He glanced down at his hands in his lap. “Sally is the woman I left your mom for.”
“That’s why you abandoned us? Another woman?” My emotions were bubbling to the surface, but I willed them back, buried them under the anger, spewing venom at my father. “Jesus, you’re a fucking cliché. You couldn’t keep it in your pants, so you decided to follow your dick, leaving us homeless. Mom couldn’t pay the bills when you bailed, so we lived in the station wagon. Did you know that? Or did fucking Sally read it in Rolling Stone?”
“I’m sorry, Miller,” his voice gruff but hard. “I was young and stupid, and I did the wrong thing. But I fell in love with her.”
“You fell in love with her?” I barked a harsh laugh. “That’s supposed to make it all better? Marriages fall to shit because people fall in love with other people, but they don’t fall out of love with their kids.”
“I never did,” my dad said, his eyes shining. “I promise you I didn’t. And I expect nothing from you. Not one thing. Not even your forgiveness. But I have nothing else to give you. You don’t need my money anymore. You needed it a long time ago. I gave up my right to be your father a long time ago, too. But you’re sick and I can help you get better.”
I scrubbed my face with both hands. “Jesus, Violet said the exact same thing.”
“Your girlfriend?”
I nodded.
“She pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“You in love with her?”
“She’s the only reason we’re talking right now. I was going to tell you to fuck off. Even if it killed me.”
“Stubborn,” he said with a proud smile, tears in his eyes. “Just like always. God, look at you. All grown.”
“Dad…” I swallowed hard. “Don’t.”
“Let me do this for you, and then I’ll go,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t have to talk to me or see me. You don’t have to invite me into your life. I just want to make sure you have one.”
“To make yourself feel better?” I asked, my voice cracking, tears threatening. I hated how his pain drew mine out, melting the hard armor of anger and leaving only the raw, naked wounds. “Is that the only reason?”
He got to his feet. “No. That’s not why.”
“Because it’s a good one, Dad. Only a jackass would turn it down. Did you count on that? That I’d have no real choice? Well, I do.” I felt cracked open, seven years of pain pouring out of me. “I can take your donation and still not forgive you. I won’t forgive you. I won’t…”
Wordlessly, he put his arms around me, and I was suddenly transported into a thousand childhood memories of my dad’s embrace. They overwhelmed me, and I clung to them, clung to him. Real and solid, flesh and blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his rough hands in my hair, grasping my shirt. “I’m so sorry.”
Over and over he said it, and each time, the words sank deeper.
Until I finally let them in.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I walked the overly-bright corridors, lit up like midday, despite it being near midnight. Night and day held no distinction in hospitals, which was fitting, I thought. Nor did it hold a distinction to the people who had loved ones lying in beds here. Hours melted together, punctuated by news—good or bad—that altered the entire course of the next handful of hours. Or a lifetime.
“You going to play something for us, Violet?” one of the nurses asked as I passed, Miller’s guitar case secure in my grip.
“You deserve better than that, Eric,” I teased.
He laughed, and I continued down to the end of the hallway, to Miller’s room. Margarite, the duty nurse that night, greeted me with a warm smile.
“It’s late,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”
“I won’t keep him up. But we have a guitar lesson scheduled. Can’t miss it.”
“I’m sure.” She chuckled. “Have fun. But not too much fun.”