Picture Perfect

was really upset.
    “I basically left you with Gram and Pop for about three months. I was drowning Flynn, and I swear to God, I regret that every day of my life. I let my wife down by being a shit father to the only part of her I had left. I should have been thanking God that at least I had a piece of her to look at forever, but instead I focused on what I didn’t have. I was crazy angry, bitter, and drunk. Luckily for all of us, Gram sat me down and gave me the business. Pop also gave it to me with both barrels. By the time they were finished with me, I had no delusions about what a pathetic waste I was becoming, or about how heartbroken your mother would be about how much I was letting you down. They scared me straight, and our lives benefited greatly from that. I’ve spent the years since trying my hardest to make up for that lapse in my sanity, and until today, I thought it wasn’t something we were ever going to need to discuss.”
    Taking a deep breath, he plowed on. “John brought a woman here to talk to me this morning. She’s the sister of a woman that I hooked up with after your mother died. What happened back then was nothing meaningful at all- just a sexual relationship. It went hand in hand with the drinking. I just was so fucking desperate to be touched again, to feel anything that wasn’t agony. Today I found out that my shit judgment led to that woman getting pregnant. She had twins, Flynn. I’ve got two daughters who are almost twenty-three. Or, I think I do. The woman, her name was Connie, was loose. She’s dead now, and so is the man that they thought was their father. The woman that John brought here today, Sandra, has raised the girls for the last twelve years. Sandra has requested a paternity test before we take this any further, but she also said that the girls have my eyes and that she’s pretty damn sure that they’re mine.”
    Well, fuck me running, sideways. I could have sisters? I couldn’t tell if my dad was happy about that or not, but what I did know was that I wasn’t mad at him in the slightest. He was staring at me now, so I knew that he wanted to know my reaction.
    “Dad, I’m not mad at you, that’s ridiculous. Right now I’m trying to figure out how John got involved, and how you’re feeling about all this? If they’re yours, do you want to meet them?”
    He looked so upset, and I wondered what was bothering him about that. My dad loved being a father, and I couldn’t believe that having two more children would be any kind of a burden to him.
    Taking a deep breath he asked, “Would it be okay with you if I wanted to meet them?”
    Christ on a crutch, he thought I would be pissed if he wanted to meet them! He couldn’t be more wrong. “Jesus! Dad, of course it would be okay. You’re acting like you just told me you were in jail for murder. You’re my father and I love you. I know better than most about using sex and alcohol as numbing agents. Personally, if they are yours, I’d like to meet them. The call is ultimately yours, but that’s how I feel.”
    Before I even had that sentence finished, my dad had his arms around me tight. “I love you so much, son. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re okay with all of this. I was scared that I was going to lose you, too.”
    He meant lose me like he had lost my mother, only emotionally instead of physically, and the knowledge that he had been scared of that gutted me. Hugging him hard, I told him how I felt. “Dad, you’re tops in my book, no matter what. You’re the best dad in the world and you’re never going to lose me, ever. I love you dad.”
    The two of us spent the next few minutes hugging it out and getting our shit together. I’m not ashamed to say that a few tears were shed, but being the men that we are, we kept it to a dull roar.
    When we finished our male bonding, dad explained the rest of the story to me. The aunt of the girls that were likely my father’s daughters was the VP of Hart International, the firm that had built my manager’s house, hence John bringing Sandra to my dad’s house. Apparently, the whole sordid tale about my dad and the woman- who had turned out to be married- had come out just a few days ago because someone was threatening to blackmail the Hart family with the information. My dad was most upset that the blackmailers were threatening to release a video of him having sex with the twin’s mother. He feared that it would hurt me, because that’s what