Chapter Twenty-Three
Once I fed Ron and put the soup away, I found his pill bottles hidden behind the Tupperware. I shook the bottle, then opened it. Frustration flooded through me, and I tried not to rip my hair out as I ran my hand over it. I grabbed the bottle and marched into the den.
“When did you stop taking these?” I asked, holding up the bottle.
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me. There are barely any missing since the last time I checked.” The doctor told me they couldn’t reverse damage, but they could slow it down. If he stopped taking them, he could do more fucking damage.
“They bother my stomach.”
It was like dealing with a toddler. “Then take them with fucking food. You don’t stop taking them. No wonder you’re all fucked up.”
I shook a pill into my palm and thrust my hand at him. “Take this. You just ate, so it should be fine.”
He stared at the pill like a child looking at their least favorite food. Begrudgingly, he took the pill from my palm.
“You don’t take those, and your memory gets worse. Is that what you want?”
He sank into the couch cushion, looking smaller than ever. “Maybe it would be better for everyone.”
To forget the horrible drunk he was for a majority of my life? To forget how he put hands on me, verbally abused me. Treated me like scum on the bottom of his shoe. “No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “If I can’t forget, neither can you.”
His gaze met mine, filled with something I couldn’t quite decipher. Regret? Shame? Exhaustion, maybe.
“You think I want to remember?” His tone was quiet, almost completely lost to the hum of the heater kicking on. “You think I want to remember who I was? How I treated you?”
I crossed my arms, my fingers digging into my biceps. “You don’t get to run from this. Not when I never could.”
He let out a slow breath, his eyes fixating on the pill in his hand. I waited for him to refuse, but with a resigned sigh, he popped it in his mouth and swallowed. I should have counted it as a victory, but I didn’t feel victorious. I stared at the man who used to get off on tearing me down, and I felt nothing.
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not even close.
But it was something.
Jack and I headed down the hallway to a bedroom I hadn’t been in since the day I left. I eased the door open and stood in the doorway. It was exactly how I left it, like a sad moment frozen in time. The System of the Down poster Franc got me for my sixteenth birthday hung above the twin bed. The black comforter had been a gift from the Grassos for Christmas. I didn’t show up, but Franc brought it by the next morning. Somehow Mrs. Grasso discovered my only blanket was the Ninja Turtle sleeping bag she bought me when I was ten.
My economics textbook sat on the makeshift desk I made out of scraps from a construction job I had worked on. The desk chair I recovered from the neighbor’s garbage. It hadn’t been much, but this place had been my spot where I could hide from the rest of the world.
Jack jumped on the bed, and I expected a plume of dust to follow, but it didn’t. I got closer to the bed, and ran my hand over the comforter. No dust. I don’t know what I expected, but Ron washing the bedding in my old room was definitely not on the list.
I plopped my ass on the bed and held my phone in my hand. The urge to call Chardonnay was strong, but if I did, she’d insist on helping, and she had her own battles to fight. I tossed my phone onto the desk and kicked my feet up. Jack jumped beside me and squeezed in between me and the wall.
“I don’t think there’s enough room on this bed for the two of us,” I said, but Jack only sighed and buried his snout into my side.
“Long day of chasing squirrels?” Jack nudged into me more.
I reached for my phone and stared at Chardonnay’s name on my screen. I should call her just to check in, but no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d spent my life keeping people away, and I wasn’t ready to let anyone in.
Franc and Laurent had weaseled themselves in, but even they didn’t know all the emotional baggage that clung to me so hard and for so long it was imbedded in me. Chardonnay would want to fix me, but I was beyond repair.
I clicked out of her name and placed my phone on the desk when my eye caught a box beneath the desk. It might have been a lifetime since I’d been in this house, but I hadn’t left a box. Curiosity got the better of me, and I kicked my feet over the side of the bed and sunk to the floor.
Assuming it was a box of junk, I expected it to weigh a thousand pounds, but it wasn’t heavy at all. I pulled it toward me. The box was filled with junk. I was about to push it back into its place under the desk, but my eye caught on a picture of… me. I reached into the box and took out the newspaper clipping. It was the editorial the local paper did on the grand opening of the distillery. Why the fuck did he have this? I went to put it back but noticed another clipping. Another piece about the distillery from a local travel magazine. What the…?
I gathered the rest of the papers, scanning through. Each article included something about me or my distillery.
There was even a bottle of my whiskey, unopened. What the fuck? Why did he have all of this?
My heart beat entirely too fast, my pulse pounding in my ears as I sifted through the rest. Each article, each clipping was a punch to the gut. He hadn’t just kept tabs on me——he had collected everything. Every mention of me, every milestone I had, every fucking achievement I told myself he didn’t give two shits about.
I stared at the unopened bottle of whiskey. My whiskey. The one with my company name printed across the label. One Barrel Whiskey . The name was derived from someone who helped me, believed in me, and had nothing to do with him. Because he didn’t care. At least I didn’t think he did, but all of this made me think otherwise.
This bottle, this unopened bottle of whiskey packed away by a man who was once a belligerent drunk who couldn’t pass up a taste of anything…. Untouched. Preserved. Like it meant something. Like I meant something.
A sharp breath rattled my chest, anger and confusion twisting into an ugly, tangled knot. Why? Why even bother? Regret? Guilt? Some sick, twisted reminder that I got away from him?
The desire to shove the box under the desk and pretend I never saw it was strong, but I couldn’t let go. It was proof, solid, unmistakable proof, that some part of him cared enough to collect all of this. That he’d been paying attention to me. And maybe the man beneath the drunk cared about me after all.
I snatched the clippings up and marched down the hall to the den. Ron sat in the same spot I left him. Fanny was on his lap.
“What is this?” I dropped the stack of papers in front of him on the coffee table.
He leaned up and glanced at the papers. “Nothing,” he muttered, still being pissy.
Fuck that . “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Don’t play that bullshit with me. You might forget, but you’re lucid right now, and I want answers while you can still give them.”
His chest rose and fell as he closed his eyes. Fanny sensed something and jumped to the floor and scampered off. “Because I was—I am proud of you,” Ron said, and it was like a bullet to my cold hard heart. “I was an awful father to you, yet you turned out pretty damn good.” His lip quivered, tears filling his dull eyes. “I never thought we’d have a relationship. I fucked it up. I accepted that. And now… we kind of do, and I’m afraid I’m not going to remember. Punishment. I guess.”
Funny. I had always wanted to see him punished. To understand pain and helplessness. In the end, that was exactly what he was getting, but instead of being vindicated and joyful about it, I was angry and sad. Why couldn’t he have been this man twenty years ago when I fucking needed him?
“Why now?” My voice raw with too many emotions cracked. “Why did it take losing everything for you to finally——” I shook my head, stopping the thought, not sure I wanted to go down that road. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it did matter. It mattered more than I wanted to admit.
He slumped forward as if the weight of his regrets and mistakes were too much of a burden to carry anymore. “I don’t have an easy answer for that, son. I wish I did.”
Son . The word was like salt in the wound. Biologically, I was his son, but in every sense that mattered, I wasn’t. He never made me feel like that title belonged to me, and it never felt like it was a title I could claim or even wanted to. But the word was the only thing that tied us together anymore. It’s all we had.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. “I can’t forget everything you did to me, every god-awful thing you said. And I especially don’t know if I can forgive you for any of it.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
I could get up right now and walk away just like I had done time and time again, but my legs were tired. Years of running were taking their toll. If I let him suffer, I was only allowing myself to suffer with him. It had to end at some point.
I wasn’t ready to call him Dad or bring him around the people who were my family in every sense of the word, but we had to start somewhere.
“I can try,” I said, my voice raw.
His lip trembled, and for the first time in maybe ever, I saw the man he could have been. The man who the broken child and angry teenager I once was wanted him to be.
Maybe I was fooling myself, and it was too late. But maybe it wasn’t.
Only time would tell.