The one he never claimed. (Complete)

27.

"What did you get him?"

"This stupid gadget thingy he hasn't stopped talking about for pretty much this whole year."

I say unconsciously rolling my eyes when I think about how he hasn't stopped mentioning the flying metal camera thing.

"What about you? What did you get him?"

I ask and she sighs before,

"I've been wanting to run this past you..." she says before pulling out a -

"Oh. Uhm." I feel my heart tighten just a bit.

"That's lovely." It really is, it's just that...

"Your mom's watch." She says taking the words out of my mouth.

She bought dad a watch, which is really nice. But dad has never in all the years I've been alive taken off the watch mom bought him years ago. Even more so after she died. I think it's his way of carrying a part of her with him. And she seems to know that because,

"Oh Alex, I should've come to you first. This is stupid, I obviously don't want to take the connection he has with your mom away. I don't ever want him to think that." She says sweetly and I give her a genuine smile in hopes to calm her down.

She means well, I know she does.

Dad's relationship with Mary is something I still can't fully decipher. Not in a bad way at all, it just came as a shock to me.

I'd found out that they'd become friends when dad used to come to visit me every day at the psychiatric ward, which I guess makes sense because he'd usually be there when I'd been sleeping too. Mary supposedly used to keep him company.

So they'd talked, a lot.

After I got discharged I still visited the hospital, like I'd promised I would. And Mary was still there because she'd never wanted to leave that place, she didn't want to live in a world where she wasn't with her ex-husband who'd not only cheated on her but had emotionally and physically abused her for years, I'd of course found out about the latter not too long ago.

Mary was left traumatized. I remember her situation being the biggest reason I'd decided to officially get over Ezra. That was not a situation I wanted to find myself in years from then.

But apparently dad was a big part of her healing, unbeknownst to me. He'd pushed her to seek even more help than she was getting, he pushed her to start seeing someone - A psychologist. Which was something even I couldn't convince her to do.

But she did eventually thanks to dad. It then took her a while but she started coming out of her shell. She started to get to know herself again, to learn to love herself again. And she did.

She eventually left the ward to restart her life. To find herself.

She luckily didn't have to earn a living since she'd had so much money still from the estate her now ex-husband left her with.

She'd sought a divorce from the bitter man to his utter surprise. He had been wanting to divorce her for a while but she'd refused to. So it's no shock that the divorce proceedings didn't take long at all.

Soon we were all celebrating her official detachment from the man who'd brought her nothing but misery for the majority of the years they'd been married.

I watched her transform from being someone who'd emotionally and physically given up on herself to the beautiful and strong person she now is. And apparently I wasn't the only person who'd taken notice of her newfound confidence and strength.

Dad had been in awe.

It was the first time I'd seen him look at anyone like that since mom. There was no doubt he'd been hooked.