Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nate
By the time Jo’s arms loosened from around me in the doorway, I already knew I wasn’t going in there to fight my father.
A week ago—maybe even yesterday—I might have.
I might have walked into Silas’s office ready with all the speeches I’ve been writing in my head for years; what he should have done, where he failed, all the ways I’d had to patch myself together without him.
But standing in the hallway, listening to him crack open for Jo, something uncoiled inside me.
This wasn’t the indestructible man I’d built in my head. This was just . . . my dad. Human. Haunted. Tired.
Jo’s fingers squeezed mine once, hard, before she slipped past me. “Be kind,” she whispered, voice thick. “He’s already punishing himself.” Then she was gone, boots soft on the hallway runner.
I stepped into Silas’s office and closed the door behind me.
Dad was slumped in Silas’s chair, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them. The notebook from my old bug-out bag lay open on the desk, pages splayed—my childhood sketches and messy lists staring up at us like witnesses.
His eyes were red and wet. His shirt was wrinkled. “I said too much,” he muttered without looking up. “Christ. Your friend is going to think I’m—”
“Human?” I crossed the room and pulled a chair around to face him. “She already figured that out, Dad.”
He huffed a humorless sound that might have been a laugh. His gaze wandered to the notebook, his fingers drifting over a pencil sketch of the barn like he could rub the memory off the page. “How much did you hear,” Dad asked finally. “All of it?”
“Enough.” I leaned my forearms on my knees, mirroring his posture. “Enough to know it hurt to say.”
He flinched. “Are you disappointed?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
He looked up at that. Really looked. Like he expected to see a lie.
I met his eyes and let him see exactly what was there.
“Dad,” I said quietly and straightened. “Look at me. Take a good look at the man you raised.”
His gaze traveled over my face, my shoulders, my hands. The same hands that used to be small enough to fit entirely in his.
“I’m not broken,” I said. “I’m not sad. I’m not ruined by any of this. If I’m hurting at all, it’s because I wish I could’ve been there to protect you and Silas both from your father, and from the guilt you’ve been carrying since he died.”
His jaw clenched. Tears filled his eyes again, fast, like I’d punched through some thin shell he’d barely gotten back in place. “You don’t know—”
“I know enough.” I let my voice stay steady even while my chest felt like someone had opened it with a crowbar.
“I know you were a kid with a violent father and no safe place. I know Silas took the hits for you and Claire until he left, and you stepped in so she didn’t have to.
I know you blamed yourself when it all finally blew up. ”
He swallowed, hard. “I was the one who hit back.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You were the one who hit back. That doesn’t make you the villain, Dad. That makes you the kid who finally said ‘enough.’ The one who broke the pattern.”
He stared at me, breathing unevenly.
“And Silas?” he rasped. “You heard what I said about him. I hated him for leaving us. I loved him, and I hated him for being happy when we were drowning. That’s not . . . That’s not something you come back from.”
“He was a good man,” I said. “But he wasn’t perfect either.”
Dad blinked like he hadn’t considered that as an option.
“He could’ve done more for you,” I went on gently. “He could’ve reached back when you needed him. He found a way out, and then he started over without you. That’s on him too. You didn’t break everything alone.”
He bowed his head, his shoulders shaking.
“I told him—” The words came out rough. “I told him you weren’t the son he lost. I said he was trying to replace his dead child with mine. I put that out there and I never—never took it back.”
“I know,” I said quietly.
His head snapped up, guilt flashing.
“I heard that part,” I added. “And yeah. That was brutal. You went low. But you were drowning, Dad. And he didn’t exactly throw you a rope.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“I’m not offering excuses.” I held his gaze. “I’m telling you I see all of it. The heroic parts and the ugly ones. And I still see the same thing.”
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“A man who survived something that should’ve broken him,” I said.
“A man who protected his sister. A man who brought his son here the second he realized he might not be safe in his own house. A man who went to therapy instead of doubling down on being an asshole. A man who came back for me as soon as he thought he could be better.”
His face crumpled.
“Dad,” I said, every word simple and solid, “I love you. I love the successful you, the overprotective you, the version of you who bought me that stupid bug-out bag because you wanted me ready for anything. I love that when you were at your worst, you still knew enough to put me somewhere safe. And I love that you’re here now, even though you knew it meant facing all of this. ”
He shook his head weakly. “You . . . you shouldn’t.”
“I do,” I said. “I don’t hate you. I don’t judge you. I see you. All of you.”
He stared at me like I’d handed him something he didn’t know what to do with.
And because it felt like he needed it spelled out, I added, “If you need me to say it, I will. I’m not going anywhere.
Not everyone leaves. Not everyone disappoints.
You raised me to believe I was capable of anything, remember?
Look at me now. I’ve got a good life. A better life than I deserve half the time.
Mostly because you were in my corner, even when you thought you didn’t deserve to be. ”
His hand came up, shaking, and pressed over his mouth. Tears slipped between his fingers.
For a second, all I could see was a man in his forties, swearing he’d never be like his father. And then twenty years later, that same man sitting in his dead brother’s office, finally letting someone see the cracks.
Jo had changed the way I understood loyalty.
Before her, it meant don’t rat out your people, keep your word, sign the checks on time.
With her—and with this place—it meant something quieter.
Being there in the worst moments. Staying when someone was at their least impressive.
Choosing to love the parts they hated in themselves.
My father had been doing that for me for years without knowing what to call it.
Maybe it was my turn.
I stood, stepped between his knees, and pulled him up out of the chair.
For the first time in my life, he felt . . . small. Not weak. Just human-sized. A man, not a myth.
I wrapped my arms around him and held on. He didn’t hug back at first. Then his fingers fisted in the back of my sweater and he broke—silent, shaking, his forehead pressed into my shoulder. I held him like that for a long time, feeling decades of tension bleed out of his frame.
“It’s okay,” I murmured into his hair. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
When his breathing finally evened out, I eased back and gave his shoulders a light squeeze.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you upstairs before that local rocket fuel finishes you off.”
A wet laugh escaped him. “Those bastards,” he muttered. “Told me it was ‘just a little something to keep you warm.’”
“Yeah, well,” I said, guiding him toward the door, “next time maybe stick to cocoa.”
We made our way up the stairs slowly, my arm firm around his back. Outside, I could still hear faint shouts and laughter, the bonfire crowd starting to thin. Cutting Day was winding down. Inside, it felt like a different kind of fire had just burned through the old rot.
In the guest room, I sat him on the edge of the bed, found the half-full glass on the nightstand, went and grabbed the Advil from the cabinet and returned. “Here,” I said, pressing two tablets into his palm. “Take these. Then horizontal.”
He grimaced but took them, drinking obediently.
“You don’t have to stay,” he muttered as he lay back, one arm flung over his eyes. “Go . . . go enjoy your party.”
“This is my party,” I said. “Old guys on too much homemade liquor and generational trauma. Very exclusive event.”
A breath of a chuckle. “Smart-ass.”
“I get it from my dad,” I said.
He didn’t answer. His breathing slowed, evened. The lines at his mouth eased.
I pulled a blanket up over him, more out of instinct than necessity, and sat down in the chair by the bed.
For a while I just watched him sleep.
If you’d told me a month ago that this is where I’d end up—sitting guard over my father in a farmhouse he once resented, after listening to him confess the worst thing he’d ever said to his brother—I’d have laughed.
If you’d told me the experience would leave me feeling peaceful, I’d have called you insane.
But that’s how I felt.
Not because everything was fixed. It wasn’t. There were years we couldn’t get back, apologies that would never be said. But somewhere between Jo pulling a gun on me in this driveway and this moment, my life had changed and not in a bad way.
I wasn’t the man who lived in a Boston penthouse and measured his worth in quarterly reports anymore.
I was the man who climbed on roofs to hang Christmas lights because a town expected their tree line to glow.
I was also the man who sat beside his father’s bed because the kid in that man had never had anyone sit beside his.
And, despite all the craziness in the world, I’d found a woman brave enough stand beside me and face down not only her demons, but mine.
Soft footsteps sounded in the hall. There was a knock, gentle, at the half-open door.
I stood and stepped out, pulling the door mostly closed behind me. Jo and Aunt Claire were there.
Claire’s eyes were a little shining, like she’d cried her own private tears somewhere between the bonfire and here. Jo’s gaze went straight to my face, searching.
“He’s asleep,” I said quietly. “And he’ll be okay.”
Relief flooded Claire’s expression. She reached out and cupped my cheek with one hand, thumb brushing just under my eye the way she used to when I was ten and pretending I hadn’t cried over scraped knees.
“Jo told me what happened. You did good,” she said softly. “Both of you.”
Jo didn’t say anything at first. She just stepped into me, slid her arms around my waist, and rested her forehead briefly against my chest. I held her, breathing her in.
Over her shoulder, Claire smiled in approval.
And in that narrow farmhouse hallway, with my father sleeping behind one door and the two women I cared most about standing in front of me, it hit me: Cutting Day wasn’t just a tradition about trees.
It was about community and starting over. Silas had come here to create what he didn’t know how fix in his old life.
Somewhere between the fields and the firelight and the confessions, I saw the farm for what it had been to Silas and what it could be for the rest of us.
A place to start over and heal.