Chapter 39
CAL
The house is dark when I pull in.
My headlights sweep across the front porch and catch nothing but empty chairs and the ghost of movement through the curtains. Dad was at the ceremony earlier, back row as usual, but he'd slipped out right after the vows.
He doesn't do well with crowds these days. Too many people asking how he's doing, too many well-meaning neighbors with that particular tilt to their voices.
The workshop is dark. No warm glow bleeding through the windows, no faint sound of the radio drifting across the yard. That means he's not spending his night out there with his tools and his sawdust and whatever conversation he's having with Mom that I try very hard not to think about too closely.
Then the light flickers on in the living room, and I see his silhouette move past the window. He's up. I take a breath that doesn't quite make it all the way into my lungs and get out of the car.
The walk to the front door takes approximately ten thousand years. Every step is a negotiation with my own self, which has decided to compress itself into something the size of a fist and twice as useless.
I keep thinking about the way Lily watched me before she left me on that dance floor. The way her hand felt when it slipped out of mine. The way she said I love you like it was both a promise and a goodbye, and I couldn't tell which one was louder.
The living room smells like coffee and wood polish, the same way it's smelled my entire life. Dad is in his chair, the TV casting blue light across his face, and when he sees me his expression lights up.
"You're home early, my handsome son," he says, and there's a question underneath the words that he's too kind to ask outright.
I want to answer, but nothing comes out. I try again, and what emerges is a sound I don't recognize. The casual warmth drops from his face and what's left is pure worry, the kind that makes him look ten years older in the space of a heartbeat.
"Cal?" He's already reaching for the remote, clicking off the TV, pushing himself up from the chair with a speed I haven't seen from him in years.
I can't speak. I'm standing in my childhood living room with my keys still in my hand and I am falling apart in a way I haven't allowed myself to fall apart since the day we buried my mother.
Dad crosses the living room in three steps. His arms come up and I fold into him, and it doesn't matter that I'm taller and broader and stronger than he is now because he's my dad and I am breaking and he is the only person in the world who can hold me together.
So I cry. My face is pressed into his shoulder, my hands fisting in the back of his shirt like I'm five years old and terrified of the dark.
I haven't cried like this since Mom died. I haven't let myself. I've been so busy being strong and dependable, so busy being the son he needed me to be, that I forgot what it felt like to just let go.
Dad holds on. Both arms tight around me, one hand on the back of my head, his voice steady in my ear.
"I've got you. I'm here. I've got you."
I cry until the sounds turn to breathing and the breathing turns to something close to normal. He doesn't let go for a single second.
The tears are freeing in a way I didn't expect.
It's not just about Lily. It's everything.
My mother. The thought of leaving this house.
The thought of leaving him. Being torn between my father and the woman I love, knowing that no matter what I choose, I'm going to lose.
Knowing that my happiness might break his heart, no matter what he says.
"You were right." I clear my throat, pulling myself together.
I pull back enough to see his face, and his eyes are wet, his expression full of a love and understanding that I realize with a start contains no surprise at all. He knew. He's known this whole time.
"I love her, Dad." The words feel like they're being pulled out of somewhere deep, somewhere I've been keeping them locked away. "I love her so much and I can't let her go."
He cups the back of my neck and squeezes. His hand is rough from decades of wood and sandpaper and tools, and it's the safest thing in the world.
"I know," he says, and he's smiling, sad and proud all at once. "I've known for a while, son."
"I want to go to Chicago." I say it fast, before I can think about it again, before the logistics and the fear can talk me out of it.
"I want to follow her. I don't have a plan. I don't have anything figured out. I just know I can't be in this town without her and I can't let her be in that city without me."
His expression doesn't change. He just watches me, waiting for the rest.
"I know I'd be leaving you," I say, and this is the part that has kept me up every night for weeks.
This is the wall I couldn't get past. My father, alone, in this house, in this workshop, with nobody to check on him in the mornings, nobody to buy the flowers, nobody to listen for the radio and make sure he's okay.
"Callahan." His voice is gentle, but firm. "You can go freely. I am not old. I am barely fifty-one, you overprotective idiot." A pause, and something almost mischievous flickers in his eyes. "I am younger than Brad Pitt."
I laugh. God, I needed that.
"I know that, Dad. I know. But I know what it would mean, and I don't know how to do this without hurting you."
His hand comes off my neck and both his palms settle on my shoulders, facing me square. The way he used to stand when he was teaching me something important. When he wanted to make sure I was really listening.
"You are not hurting me." His voice is so sure. "You are making me very happy, knowing you made the right decision. You keep that girl. You support her every step of the way."
"I can't just go and be happy." I shake my head, feeling the familiar weight settle back into my shoulders. "I worry about you. I love living with you."
"I am so proud of you, Cal. I hope you know that." His grip tightens slightly. "The way you love, the way you want to stay with me. But that is not how life works."
"You're my dad. Why wouldn't it be how life works?"
"Because kids grow up and move on and out to live their life." It sounds so simple, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Have their own wife and children. You know that."
"But I didn't want a wife and children." The words come out before I can stop them. "I was happy to live here with you."
His smile shifts into something brighter, something that looks almost like hope. "Didn't? Does that mean you want now?"
The heat creeps into my cheeks.
"Yeah," I admit, not quite meeting his eye. "I want now."
He lets out a victorious sound. "That makes me and your mother very happy."
I frown at the mention of her, the way I always do when he talks about her like she's right there in the room with us.
"No." His voice sharpens immediately. "You stop that right now. I am not crazy, and I will see any doctor you want to prove that to you if that is what makes it easier for you to leave."
I've been carrying this for months, and there's no way to say it that won't hurt him.
"I think I need you to be checked out, Dad." I force myself to meet his eyes. "I am so sorry. But I worry, and if there was something wrong, I would never forgive myself for it."
"I will do it any time." He doesn't hesitate. "For you, I will do it tomorrow."
"I'm so sorry."
"I understand." His expression is understanding. "I would do the same."
"Yeah?"
"Of course. There is nothing to it." A small smile tugs at his mouth. "All they will find is a man still in love, Cal. No crazy."
We both laugh, and I nod. It might just be okay.
"So promise me you're going," he says.
I don't answer right away. My brain is already calculating, running through logistics. When. How. What I'd need to arrange, who I'd need to talk to, how quickly I could make it happen.
"If you won't go alone, then I'll come too."
I stare at him. "Dad, no..."
"I mean it." His eyes are clear, and I can’t detect any hesitation.
"If that is what it takes, we both follow that girl wherever she goes."
"This is your house." My voice is barely a whisper. "Yours and Mom's."
"My whole life is standing in front of me, Callahan.”
He gives me a shake, and I nod. “You. You are my whole life. You and that girl who fell into our lives and made us both remember what living feels like."
He pauses, and something shifts in his expression.
"I owe it to your mom to make sure you are happy."
I can't see. My vision has gone to water. My dad who has shrunk his world to the size of a workshop for over a decade. He's telling me he'd leave it. For me. For her. For the life he can see we need even when I couldn't see it myself.
"We'll find another way," I manage. "You can't leave home."
"I'd leave all of it." His voice doesn't waver. "Callahan, listen to me. Your mother would haunt me properly if I let you lose your girl because you were worried about your old man and his workbench."
He pulls me back in a hug that contains thirty years of fatherhood and everything he's never been able to say out loud. I bury my face in his shoulder.
"We'll find a place for me with a good workshop," he says into my hair. "Big windows. Southern exposure. Your mother likes southern light."
"Dad, I love you."
"A porch, too. And a big kitchen." I can hear the smile in his voice. "Your girl is big on kitchens and porches she can kiss you on."
I snort, but he's right. He's so right.
"I love you very much” he tells me. "And I'd do just about anything for a few grandbabies."
I study my father, and I know I don't deserve him.
This is the bravest thing anyone has ever done for me.
Braver than any fire I've ever run into, braver than anything I've ever faced.
He's offering to leave everything he knows, everything he built with my mother, everything that keeps her close to him, just so I can be happy.
I pull him into another hug, before I shove him away.
"But you'll have to wait a long-ass time for grandbabies, you crazy old man."
"It's okay." He pats my back. "Younger than Brad Pitt, remember?"
I roll my eyes, and for the first time, I can breathe again.
He gestures broadly, his hand sweeping to encompass the living room, the house around us, the workshop visible through the window.
"Just so you know," he says, "all of this?" Another gesture. "It means a lot of money. And we haven't really used that well, you and me. We've just been sitting on it, living small."
I frown, not following.
"What I'm saying is that it means a lot of freedom. For you and for her. Medical school is expensive. Starting a life is expensive. And your mother and I built something here that was always meant to give you options."
He cuts me off with a look when I want to protest.
"Let me do this, Cal. Let me give you two this. It's what fathers do.”
I don't have words. I just nod, my throat too tight to speak, and he smiles at me like I've given him a gift instead of the other way around.
"Now." He claps my shoulder. "Go get your girl. And bring her home so I can gloat and be happy."
I do just that, hoping she will still have me.