Chapter 24 #2
“You say that you spent years thinking I hated you, but when I left and you never once called or came to see me, I truly thought you wished it was me that died in the pasture that night instead of Lyle.” A choked sob comes up my throat as I admit the one thing I’ve never said out loud. “And sometimes, I still do.”
Dad looks out the window, wiping a hand over his face. His other one sits in his lap, curled into a tight fist. I feel lighter now that I’ve said what I’ve been holding in all these years, but the pain is still there.
“Chesney, I’m so sorry.” He clears his throat and finally looks at me. “I was too stuck in my own grief that I didn’t even see the pain I was causing you. There’s no handbook for how to deal with losing your kid. Children are meant to outlive their parents, but Lyle didn’t.”
My dad pauses, staring down at his lap. It feels like my chest has been cracked open, like all the bad stuff is on display—my insecurities, the anger I bottled up for too long, everything I wished I had gotten from my parents but never did—and if I had to guess, I’d say Dad is feeling much of the same.
“I see now that I took a lot of my grief out on you,” he goes on. “And when you needed me the most, I wasn’t there. None of that was fair, and you…Son, you deserved better. I don’t want you carrying this after I’m gone.”
Something breaks inside me. This is all so bittersweet.
On the one hand, it’s so nice to hear my father say the things I desperately needed to hear growing up.
To hear him apologize. But on the other hand, it stings.
I wish I wouldn’t have had to carry the weight of this all these years.
Part of me is relieved, while the other half thinks it’s too little too late.
Swallowing roughly, I say, “I don’t even know what I’m carrying anymore.”
He nods once, like maybe he understands. Then, reaching over, his hand settles over mine. It’s thinner than it should be. Cooler. A reminder of the reality we’re living in. “I’ve always been proud of you, Son.”
I stare at him, completely caught off guard. My heart’s beating so damn fast, I can feel it in my throat. It’s making it hard to breathe. “What?”
“I never told you, but I should’ve,” he says.
“I should’ve told you that I was proud of you and made sure you knew how much I loved you.
Chesney, I could never hate you. And I have never, not even once, wished it had been you that night.
If anything, I wished it had been me instead.
Because then Lyle would still be here, and maybe you could’ve found your way back home sooner. Maybe you never would’ve left.”
It’s everything I’ve wanted to hear since I was sixteen, arriving twenty years too late.
I blink hard, trying not to cry again.
“I should’ve said it sooner,” he echoes. The conviction in his weak, tired voice gives me goosebumps.
Squeezing his hand gently, I say, “I know, Dad.”
It’s a lie.
I didn’t know he was proud of me, or that he loved me, or that he wished I never left.
I didn’t know because his actions and everything he said to me after that night proved otherwise.
But I want him to believe I did because he needs that.
I don’t tell him that it’s okay, or that I forgive him, because the truth is, I don’t know if I ever can forgive him.
Maybe I will, with time.
But maybe I won’t.
Dad’s eyes have already drifted closed by the time the hospice nurse knocks softly on the door a few minutes later.
He’s asleep before she finishes his medication, and I take it as my cue to quietly leave the room.
The hallway is too small, too quiet, and there’s an uncomfortable weight pressing down on my chest the farther away from the den I get.
Stepping outside, the afternoon air hits my face like a balm.
I take a deep breath, my shoulders relaxing on the exhale.
My mind is all over the place. I don’t know what to think or how to feel.
That’s the most my father and I have said to each other since before the accident, and I think I needed it.
Even though I somehow feel worse now than before walking in there.
Truett’s sitting on the porch steps with two bottles of water. He hands me one without asking when I sit beside him. “How’d it go?”
I twist the cap off and take a long sip. “I don’t know,” I reply honestly. “Different than I expected. But…good, I guess.”
He nods, then we both stare across the pasture. “The doctor says there’s really no way to know how much longer he has left. Could be a week. Could be months. They said Dad’ll probably start sleeping more in the coming days or weeks.”
“And after that?”
Truett’s silence tells me everything. There’s a pang in my chest that’s impossible to ignore. “He’ll eventually stop eating much.” Pausing, my brother clears his throat. “Then…” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. We both know what’s coming; there’s no point in saying it out loud.
The breeze moves through the grass, and cattle make noise off in the distance.
Life stubbornly continues. It’s surreal.