Chapter 29
“Hello?” comes through the phone before it gets to the fourth ring.
Will can hear the television turned up too loudly in the background. He doesn’t know if he’s called a cell or a landline, but he’s picturing his dad having grumpily trudged over to the latter.
“Uh, hi,” Will says. He hasn’t heard his dad’s voice in more than five years. It sounds older than Will expected, but he can still detect a growl of disdain in it. All just from a hello.
“Who is this?” his dad asks.
Will should’ve known. Why would he recognize him?
“It’s Will.” There’s a pause, so he adds: “You know, your son?”
“Ah, William.” His dad is the only person who’s ever called him William, and his voice softens a bit with what seems like warmth, but Will doesn’t trust it. “Good of you to call. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
The TV noise disappears, suggesting either his dad has turned it down or moved to a different room. Their relationship has been so nonexistent that even that level of attention tracks as significant in Will’s mind.
“Yeah, well, I told Mom not to give you my number, but I guess I changed my mind.”
“So she said. I don’t know why she mentioned it to you in the first place. I shouldn’t need permission before calling my own son.”
Maybe she mentioned it because you never call me, and she knows I can’t stand you?
Will pushes his lower lip out with this tongue to keep those words from coming out of his mouth. This conversation is almost guaranteed to go sideways at some point, but he needs to get something from it first.
“Well, I’m here now. What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“See? I knew you’d be interested.” His dad’s entire phone demeanor lightens, sounds happy, which is even more out of character than the warmth of 30 seconds ago. “It’s actually good news. I’m getting married, William.”
Will can’t keep up with his thoughts.
Does Mom know? Why would a habitual cheater get married again? Did he not hate family generally but just us specifically? Why does he think I’d be happy about this? Is he telling me because he wants me to go to the wedding? Be in the wedding?
“William?”
“Uh, sorry. That’s just—yeah.”
His dad barks a laugh. “I’ll take that as a congratulations.”
Will stares at his compostable iced-coffee cup sweating onto the black metal table. “All right, so who is this person?” he asks. He doesn’t really care what the answer is. He just knows he needs to say something.
“This woman is someone I met at my church.”
“Your church?” His dad had said it like the devil hadn’t wept the first time he touched a pew.
“Yes, I started going about a year ago. You get to a certain age, you start taking stock of your life, and you realize some things.”
Will can feel a glimmer of hope creeping in. He tries to bat it away, knowing from experience that it’s fool’s gold, that whenever he’s thought this man was about to say or do something self-aware or humble, Will has walked away more disappointed and broken than before.
Then again, maybe his dad had in fact found religion. If he had, weren’t apologies part of that?
And wouldn’t reaching out to say you were sorry to the son you’d abandoned be the natural place to start?
“I knew I couldn’t keep living the way I had been,” his dad continues. “So I cleaned up my act, and then I met Shelley. We started dating about three months ago, and I proposed to her last weekend.”
“Whoa. That was—that’s fast.”
“It is. But when you know, you know. Especially at our age.”
“Did you tell Mom?”
That barking laugh again. “Why would I tell your mother?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like the right thing to do.”
“You can tell her if you want. She and I just don’t have that kind of relationship. I doubt she’d even be happy for me. You’d think after all these years, but no.”
Forthcoming apology or not, his nonchalance is infuriating. “Well, you were pretty awful to her.”
“Hey,” his dad says, his voice hardening, “we were young, and she wasn’t always the easiest ...” He stops, like he can see Will’s face contorting with rising anger. “Look, I’m not here to relitigate my marriage to your mother with you. That’s not why I wanted to talk.”
“So why did you?”
“The wedding is in a couple of weeks here in Florida.”
Will braces himself. This is it. It’s not an apology. It’s an invitation. They want him and Rachel at the wedding to somehow whitewash all his past sins. If his dad asks him to be his best man, he thinks he might throw up the doughnut.
“Okay,” Will says, committed to making him say the words.
“And it’s really important that before I go into this marriage, I have your forgiveness so my slate is wiped clean. It’s a big part of our faith.”
Will waits for him to say more. To say that he was wrong to blame his many failures as a husband on his eight-year-old son or that he understands now he should have been there for Will even though things didn’t work out between him and his mom. Or maybe that his newfound faith has finally forced him to fess up and face what a lousy father he’d been. Will doesn’t know what religion his dad is practicing, but pretty much all of them have a lot to say about family.
But none of that comes.
“So do I?” his dad asks after about 15 seconds of dead air between them.
“Do you what?”
“Have your forgiveness?”
Will laughs. He can’t help it. After all that time spent thinking he was the problem, the reality is that this man is so self-absorbed he can’t even tell how ridiculous he sounds right now. Not even at Will’s lowest—which, let’s face it, is where he’s been for most of his time in Nashville—has he ever displayed this type of arrogance and entitlement. His mom knows it. Rachel knows it. Ali knows it.
And now Will can see it for himself.
“Have you even apologized?” he asks.
“Of course I have. What do you think this is?”
“Telling someone you need them to forgive you isn’t the same thing as saying you’re sorry.”
“I think that’s implied, William,” his dad says, the tone unmistakably condescending.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to need you to do more than imply it after everything you’ve done. Are you even inviting me to the wedding, or do you just want me to absolve you beforehand?”
“It’s going to be a small ceremony, just Shelley’s kids and a few of our friends, so there’s really no need for you to come.”
His dad doesn’t say it with any more cruelty than normal. To him, it’s just a statement of fact. And Will feels like he should be relieved because the last place in the world he would ever want to be is at his dad’s wedding to some woman named Shelley.
His self-centered, egotistical father, whom Will thought he’d finally closed the book on not one minute ago.
But he’s crushed all the same, the message he’s received for so many years delivered one more time, underlined and in bold.
I don’t want you. I never wanted you. You were never enough.
And that’s when he remembers why he decided he didn’t need talking points.
“I guess I’m not surprised. You didn’t even respond when Rachel and I invited you to our wedding, so why would you want me at yours?”
“It would just be awkward. You must understand that.”
“Oh, but I thought it was because it’s going to be a small ceremony. So which is it? I make things awkward, or there’s just no room for me?”
“For crying out loud, William. Don’t be a child.”
“How the hell would you know what I was like as a child?” Will shouts into the phone. The dog beneath the table two over looks up at him, concerned, while the woman sitting there tries not to. “You took me to a baseball game and then left forever.”
“A baseball game?”
One of his only memories of his dad. A day he had played out over and over again as a kid, trying to make it come out differently. And his dad doesn’t even remember it.
“Still polishing that dad-of-the-year résumé, I see.”
“Please,” his dad says. Will doesn’t need to see him to picture the sneer on his face. “Like your life was so hard. I paid my child support. I saw you when I could. I’d say things turned out pretty well for you.”
“You don’t even care if I forgive you, do you? This was Shelley’s idea. She’s making you do this, isn’t she? And you’re going along with it because, what, you’re some kind of Holy Roller now?”
That his dad for once doesn’t have a response both shocks Will and confirms he’s right.
“God, Aunt Katie was so right about you. You just don’t get it. You never got it.”
“Ha, Katie,” his dad says coldly, proving his silence was fleeting. “I haven’t thought about her in years. Be careful there. She’s a real piece of work.”
Will’s tone is more measured now as he feels himself letting go of any last bit of desire to know this person.
“She’s dead, you prick. She loved me. She loved her sister. She knew and loved Rachel. And she was more of a parent to me than you ever were.”
His dad gets quiet. Dangerous.
“Now you listen to me, boy. I am still your father, and I am not going to be spoken to the way I’m sure you let that little wife of yours talk to you. Check your tone, or we’re done here.”
Everything Will has felt—the pain, the frustration, the anger, the sadness, the disappointment—bubbles up inside him.
But so, too, does the relief. He knows this is about to be over once and for all.
He takes a drink of his coffee to ensure he’s fully present in the moment. Because it’s been a long time coming.
“No, you listen to me,” Will says, lowering his voice so only the two of them can hear it. “Because if you don’t, and you hang up, I swear to God I will find Shelley, and I will tell her all the shit about you I know you haven’t.”
He waits a few seconds, making sure his dad is still there.
“I thought so,” Will says. And then he starts.
“What I’m going to say is probably going to surprise you. Because guess what? I do forgive you. Or at least I know I should. Not because it will make me a better person or because I think God wants me to. Because to be honest, if there is a heaven, I think you and people like you are going to have a lot to answer for.
“It’s not because of the two women who raised me, either. They sacrificed for me and loved me and taught me how to be a man I can be proud of, even if I get it wrong sometimes. And you were terrible to them both, but especially to my mom. I could never forgive you for that. Only they could. I think Mom maybe has. I think you’d better hope you don’t run into Katie in the afterlife.
“I’m not forgiving you for Rachel. That’s my wife, by the way, in case you didn’t catch her name before. I don’t even know if you knew it. She of course knows about you. And she hates your guts. Like, wholly and truly. She’s not even speaking to me right now, and yet I know if I told her you asked me to forgive you—wait, I’m sorry, that you implied an apology—she would tell you to go to hell.
“Most important, I’m not forgiving you because you’re sorry. If you truly were, I would. But I know you’re not.”
Will stops, verifying once more his dad is still on the line. He hears something clatter in the sink and thinks Shelley must be right there with him.
“I want to forgive you for me. For what you said about me to Mom when you left. For allowing me to blame myself for you being a coward. For causing me to doubt that I’m worthy of being loved. For chipping away at my self-esteem all these years without so much as saying a word. For not being a part of my life and not wanting to be a part of my life. For not knowing my wife and, in five months or so, never meeting your grandchild. And for making me believe I could ever treat that child the way you’ve treated me.
“I am going to do my best to forgive you for all of it, Andrew, because you are a small, sad, shallow man, and I’m tired of feeling like who you are ever had anything to do with me.”
Will lingers for a second or two. There’s no reaction, no screaming or tears or “You listen to me, boy.” Just stony silence.
“Goodbye,” Will says, and he hangs up.
He sets his phone down on the table and notices how quick his breathing has gotten. Closing his eyes, he rubs his forehead between his thumb and fingers, slowing himself down.
He did it. He actually did it.
The dog who looked at him earlier gets up from under her table and comes over to lick his leg. He opens his eyes and reaches down to pet her.
“Sorry,” the woman says. “She can tell when someone’s upset. It’s a dog thing.”
“Oh no, I don’t mind,” Will says, smiling down at the black Lab. “What’s her name?”
“Well, we let our six-year-old pick, and she went with Katydid because she loves bugs. But of course the three-year-old couldn’t say that and just started calling her Katy, so now we all do.”
Will is confident his aunt didn’t believe in reincarnation, and neither does he. But he also could imagine her saying that if she did, you could do a lot worse than coming back as a dog.
“Hi there, Katy,” he says, tears in his eyes. “Thanks for looking out for me.”