Neil’s voice died away, and the hand resting on the desk turned to a fist. “If he had just been paying closer attention. He was probably texting or fiddling with the radio or, or—”
We weren’t talking about Jason, anymore.
Neil pushed back from the desk. “I knew this would happen! I offered to pay for a driver for them, but he had too much fucking pride to take anything!”
“It was an accident, Neil,” I reminded him quietly. Then, I decided to shut my mouth. He hadn’t been angry, yet, and that was supposed to be an important part of grieving, right?
“I knew he wouldn’t be good for her! I didn’t like him from the start. And I know you think I was overprotective, but fathers have intuition, too,” he ranted, pointing a finger at me as if to silence words I didn’t say. “I shouldn’t have let her—”
“You shouldn’t have let her do what?” I asked, because, grief or not, reality still existed. “She was an adult, Neil.”
“Well, there are things I could have done,” he snarled. “Do you think he wouldn’t have taken my money?”
“You aren’t the kind of person who would buy misery for his daughter,” I pointed out, taking a seat in the desk chair he’d vacated. “And you could have offered Michael a billion dollars. He wouldn’t have taken it. He would have known it wasn’t worth as much as Emma.”
“Then, I would have done something else!” He paced the length of the room. “Gotten him an internship somewhere in California, or hired someone to…”
He didn’t continue down that path, thank god.
“You wouldn’t have had him killed.” There was no way Neil would have been able to pull that off, money or no. He would have felt too guilty, and he would never have hurt Emma that way.
“Why not?” He stopped his pacing and leaned an arm on a bookshelf. “I’m not a good person, Sophie.”
“Yes, you are,” I stated emphatically.
“According to you, you only know five percent of me. So, how well do you really know me? How well do you think you can?”
The words cut me to my soul. He’d just spoken the fear that had lurked in the back of my mind for as long as I’d known him. Oh, I was good at telling myself that I knew him better than anyone else. I probably did. But nobody really knew Neil. They knew only what he let them see.
“If you really…” He shook his head, dismissing his own words.
“Then, let me know.” It wasn’t a plea. It was a solution. “Whoever you were before is gone, now, Neil. Not all of him, but a significant part. I don’t love parts of you. I love all of you. I’ll love the parts that are different as much as I love the parts that are the same.”
“You wouldn’t if…” He stopped and closed his eyes. “I thought about… I even looked into…” He took a shuddering breath. “I was so angry at the driver of that other car, Sophie. And, when we found out that he’d been discharged from the hospital… Why did he get to go home, but my daughter didn’t? It isn’t fair. And I thought…”
“You thought you’d do something about it.” I knew why he didn’t want to tell me. But the emotional reaction made so much sense. “You’re not a bad person for thinking about it. I don’t even think you’re a bad person for, what, trying to buy a gun and go shoot him?”
“No. I wasn’t even brave enough to do that. I thought I could hire someone.” He laughed bitterly.
“You wanted to end the life of the person who ended your daughter’s life.” I shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first person to have those thoughts. But you didn’t do it. Why didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
So, I answered for him. “You didn’t, because you are a good person. Good people have can have incredibly shitty wants and impulses. Good people can think horrible things. And good people can be angry at innocent people for things they can’t control.”
“The way you were angry with me, for leaving?”
Having the question out there between us made it unavoidable. And, though I had vowed to myself that I would never tell him, I said, “Yes.”
He looked down with a sad smile. “Here I was, thinking that you didn’t really know me.”
“I don’t think either of us will ever really know each other as well as we know ourselves. Maybe nobody knows their partner on that level, and we’re expecting more from each other than we should. But I am a hundred percent sure that no one has ever understood me as much as you understand me. And I want you to feel the same way about me.” Now, I was pleading, a single tear coursing down my face. “You lost Emma. But I lost you. Maybe we can grieve those losses together.”
He looked up at me, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, it was Neil my husband looking at me, not Neil the grieving father. In his emerald green eyes, I saw the love he still had for me. That had never gone away. He just hadn’t thought he deserved it.
“Maybe we’re both wrong,” I said, hoarse from my held-back tears. “Maybe we know each other a lot better than we give ourselves credit for.”
“I want—” He sighed. “I want to be who we were before. I feel as though it’s impossible.”