Maddox smiled, not commenting on the fact that his father before would’ve bet a million dollars he’d never read a romance novel. The truth was, his father probably made up a whirlwind romance in his mind that didn’t even exist. “You couldn’t have been that bad with the ladies, a handsome fella like yourself.”
John barked a laugh and slapped his once strong leg that now looked far frailer. “I did enjoy my fair share of ladies, of course, but there was one woman who mattered above all the others.”
Nancy returned then, placing two hot apple ciders, a new favorite drink of his father’s, onto the coffee table between them. “Thank you,” Maddox said to her before picking up the mug and addressing his father again, indulging the conversation. “Tell me more about this woman.”
He took a sip of his cider, as his father explained, “She was the mother of my only son.”
“You had a son?” Maddox asked, lowering his mug back to the table. Last time, his father had said he had a daughter, which of course wasn’t true. The time before that, he’d had twins.
John began to frown. “No…no, I don’t know why I said that.”
“About this woman,” Maddox added quickly, moving the conversation along not to let John get too focused on what he didn’t know. The key to pleasant conversations with John was not reminding him of all the things he couldn’t remember. “Was she pretty?”
“Pretty?” John said, a big smile spreading across his face, eyes twinkling. “She was one of those girls that shined as bright as a million suns in the sky.”
Maddox chuckled. Apparently, the old man had been reading quite a few romance novels.
A thought he kept to himself as John continued. “For some reason, she married a guy like me”—a sudden darkness rose to his face, voice growing thicker—“and, truthfully, that was the biggest mistake she could’ve made. I was her demise.”
Maddox leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What do you mean by ‘her demise?’”
John sipped his cider before putting his mug back on the coffee table. “I never told her I loved her, can you believe such a thing?”
“Yes, actually, I can,” Maddox said, never having said those three words to any woman either. It was not something built into his vocabulary. He couldn’t recall his father having ever said it to him either.
“I’m not sure why that seemed so hard at the time, but it was. It felt like it weakened me to say it, or maybe it gave her control over me. I’m not sure. It’s something I’ve wondered over the years, you know. Was it because no one ever told me ‘I love you?’ Could it be that I never learned from my parents how to express emotions like that?”
Maddox reached for his cider again, washing away the discomfort rising in his throat. “What happened to this woman?”
“She died.”
There was a ring of truth to his father’s voice, a little more clarity than usual. As odd as it was, there was something inside Maddox, telling him to dig a little here when normally he wouldn’t. “When did she die?”
Another orderly walked by, heading down the hallway when John answered, “A week after she’d left my son and me. She’d been in a car accident, and I was called because I was her next of kin.”
Maddox frowned. “You can’t think you’re responsible for her death.”
“It’s my biggest regret in my life,” his father added dryly, reaching for his mug and taking another sip. “If I’d only treated her better, she wouldn’t have left us. She wouldn’t have been driving that night to look for a new apartment suitable to raise a child.”
Maddox almost commented on the child again but knew to stay away. This was the most his father had talked in at least six months. Usually, his conversations were so far out there, it was hard to follow along sometimes.
Letting his father go on, Maddox stayed silent, as John said, “If I’d called her and begged for her to come back… If I had worked less and been there for her more. If I had treated her like the angel she was. She’d still be here, not only for me. But also for my son.” He suddenly reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, then he took out a black-and-white photo, offering it to Maddox. “This is my Lilianna.”
At his mother’s name, Maddox froze, unable to speak, and squeezed his fingers around the picture of his mom and him. He tried to get his mind around this, reading between the lines to gauge if this was another of his father’s stories. Back when he was a young kid and had asked why he didn’t have a mom, his father replied, “Because some kids don’t. Sorry, buddy, I’m all you’ve got.”