Sunday, June 25th
Ronan
Dinner with Cormac and his family last night felt… surreal. But good. I sat across the table from a man who, not long ago, was just a name, a blurred silhouette. But last night he was all presence and voice and gentle wisdom. And hope.
The hours passed in a haze of warmth I still don’t quite know how to hold.
The conversation drifted between Mark’s and my college classes, the best clam chowder on the coast, and a long, dramatic retelling of a T-ball game Ashley swears was the peak of Mark’s athletic career.
Everyone laughed. Even me. Even my dad. And Cormac—Mac—sat across from us, talking about the best type of wood for framing, about the kid he once was and the father he chose to become, like it’s not a miracle.
Like healing doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
Later, in the stillness of the motel room, I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.
The quiet settled differently than it used to.
Not heavy, not hollow. Just quiet. I thought about Cat.
About her laugh. Her beauty. Her strength.
About our baby, a blur of cells and possibility, already reshaping me.
And I thought about Cormac. About how he hasn’t erased the past, but he hasn’t surrendered to it, either.
And then something stirred in me. Not certainty.
Not peace. It was Cat’s words, and Shane’s, and my grandparents’, and my therapist’s.
It was a small, stubborn belief that tomorrow doesn’t have to echo the worst parts of before.
That I can choose something different. That this life I’m building, still imperfect, still unfinished, is not just another yesterday.
***
Even now, in the quiet hum of morning light spilling through the car window, that feeling lingers. It sits in my chest like a foreign object I’m afraid to poke too hard. What if it dissolves under pressure? What if I imagined it?
My dad hasn’t said much since we hit the road. We’ve been driving for over an hour, the highway stretching out like an old scar—cracked, familiar, unchanging. I can tell he’s thinking. So am I.
We’re overdue for a talk. We’ve been dodging it. Well, I’ve been dodging it, shutting him down the moment he even hinted at getting too close to something real.
But I have a sneaking suspicion the time has come. The road ahead is looking pretty damn empty. And there’s nowhere left to hide.
Sure enough.
“I am so sorry, Ronan,” my dad says into the silence.
I turn my head to look at him, not sure what he’s apologizing for. Everything, probably. Everything. But I don’t ask—I wouldn’t even know where to start. So, I wait.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a dad to you and Stevie.
I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.
” The words spill out like he’s been holding them in for years.
“Sitting there yesterday, listening to Mark talk about what an amazing father Mac is, I realized how much I’ve failed you—and Stevie—but especially you. I shouldn’t have left you guys.”
“Dad, you did what you could,” I say, out of habit more than belief.
“No. Actually, I didn’t.” His voice goes stern. “Things could’ve been different if I’d been man enough to do what was right.”
He takes a deep breath, then exhales through his nose. “I left Morai and Athair just a few days after I turned sixteen.”
I nod. I’ve always known he left the ranch that young, though I never really understood why. Montana has always felt like a refuge to me.
So, I ask: “How come? Why’d you leave?”
He glances over, and there’s a heaviness behind his eyes that startles me. I recognize it—the same fractures I saw in Cat’s eyes the night I met her. The same darkness I see in my own reflection.
“I just… couldn’t stay,” he says. “I needed to leave. For me. And I swore I’d never step foot on Montana soil again.”
I don’t get the chance to press further.
“I grew up knowing I’d inherit the ranch. That I’d take over the family business. Until one day, I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Of staying. At sixteen, the only way out I saw was the military.”
I listen, more intently now. I’ve never heard this part.
“I knew I couldn’t enlist until I was seventeen.
I knew that because the day I turned sixteen, I took Athair’s truck and drove to Missoula.
Walked into a recruitment center and they told me they’d love to have me…
next year. Man, I was pissed,” he says with a dry laugh.
“So, I decided I’d leave anyway. Started working whatever jobs I could find, sleeping wherever I could crash. Sometimes there wasn’t even that.”
He shakes his head, like he’s watching it all play back in real time.
“I made my way to New York two weeks later. Met some people, crashed in their apartment for a bit. One weekend, we went to the beach—it was brutally hot—and that’s where I met Rica.
It was her sixteenth birthday. She was in the city with some girlfriends.
We started talking, hit it off, and… well, we kind of just snuck away from the group and—”
“Yeah, no need to share details, Dad,” I say, grimacing.
He chuckles. “I’ll spare you.” He sobers a little. “We exchanged numbers, but as shitty as it sounds, I had no intention of calling her. She was obviously a beautiful girl, but I wasn’t in that headspace.”
“Where was your head?” I ask.
He grins. “I was sixteen, Ran. Living away from my parents in a big city. My mind was on parties and sex and all the dumb stuff you get caught up in when you think the world owes you something.”
“Shit. Sorry I asked.”
“Oh, please. I’ve heard you weren’t exactly a saint before Cat,” he says with a laugh.
“Okay, fair enough,” I say. “So… when did you find out about Stevie?”
“Your mom called me about three months later, out of the blue. Asked if she could see me. I thought we were gonna hook up again, but she showed up at the apartment and it was obvious that wasn’t why she came.
She told me she was pregnant. God, Ran, I was such an asshole to her.
I tried to deny it. Said it wasn’t mine.
She was just bawling, swearing I was the only person she’d ever been with. ”
He stares out the windshield.
“I took her virginity during a one-night stand. How fucking shitty is that.”
“Definitely shitty,” I say. It’s something I’ve always worried about—being someone’s first when I had no intention of sticking around.
I remember how much it meant when Cat trusted me that way.
How it changed us. Changed me. I wouldn’t want to do that to someone I’d just met, someone I’d never see again.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “She told me her dad kicked her out. She completely broke down. Told me her dad had been abusive. We stayed up all night talking, and I realized I needed to step up. But, Ran?” He looks at me again, eyes steady.
“I’m going to be honest with you, so try not to judge me too hard: I hated it.
The idea of being a dad. I felt trapped.
I was sixteen. I didn’t love her. I didn’t want to raise a family.
I wanted to live. I wanted to go places. ”
“You sound like every sixteen-year-old guy ever,” I say, because… yeah. I get it.
“Rica stayed with me for a bit. We tried to make it work, but we couldn’t stay.
The guy I was crashing with didn’t want a baby in the place.
I had no way to support her or the baby.
So, I bit the bullet and called my parents.
Morai cried when I told her. But within minutes, she had a plan for us to come back to Montana.
Rica’s parents wanted nothing to do with her. And I couldn’t do it on my own.”
He exhales like the memory still stings.
“So back to Montana we went. We got married. And I was so fucking resentful, Ran. I didn’t want any of it. Not Montana, not the ranch, not the marriage, not fatherhood.”
He stares out the windshield, jaw tight.
“But then Stevie was born,” he says, softening. “And, god. That moment you hold your child for the first time… it’s like your heart breaks wide open.”
I nod slowly. “Still didn’t stop you from leaving.”
“No. It didn’t.” He pauses. “I told Rica and my parents that I was still going to enlist. The plan was that once I got stationed somewhere in the U.S., I’d bring Rica and Stevie to live on base with me. But… Rica got pregnant again. Right before I left for basic training.”
He swallows. “She called me crying. Told me she was expecting you. I wasn’t there for any of her pregnancy. Not the doctor visits, not the ultrasounds. I completed basic, then technical training, then went overseas for a bit. Ran, I didn’t meet you until you were six months old.”
That one stings more than I expect.
“Can I ask you a weird question?” I say.
He glances at me. “Sure.”
“Were you… faithful to Mom? Before Penny, I mean.”
He exhales long and deep, then shakes his head. “No. I wasn’t. I was a shitty husband to your mom. Just like I was a shitty dad to you and your brother.”
“Did you love her?”
“I had love for her—as the mother of my kids. But I didn’t love her like a husband should. Not like I love Penny. Not like you love Cat.”
He looks at me again, eyes glassy but steady. “Ran, I am as much to blame for what happened to you as your mother. I may not have laid a hand on you, but I didn’t protect you, either.”
He looks back to the road, knuckles tight on the wheel.
“I remember Morai telling me, over and over, that she was worried Rica didn’t have much of a bond with you.
She told me once she saw Rica hit you. I confronted Rica.
She blamed it on stress. Said she was overwhelmed.
I bought it. I wanted to believe it, because it meant I didn’t have to look closer. And I didn’t.”
He goes quiet, and I let the silence hang.