“It’s me I’m crying for,” David admitted in a choked voice. “Me and you. It’s my guilt, not my father’s, that’s eating me up, just as it did him. I’m as much of a coward as he was, and I haven’t been able to stand you knowing, even as I’ve been afraid you’ve known all along.”
Shock blazed through her like a single, pure flame, right down to the tips of her toes, leaving her immobile, speechless. She’d never, ever expected her father to say something like that. She’d returned from Minneapolis hoping and praying she would be brave enough to say something, to begin to bridge this chasm between them that they’d both always pretended wasn’t there, but she’d never expected her father to be the first one to speak.
“Dad…” She licked her lips, unable to say more. Even that was hard enough. She didn’t know how she felt, whether she was happy or sad, hurt or relieved. Everything was jumbled up, a tangle of emotions.
David shook his head. “I did it all wrong, Abby, after they died. I went about it all wrong. I was a coward.”
Tears stung her eyes, tears she hadn’t thought she’d had left. She’d cried so much last night, wept herself right out, and yet these were different. These weren’t tears of grief, they were ones of emotion, and even of hope. “You didn’t,” she whispered.
“I did.” He sounded fierce now, a remnant of the gruff man she’d always known—and loved. “I did. I shut you out, I blamed you. I know I did.”
Oh, but that was hard to take, even though she’d been expecting it. Had known it. “You had a right to,” she made herself say, even though each word felt like drawing a razor across her soul.
“No, I didn’t, Abby. I never did.” David spoke staunchly. “You were seventeen.” He paused, struggling to rein in emotions he’d never showed her before. “I was in the barn.” He looked up at her with bleak, reddened eyes, their hands still clasped on the table. “I didn’t have anything all that important to do, just the usual work, and I knew about your trip to Milwaukee.”
Abby shook her head, although she didn’t deny what he’d said. She’d known he was in the barn, or the orchard, somewhere, busy, always busy. Yet she’d never blamed him. Never even thought of doing it, not for a second. Yet, she realized in wonder, he’d been blaming himself, all these years.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. Her lips felt stiff, her tongue thick.
“It wasn’t yours, either. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did, but it was—it was as if I didn’t know how to be. Like someone had taken my leg off, or half my heart. I just didn’t know how to be anymore, Abby.”
Tears leaked from his eyes and trickled
down his craggy cheeks. He glanced down at the photo, and that was when Abby saw it wasn’t a picture of her grandfather, as she’d assumed, but of them—the four of them, a family, the last photo they’d had taken, the Easter before Luke and her mom had died. Everyone was smiling in it; Luke needed a haircut.
“Oh, Dad.” She put her arms around him, breathed in the scent of him—apples and leather and old-fashioned aftershave. Her dad. Her dad.
“Forgive me, sweetheart.” He hadn’t called her that in fifteen years. “Forgive me.”
“Of course I do.” It was as easy as that, and yet Abby knew it wasn’t. You couldn’t simply sweep fifteen years of hard history under the carpet and then walk over it, all smooth and neat, normality restored. Life was messier and more complicated than that. They were. Still, this was a start, a second chance, something she’d never expected to have.
David eased back, his mouth working its way into a smile before he wiped at his eyes, embarrassed, gruff again. Bailey trotted over to him and put her head on his knee, tail thumping on the floor. He rested one hand on the dog’s head as he looked at Abby. “I’m not sure why you digging into my father’s past brought out my own. Maybe I was scared you’d see a connection between us. Maybe I’m just used to having secrets.”
“So am I,” Abby said softly. “But I’m glad this has all been brought out into the light.”
“So am I.” He slapped his thighs and rose from the chair as Bailey circled him. “I should get on, check things.”
It was five o’clock in the evening, but Abby didn’t protest. He needed a moment. She did, as well.
Her father gave her a nod that for once didn’t feel like a terse dismissal, but an acceptance, almost as good as a hug. Abby nodded back, a beginning.
She didn’t know how long she sat at the table, staring into space, trying to make sense of the jigsaw of memories, of emotions, and only able to leave it a jumbled mess, a piece found there, another one slotted in. Her grandfather. Her father. Her mother and Luke. Simon…
At some point, her phone buzzed. She slid it out, and saw it was a text from Simon.
I’ve found Matthew Weiss.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ABBY
“He married my great-aunt!”
Simon sounded almost giddy with the knowledge, so much so that Abby had to laugh.
“What? Really?” They were sitting in Simon’s little cottage, his laptop on the table between them, as the afternoon sunshine poured in, the day after Abby had returned from Minneapolis. The relentless humidity had finally broken, if not the heat. The colors had returned, under a blazing blue sky—the shimmer of the lake, the verdant green of the grass, thanks to the rain overnight. The world in Technicolor, once more.
“Yes, it’s crazy, isn’t it? I was searching online, looking up every Matthew Weiss from here to Timbuktu, and getting nowhere. Do you how many Matthew Weisses there are?”