You Don't Belong Here

Chapter 02 - The Father Upstairs

The office above the store was nothing like the showroom below, quieter, warmer, lined with old photographs of watch mechanisms and a wall of framed patents that Mark had never seen before in his life.

Richard Mercer sat behind a wide mahogany desk, considerably grayer than the last photograph Mark's mother had ever shown him, though his eyes carried the same steady, careful warmth Mark recognized immediately from a handful of early childhood memories he'd never fully let go of.

"You look exactly like your mother," Richard said quietly, standing as Mr. Whitfield showed Mark in.

Mark stood in the doorway, uncertain, caught between the specific, unfamiliar thrill of finally meeting the father he'd barely known and a considerable, justified anger at the man who had been absent for nearly ten years of his life.

"I didn't know you owned this store," Mark said. "Mom never told me."

"I know," Richard said. "That was my fault, not hers. I asked her not to, years ago, when I still believed distance was the kindest thing I could offer both of you. I was wrong about that, considerably, and I've spent a very long time trying to find the right moment to say so."

"This is the right moment," Mark asked, skepticism plain in his voice despite his careful composure.

"Mr. Whitfield called me the instant he saw you walk in this morning," Richard said. "I didn't plan this. I've been watching from a distance for years, waiting for the courage to actually reach out directly, and apparently my own store manager had considerably more courage on your behalf than I managed to find on my own."

Mark considered that, something in him wanting to stay angry, wanting distance to remain exactly as familiar and safe as it had been for a decade, while another, quieter part of him simply wanted to sit down and talk to his father for the first time in his conscious memory.

He sat down.

"I have questions," he said. "A lot of them. Starting with why you left, and why Mom raised me alone for ten years without you."

Richard nodded slowly, something heavy and genuinely grieved crossing his face. "I owe you answers to every single one of those questions. I want to start with the hardest one first, because I think you deserve to hear it directly rather than in pieces."

"Okay," Mark said.

"I didn't leave your mother," Richard said. "She was driven away, deliberately, by someone in this family who decided she wasn't suitable for the life I was building. By the time I understood what had actually happened, she'd already moved across the country with you, and she had every reason in the world never to trust me or my family again."