Beautiful Disaster

"What do you mean 'you have a brother'?" she asked, falling into the chair across from her father.

"Half brother," her father corrected, looking like he'd rather be anywhere than at the kitchen table having this conversation with his daughter. "He's a year older than you. He lives in Beacon Hi-"

"With mom's family?" his daughter asked excitedly as she pushed her long, light brown hair behind her shoulders. Her golden brown eyes, filled with hope, shone up at her father.

"No, with, uh... with his mother," he said. The hope fell from her face suddenly. "My ex-wife."

"You were married? And you never told me?"

"It was complicated," her father said, trying to defend himself. "And it just never came up."

She looked back up at her father with a confused look spread across her face. "Were you still with her while you were with mom?"

"I-it's-I... Your mother and I were never really... together."

Confusion quickly turned into betrayal.

"Don't look at me like that, Car. It was a long time ago. I made a mistake. I messed up, I know it. But I got you out of it, and that's enough for me, ok. Is that enough for you?"

As angry as she was at just learning this information, she just nodded at her father. They may have fought often, but at the end of the day, they were pretty much all the other had, and they loved each other.

"Why are you telling me this now?" she asked plainly.

"Because... I'm going away for a while, Car," he started. She shook her head at him, repeating the word "no" over and over again.

"No. You go away all the time and I'm perfectly fine here on my own. Why is this time any different?" she asked him.

"I'm going to be gone for six months this time."

"No you're not. No. You can't be gone for six months. You can't leave me with a brother I never knew I had and his mother. Why? I just. Dad, no. You can't," she said, looking at her father with wide, scared eyes.

"Car," he said, moving to the chair next to her, pulling her into a hug. "It's going to be ok. They're already expecting you, and they're ok with this and they'll treat you like family. It's going to be ok, sweetie."

She sat there, quiet, for nearly ten minutes, just letting her dad hold and comfort her before she spoke again.

"If you weren't going away for this long, would you have ever told me about them?"

"Yes. I was going to tell you a few years ago, but then... But then your mother died, and I just didn't want to make you any more upset than you already were," he replied.

"What's his name?" she asked.

"Scott. His name is Scott."