I couldn't believe what my father had done.

Donna and I had gone over to his house to get my paintings he'd picked up at Drew's while I was in the hospital.

We rang the doorbell.

My dad's wife, Linda, answered the door. "I'll get your father for you."

We waited in the living room.

On one wall hung a huge portrait of my dad's new family. Him, Linda and Max smiling down upon the room.

There were other pictures surrounding it. Wedding pictures, Max as a baby, his school picture-- all of them with the same look of happiness, of contented bliss. A perfect family in a perfect house.

I looked around the room and couldn't see one sign that my father had had a life before this one. It was as if his past had been cleaned and sterilized, just like this house.

Donna pointed at a picture on the mantle. "Is that you?" she asked, peering closer to get a better look. "Oh my God! It is you. That's so adorable."

I bent down next to her. She was right and wrong. It was me, but it wasn't adorable.

It was a small wallet size photo of me on Santa's lap. I must have been three years old. Santa looks like his old jolly self. Me, I look like somebody had just thrown fire ants down my shorts. Either that or Santa had tried to cop a feel. The picture captured me screaming my lungs out, tears steaming down my cheeks.

I felt as out of place in my father's house as my picture does in this room of happy faces.

"That's my favorite picture in this room," said my father. "You wanted to talk to Santa so bad, you begged me to take you up there. After you'd gotten to the front of the line and he put you on his lap, you freaked out. You bolted off his lap so fast I couldn't stop from laughing.

*****

We stood in his garage, just my father and I.

I'd told him about how the gallery really loved my work and how I'd come to get the rest of my paintings so Donna could show them to the owners.

He stared at his shoes. A shadow of regret crossed his face. "I threw them out," he said finally. "I thought they'd remind you of how you used to be.

I didn't want you to go back to that. I'm not sorry I did it. I know you can do so much better."

I felt just like when Santa put me on his lap.

I wanted to cry and bolt out of there.