Chapter 15
Dad got sick the next year.
Cancer.
Fast.
Thomas called me.
“He may not have much time.”
I sat in silence.
Marcus took my hand.
I did not owe Dad a deathbed.
I knew that.
My therapist knew that.
Every wise part of me knew that.
Still, I went.
Not for forgiveness.
For completion.
Dad was in a small private room overlooking a garden.
He looked nothing like the CEO who had once made boardrooms freeze.
He looked like a man.
Thin.
Afraid.
Human.
When he saw me, he cried.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Neither did I.”
He nodded.
Fair.
I brought Maggie once.
Only once.
She stayed in Marcus’s arms.
Dad looked at her like sunrise through prison bars.
“She has your mother’s eyes,” he whispered.
“No,” I said softly. “She has mine.”
He absorbed the correction.
Then nodded.
“Yes. She does.”
Before he died, he gave me full access to a trust my mother had created separately.
He had hidden it.
Then restored it.
“It was hers,” he said. “I had no right.”
“No,” I agreed.
His eyes filled.
“You say truth so easily now.”
“No,” I said. “I say it even when it isn’t easy.”
Dad died three days later.
I cried.
I was angry about that.
Then my therapist told me grief is not endorsement.
I repeated that for months.
Grief is not endorsement.
Love is not permission.
Death is not repair.
Still, at his funeral, I placed Mom’s letter in my purse and stood beside Thomas.
Dylan was not allowed to attend.
I felt relief.
Then guilt.
May you like
Then relief again.
Healing rarely walks in a straight line.
