"Scott."

"Scott King," Dad explained. "I don’t think you ever met him, but he was Daryl's father…"

"I know who Scott King is." When we were little, Daryl's absentee father was pretty much football royalty in this town. His star dimmed out when people realized that the son he had forsaken had even more potential for greatness. "Could have made the pros if he hadn't busted out his knee playing college football, right?"

"Right." Dad cleared his throat. "Well, I think his leaving broke something inside of Trish. Maybe it was the thought of another failed relationship on her hands, or maybe it was the fear of the scorn that came from raising another child on her own, but she clung to her marriage with Wren, choosing to forgive him for things that God Almighty himself would have a hard time forgiving."

"And you?" I looked at my father. "Did you forgive my mom?"

He met my stare and held it for a long time before saying, "No. I never truly forgave your mother for what she did, but I tried to help her."

"Tried." I swallowed down the lump in my throat. "What does that mean?"

"When she finally decided to come home, she was penniless and depressed, not to mention heavily pregnant with another man's child." Blinking away the tears that were filling his eyes, Dad rubbed his jaw. "She didn’t come knocking on our door, Molly. She went straight to him."

"Wh-what?"

"Wren," Dad confirmed. "She went begging on his doorstep, but he had no real love for her. Your mother was always a sensitive person, not really made for this world, and Wren preyed on her vulnerability. All your mother ever was to that man was an itch to scratch. He broke her, and then he abandoned her."

"But she came home," I protested shakily. "To us. I remember…"

"Because she didn’t have anywhere else to go," Dad said sadly. "Neither one of us wanted to make it work, Molly. I couldn’t get past the betrayal and she couldn't get over him, but I couldn’t just abandon her to the streets like Wren had. She was almost ready to give birth by then. And I had a little girl at home who needed her mama."

"So you raised him?" Crying hard and ugly, I reached across the table and grabbed my father's hand, "Bobby? You raised him as your own?"

Dad squeezed my hand affectionately. "He was a part of her, which made him a part of you, and I loved you both. That meant I loved him, too. So, I gave him my name and I tried to rebuild our broken home, but your mother?" A deep shudder racked through his body. "Your mother wasn't well after that."

I frowned. "Wasn’t well?"

"Post-partum," he explained. "Along with a lot of other issues, sweetheart. I never told you this, but your mother didn’t have a very good childhood, there was a lot of abuse, both substance and physical, that affected her long into adulthood."