Irreconcilable Differences

The warm, night, breeze, blew across the lake and onto the man’s face, blowing his dark, silky hair to one side, as he sat down on the edge with a small glass of brandy in his hand. It had fifteen years since he left this house – fifteen years since he had divorced.
‘It took a child to have an accident to bring you here,’ said a female voice from behind.
‘I was sending you money for maintenance wasn’t I? I have been paying school and college fees, haven’t I’ whispered Neil Choudhary, not wanting to wake up his child inside, ‘I also told you that I would be there whenever she needed me.’
Sarita threw a glance at her ex.
‘You will never change,’ she said, ‘always arguing and not listening to what I have to say.’
Neil Choudhary looked at the mother of his child.
‘You are the same,’ he thought, ‘always arguing and not willing to understand me.’
Without saying a word, he got up to go inside to see his daughter.
‘What are you running away from now?’ asked Sarita, as she watched him go inside. But there was no reply.

‘Nothing has changed in this house,’ thought the millionaire businessman, as he quietly looked around the house and walked into his daughter’s room to check on her.
‘You never returned her calls, emails or any other messages,’ said Sarita, angrily as she followed him, ‘Why?’
‘I didn’t want anything to do with you,’ came the bitter reply ‘and besides I was busy with the business! A business that, one day, will be handed over to my daughter and not you or anyone else. I may have missed out on her growing up but at least she will have something from me that she will be able to keep for her whole life.’
‘Do you mean to say, that I have not provided her with anything?’
Not wanting to argue at the moment, the businessman walked upto the attending, Private Nurse he had hired and enquired how long his daughter would be unconscious for.
‘I’ve given her mild sleeping tablets so she won’t wake up until the early hours,’ replied the Nurse.
The businessman, having established the largest Pharmaceutical and Medical Distributing Company in the Eastern African zone, turned to his ex.
‘How did she fall?’ he popped the question like the speed of lightening, ‘How did she fracture her hand in two places? It is because you were careless!’ and, just as a Tornado rips a roof off a house, he walked out of the room before Sarita could reply.
Just like a heat seeking missile follows its target, Sarita, feeling deeply wounded by the remark, followed him into the lounge.

‘You have no right to accuse me,’ she yelled, ‘and by the way, where were you all these years?’ The question hit the target.
‘I was building a business empire,’ he replied, as he defended himself.
‘Building a business empire when your daughter needed you the most! Never mind not replying to her messages, you never bothered to enquire how she was. You say that you didn’t want anything to do with me but you could have at least contacted her! But no! You were sending money for her maintenance and here she was crying to see her father just once. You are a cruel, heartless, bastard.’
The ugly irreconcilable differences now appeared and as the grandfather clock ticked away, the seconds turned into minutes, then into hours, the two kept on arguing and shouting at each other. Suddenly the Nurse appeared.
‘Your daughter is awake and is calling you,’ she said.
The couple, still arguing and quarrelling, battled into the bedroom to see their daughter.

‘Can’t you two put your differences aside and think of me?’ asked the daughter, as her eyes bounced open.