Chapter 17
MAC
Isat at the kitchen table at six in the morning with coffee I hadn’t touched. Outside, the mountain was doing its pre-dawn thing—the creek running loudly in the silence, the first birds testing the air, the sky going from black to charcoal gray in slow increments.
Today would be a day. A big day, a difficult day. Potentially a bad day. But one I had to face, had to get through. And I had to start with the scariest part of it.
Boden’s birthday was in three days. Fay’s words were clear as a bell in my head. Don’t reach out unless you’re going to stay. She’d repeated that warning when she’d sent me Boden’s number.
I wasn’t going to wait for his birthday.
That felt wrong, like showing up with a card and pretending the last five years were a gap I could bridge with a “Happy birthday, son.” Boden deserved more than a greeting.
He deserved a father who reached out because he wanted to be in his son’s life, not because a date on a calendar reminded him to.
I picked up the phone and opened the text app, then stared at the blank message screen. The cursor blinked. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. Jesus, what did you say to a son you had abandoned? I didn’t even know where to start.
I typed: Hey Boden. It’s Dad.
Deleted it. Too casual, like I was texting about picking him up from practice.
Boden, this is your father.
Deleted it. Too formal. I sounded like Darth Vader.
Hi Boden. It’s Mac.
Deleted it. He didn’t call me Mac. I was Dad. Or I had been, once.
Hey bud. I know it’s been a long time.
Deleted. I didn’t have the right to call him that after five years of nothing.
A deep breath, then:
Boden, it’s Dad. I know I’ve been gone a long time and I’m sorry.
I’ve been in contact with your mom, and she gave me your number.
I’m not texting because your birthday is coming up, although I’m happy about that too.
I’m texting because I want to be in your life again, if you’ll let me.
I understand if you’re angry. You have every right to be.
But I want you to know I think about you every single day and I never stopped.
I read it four times. It wasn’t eloquent. It wasn’t poetic. It was the truth in plain language, and I had to hope it would be enough.
I hit send.
My pulse kicked up in a fury, so I set the phone on the table, screen up, and wrapped my hands around the coffee mug to give them something to hold.
The coffee was lukewarm, but I drank it anyway.
It would be a shame to waste the good stuff.
Outside, the sky had shifted from charcoal to steel, the trees emerging as silhouettes against the brightening east.
He might not respond. He might read it and feel nothing, or feel anger, or feel the kind of hurt that turned inward and became silence.
He was almost sixteen, and I didn’t know what he was like.
Was he the kind who yelled or the kind who went quiet?
The kind who slammed doors or the kind who closed them softly and didn’t come out?
My phone buzzed.
Seven minutes. Boden had responded in seven minutes, which meant he’d either been awake already or the notification had woken him and he’d read it immediately. My hand shot out and grabbed the phone so fast I nearly knocked over the coffee.
wow
I stared at that single word.
Then the dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. He was typing, deleting, retyping—the same thing I’d been doing ten minutes ago. Like father, like son. The thought hit me somewhere below the ribs.
I don’t even know what to say
Mom told me you texted her. She said you might reach out. I didn’t really believe it
It’s been 5 years dad
No period. No question mark. Just the fact, sitting on the screen. Five years. A number that was also a weight, a distance, an accusation, and a door, all at once.
I know. And I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it.
I have a lot of questions
I’ll answer all of them. Every single one.
Why did you leave
There it was. The question under every other question. The one I’d been afraid of for five years, the one that woke me up at night, the one I’d moved to a mountain to avoid having to answer.
I could dodge it. I could say it was complicated, or that I would explain when he was older, or any of the cowardly phrases parents used when the truth was too hard for a child. But Boden wasn’t a child anymore. He was almost sixteen. And he deserved the truth after five years of nothing.
I left because I was scared of hurting you. I have PTSD from my time in the Army, and it made me do something I’ll never forgive myself for. I was afraid it could happen again and that you’d be the one I hurt. So I left to keep you safe. It was the wrong way to do it. I see that now.
I sent it and my hands were shaking. The dots appeared, then bubbled and bubbled.
Mom told me about the PTSD. Not all of it but enough. She said you weren’t dangerous and that you left because you loved me, not because you didn’t.
I believed her. But it still sucked. Like it really, really sucked, dad. Do you know what it’s like to have your dad just disappear? I was 10.
I read it twice. My vision blurred on the second pass, and I blinked hard. He had the right to say that. He had the right to say much worse.
I know. I can’t fix those five years and I won’t try to pretend I can. But I’m here now and I’m not disappearing again. That’s a promise.
You promised a lot of things
It landed like a fist. Because he was right. I’d promised to always be there. I’d promised to teach him to drive. I’d promised him a thousand things that ten-year-olds remember and fathers forget they said.
I know I did. And I know my promises don’t mean much right now. So I’m going to show you instead. However long that takes.
A pause. Longer this time. A minute. Two.
ok
I’m still angry though. Like really angry. You should know that
I’d be angry too.
And I have more questions. Way more
I’m not going anywhere. Ask me anything, anytime.
ok
A pause. Then:
My birthday is Friday
I know.
Just making sure you actually know
Something happened in my chest. A crack, a release, a thing giving way that had been locked tight for five years. We were a long way from forgiveness, if we ever got there at all, but it was a door, open a crack, with light coming through.
I know, Boden. Sixteen. I’ll call you Friday if that’s okay. I’d like to hear your voice.
yeah ok. That’d be good, I guess
I gotta go. School
Have a good day.
thanks
bye dad
I put the phone down. My son had called me Dad three times in a fifteen-minute text exchange after five years of silence.
I sat there for a long time. Boden was angry, and he had every right to be.
The anger was proof that he cared. Indifference would’ve been worse.
Indifference would’ve meant I’d truly lost him.
No, he was furious and hurt and had questions, but he’d said “bye dad” like the words were muscle memory after all this time.
That was enough. More than enough. More than I deserved.
Time for some breakfast and then the second big thing on my schedule, only slightly less scary than texting Boden had been.
Dr. Everett’s office was in the back of the Forestville Family Practice, a small room with a window that looked out over Main Street and had shelves lined with medical texts and a few framed photos—his sons, Tomás, a picture of him with his friends, including Sheriff Frant.
The room had the lived-in quality of a space where someone spent real time, not just saw patients.
I liked Dr. Everett well enough. He had steady hands and kind eyes, and he’d treated my hand while making me feel more like a person than a patient.
He’d just removed the stitches from my hand and had asked if there was anything else he could do for me.
Now I was sitting in a chair across from his desk, and he was looking at me with that calm, focused attention.
“I want to try therapy again,” I said without preamble. I didn’t have the energy for a runway. “For the PTSD. I tried group talk therapy through the VA a few years back, and it didn’t work. Meds made me feel like a zombie. But I want to try something different.”
Dr. Everett nodded. If he was surprised, it didn’t show. “What’s changed?”
“I have reasons to get better that I didn’t have before.
” I paused and met his gaze. As my doctor, he deserved an honest answer.
“I contacted my son this morning. He’s almost sixteen.
First time in five years I had contact with him.
And I want to be someone he can count on. I can’t do that the way I am.”
Dr. Everett’s expression grew warmer, his attention on me deepening. “That took courage, Mac.”
“It took long enough.”
“The timing matters less than the doing.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “Can you tell me a little more about your military career, your combat exposure, and your PTSD diagnosis?”
I ran him through the facts. Funny how a career that had defined my life for so long could be summarized in less than a minute.
Fir nodded. “There’s a therapist in Monroe I’d like to recommend. Her name is Sarah Delgado. She specializes in trauma, specifically combat-related PTSD, and she’s trained in EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Are you familiar with it?”
“Vaguely.”
“It works differently from talk therapy. Instead of narrating the traumatic experience repeatedly, EMDR helps the brain reprocess how the memory is stored. It’s less about talking through what happened and more about changing the way your nervous system responds to it.
The research over the last several years has been very promising, particularly for veterans who haven’t responded to conventional approaches. ”
I shifted in my seat, something warm blooming inside me. “That sounds like me.”