22. Elijah
ELIJAH
Elijah let out a long sigh at the sight of his father. “I suppose I should have known it would be you,” he said.
Oliver Norcross stood at the threshold, looking more windswept and less put-together than Elijah had ever seen him before. “Can I come in?” he asked.
“I’m surprised you’re asking my permission. Don’t you just do whatever you want anyway?”
“Elijah, come on. Don’t be like that.”
Elijah leaned against the doorframe. “All right, Dad,” he said.
“Go ahead. Why don’t you tell me how you’d like me to be?
Why don’t you spell it out for me once and for all, so we can at least make sure we understand each other?
Because, I swear to you, if I have to find out secondhand from someone again that you were paying them to try to hem me into being the son you want, I’m going to give up on all of this and move to Fiji. ”
“Don’t be dramatic,” his father said. “Let me come in and we’ll talk. You’ve been ignoring my calls and messages for days.”
“Because I haven’t wanted to talk to you. Was that unclear in some way?”
“Well, I came all the way over here, so you’re going to talk to me now, even if we have to do it standing in your doorway in full view of your neighbors,” Oliver said firmly. “But I think we’ll both be more comfortable if we go inside.”
He was right, of course. Elijah hated to admit it, but his father had a point. He stood back to let him in.
Oliver made his way straight through the kitchen and to the back of the house, where the living room was.
Elijah had a moment of relief that he had chosen that room, that he wasn’t trying to go to the den, where Elijah and Stephanie had spent so many relaxed evenings together.
He didn’t think he would have been able to stand sitting in there with his father after everything that had happened.
The two men settled into chairs. Oliver looked at Elijah as though expecting something—recriminations, maybe. Elijah said nothing. He wasn’t the one who had wanted this conversation. If his father wanted to speak, then he could do it.
After a moment, he drew a breath. “All right,” he said. “Let me have it.”
“Let you have what?” Elijah said coldly. “I really don’t have anything to say to you. You know what you did, and you know why it’s twisted. I don’t have to explain that, I hope.”
“You’re judging me too harshly,” his father told him. “You need to hear my side of this.”
“Maybe you need me to hear it. I don’t really think this has anything to do with what I need. I don’t think you have ever been concerned with what I needed, if I’m honest.” Elijah folded his arms and regarded his father. “I think you’re the most selfish parent I could possibly have had.”
“Elijah, just listen,” his father said. “If you could only open your mind, you would see that I’m just trying to do what’s best for you.”
“It’s interesting how doing what’s best for me has never involved finding out what I actually wanted. Or did you genuinely think that paying a woman to spend time with me was going to make me happy?”
“Well, I never paid her a dime,” his father said.
“You wanted to, though.”
“I wanted to give her a business loan. I wanted there to be something in it for her. What’s the matter with that?”
“What’s wrong with that is that it assumes she couldn’t possibly have wanted to spend time with me for any other reason,” Elijah said.
“Which is what you think, isn’t it? You found a good woman, a quality woman, and your first thought was, what could she possibly see in my son?
But if I pay her… well, then she might be willing to tolerate him. Isn’t that right?”
His father sighed. “Son, she had already turned you down. I saw it happen. I wasn’t making an assumption there. It wasn’t that I decided she was too good for you in some way. She had already shown she wasn’t interested.”
Elijah opened his mouth to retort, but then closed it. His father was right, as much as he hated to admit it—that was exactly what had happened. “Well, you still should have stayed out of it,” he said, feeling pathetic.
“Maybe I should have.” His father shifted in his seat.
“The truth was that I never expected things to go the way they did, Elijah. I never thought you would start taking this one seriously. I thought it was going to be just another fling. And if it was that, it seemed harmless for me to push a girl in your direction, to make sure your fling was with someone who would help you stay out of the news. You must admit that’s something you’ve struggled with on your own.
You keep making headlines, and not in a good way. ”
“It’s not yours to control,” Elijah said. “If you’re disappointed in me, you have to live with that. You can’t pull strings behind the scenes to reframe my life into something you can tolerate. You just have to… be disappointed.”
“Maybe you’re right,” his father admitted. “But, Elijah… it’s not that I’m disappointed in you.”
A laugh huffed its way out of Elijah’s throat. “You can’t tell me now that you’re happy with me,” he said. “That ship sailed a long time ago, Dad. We both know the truth. I’m not enough for you, and I never have been. You’ve always wished that I was someone different.”
“Will you listen to me?” his father demanded. “I mean, will you get down off your high horse and let me say what I came here to say?”
“Which is what? Which is that you were completely justified in interfering in my life, and I ought to just get over it?”
“No, damn it.” His father let out a long sigh. “I’m trying to apologize to you, Elijah. That’s what I’ve been trying to say here. I shouldn’t have done it, all right? I’m sorry.”
The words hung in the air.
Elijah couldn’t quite believe what he had heard. “You’re sorry?”
“I underestimated you,” his father said.
“Or I… I misunderstood you. I don’t know.
I didn’t think you were someone who had it in you to care about a relationship.
You have a different girl on your arm every week—at least, you used to.
I didn’t think it mattered to you who it was.
I didn’t think you’d be that bothered by the idea of me making a deal with someone.
” He hesitated. “I didn’t know that she was going to matter to you.
If I had known, I wouldn’t have done it. ”
“You shouldn’t have done it anyway,” Elijah said, but something in him softened slightly at his father’s words. “You overstepped. You shouldn’t have tried to manipulate my life like that, whether you thought it was going to be a big deal to me or not.”
“You’re right,” his father said. “I shouldn’t have.”
The two men sat quietly for a minute.
“You need to know that she’s completely separated herself from our agreement,” Oliver said.
“I reached out to her after I heard from you about all this. I thought she and I might be able to get back on the same page, that maybe we could go back to helping each other figure all this out. But she shut me down. She wants nothing to do with me. And you need to know that it didn’t just start—this aversion to me she has.
She contacted me weeks ago and told me that our arrangement was over.
Whatever has happened between the two of you, it’s had nothing to do with me. Not for a very long time.”
Elijah sucked in a breath. “Dad… she’s pregnant.”
His father went rigid. “Are you sure?”
“She has no reason to lie about it.” He closed his eyes.
“I just don’t know if I can trust her motives.
Knowing that she was only with me in the first place because she wanted to open new doors of business opportunity…
how can I trust someone like that? How can I let myself start a family with her?
But what choice do I have in the matter now? I just don’t know what to do.”
“Son, there is no possibility that she was still hoping for a deal from me when this happened,” Oliver said slowly.
“I don’t know the precise… timeline, but it doesn’t add up to me that she could have become pregnant before she and I went our separate ways.
This is what I think happened: I think she realized that she really cared for you, more than she had expected she would.
I think she ended her arrangement with me for that reason.
And then, sometime after that and completely unrelated, she found out she was expecting a child.
” He rubbed a hand across his face. “And I can’t tell you what to do,” he added.
“That’s a decision you’re going to have to make for yourself.
But you deserve to know—I hope you understand—whatever is happening now is not part of a manipulation, and it has nothing to do with me.
It’s my fault you were deceived, and I’m sorry.
But please know that she was the one who put a stop to it, and that happened a long time ago. ”
“Dad, I just don’t know what you want me to say to this. I don’t know how I can possibly react.” Elijah fisted his hands. “I can’t just forget about it. I thought every moment of this relationship was real, and then I found out it wasn’t.”
“I’m telling you that most of it was,” his father said. “As far as what you should do—that’s up to you. But you seemed like you really cared for this woman.”
“I did,” Elijah whispered.
“And if she’s having your baby… well, you need to decide what to do about that, son. I can’t answer that one for you.”
Elijah sighed. “I don’t know that I’m ready to be a father,” he admitted. “But I always thought… I always hoped that someday I would be. And that when that day came, I would be the kind of father…”
He trailed off.
“The kind of father you wish you’d had.” Oliver’s voice was heavy.
Elijah looked up. He hadn’t realized his father was aware he felt like this.
“Elijah, I know I wasn’t around when you were growing up,” Oliver said.
“You have to realize—it was for you. It was always for you. And maybe you disagree with the way I handled it, but all I ever wanted was to create something I could pass along to my son. All I wanted was to build a company that would set you up for the rest of your life and to give it to you to take over one day.”
Elijah nodded slowly. “I just don’t know if that’s what I want,” he said. “I understand that’s what you always wanted for me. I know how hard you worked for it. But if it isn’t the life I want…”
“If it isn’t the life you want, I have to make my peace with that,” his father said firmly.
“I’m not going to try to make you live a life that isn’t right for you, Elijah.
The only thing I’m going to say is this—don’t give up your chance to have a family of your own.
Don’t turn your back on this woman—on your child—because of my mistakes.
Think long and hard about what you do here, because it’s going to define the rest of your life. ”
He rose to his feet, clapped Elijah on the shoulder, and left, leaving Elijah’s thoughts in turmoil.