I stared at Laura standing there, twisting everything upside down, and the blood rushed so hard to my head I could barely see straight. I leveled a finger at her face. "That's a lie! You took every cent I had and disappeared with your boyfriend! You know exactly what you did, you cold, scheming—"
I spat out those last words and lunged forward a step. But I didn't reach Laura. Marta stepped between us and shoved me hard in the chest. I stumbled back two steps and slammed into the window sill. For a second, I nearly went over.
"Stop it!" She stood in front of me, eyes blazing. "You're a rapist! What gives you the right to talk about my mom like that?"
I gripped the window sill. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over me from head to toe.
Rapist. Marta had called me a rapist. Those words, coming from her mouth, hurt worse than the moment the judge read the verdict in that courtroom.
"Marta." My voice shook. "What did you just say?"
Her eyes flickered for a split second, like she'd hurt herself and knew it was too far, but she lifted her chin and didn't back down. "I am not wrong! You forced yourself on Mom back then! Yeah, Mom made mistakes, too, but you're no saint, either."
Not a saint. I had raised her for twenty years, and in the end, to her, I was just a rapist.
I looked at her, and suddenly I had nothing left to say.
I thought about the time she was three, burning up with a high fever. I'd carried her on my back and run two kilometers to the hospital, lost a shoe along the way, cut the bottom of my foot open on broken glass, and left a trail of blood all the way through the ER doors. She kept murmuring "Daddy" in her daze, and I kept saying, "I'm here. I'm here the whole way."
I thought about when she was seven, and some kid at school called her a motherless girl. The next day, I went straight to her teacher, then called every single parent. That kid apologized to her in front of the whole class. She came home that afternoon, wrapped her arms around me, and said, "You're the best dad ever."