safe. You are loved. You are not broken for you are whole. You are mine."

Yes. Yes, there was truth. Of course there was truth. Edward was true. Thea was true. They were my reality, thank God. No other piece of my past or existence could overshadow what they gave me now. No matter where my life began, they would be my future, my world, my story, my everything.

With the conviction of those facts coursing through my being, I began to rework the narrative of my life in my mind, to retell my own story to myself.

I was adopted. Oh my God! I was adopted.

Mark and Terri McGee had to have adopted me as a small child. Adopted. I exhaled, feeling instant relief with that realization. Those monsters were not my parents.

Despite all attempts at distancing myself from the McGee family tree throughout my life, I had always feared that it was too late for me. I was poisoned with their genetics, a permanent sore spot left to the earth, not capable of making my own way or doing any good in the world. This horrible cloud covered all the light in my life, smothering it until it was a simple ember threatening to be extinguished...but I wasn't even theirs. I was adopted. I had no clue why they would want to bring a child into their fucked up relationship. Knowing them, it was probably some grand plan to "save" their marriage. Selfish bastards...

However, with the small amount of reprieve planted in the knowledge that my body held no sample of their tainted blood came even more stress. David Ateara—my birth father—had left me.

All those years that I spent feeling lost and alone...hurt physically...emotionally stunted...It was because I was all of those things. I was living a life that wasn't mine. My own father had abandoned me at an orphanage after we travelled to the "real world." Or wait, was this the real world then? And if this was the real world then what was that other place? Ugh! What the hell?!

How could David have left me there? Why? And how did he even get to that other world in the first place? Every answer seemed to lead to more questions. I still hadn't pieced together a lot of the equation, but two things were absolute. One, my father had abandoned me, and I was going to figure out why. Two, I wasn't caught in Twilight, never to return home. Being with Edward and Thea WAS my home—where I was meant to be, should have been all along—and now I needed to return to them.

Light. Dark.

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