The quick transition in my father's character was unexpected, but it came. The spark of love that warmed our faces went off shore.

At first, it was stress. The problem at his workplace. Workers were  being laid off. Every time he made a complain, my mother hastened to brush those jagged lines of exhaustion off his forehead.

Selene was the first to think otherwise. She was straightforward when she told us our father was having affairs. No one believed her.

Soon, we were behind on rent. Daddy maintained he had nothing. Mom saved the day. Eating died down to once a day. Not long after, he stopped coming home.

Selene brought evidence of her allegation. A photo of my father with a mother, and two children. From their appearance, they were boys. 

We shared a glance. Apparently, he wanted boys. We girls were not enough.

Our dilemma stemmed from how we would tell our mother. I couldn't bear to let her know that her solemnised husband had a family elsewhere. Also, it would impact our youngest sister, Miriam. The last thing I wanted for her was the feeling of being unwanted. 

I talked Selene out of telling everyone else. We should hear his ire. If at all there was a reason for our father's infidelity, it must come from himself.

That evening. We sat around a table for a normal family dinner. It shouldn't have been assorted, but once mom got a call from our father, saying he would be home, she made a feast. A feast fit for her king.

Considering all her attempts to win him back, we were drowned the second he pulled the divorce papers.

Miriam's voice was caught in her throat. Selene treated him like the beast he had become to her. I helplessly watched a scenario I tried to stop unfold before my eyes.

" Not like this. You have no right to do this to them," mother mumbled. Even then, her ire was not about his unfaithfulness. She hated that we had to see it.

“ You should've chosen any other time. Selene and Lucy are graduating next week. Couldn't you let them have the joy of a complete family on their big day?”

" They know," he replied, frost bitten.

That picture of my mother scrawling her name on the paper stuck like a nightmare. I don't know which was worse. The fact she endured the truth inorder to give us a complete family photo on our graduation day. Or, the fact she was battling stage three cancer.

He didn't show up at our graduation. The picture wound up framing a mother and her three daughters. The devastation the news of her health brought on its voyage was fought with unyielding strength. 

She survived, and she lived long enough to see her fifth grandson graduate from kindergarten. Without our father, we were incomplete, but we were enough.