Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DEAN
Imake it through half of Monday morning before admitting I am not going to get any work done.
My office is quiet, except for the muted hum of traffic thirty floors below and the occasional sound of voices passing in the hallway outside.
Every few minutes, my gaze shifts toward my phone. I don’t know if I’m more afraid that Aubrey will call or that she won’t.
She was already awake when I left the apartment this morning, though she pretended not to be. I saw the slight tension in her face when I stood in the doorway of her room. The faint swelling beneath her eyes. The way she kept them closed too deliberately, her breathing too measured to be sleep.
I almost sat beside her and apologized for everything I’d said. Instead, I stood there like a coward, and then I went to work.
I stare at my phone again. My father’s name sits near the top of my Recent Calls.
I pick up the phone before I can talk myself out of it.
Dad answers on the third ring. “Hey.”
The sound of his voice nearly causes me to hang up.
He sounds normal. Unaware that his son has spent the last two days dismantling the happiest thing that has happened to him in years.
“Are you busy?” I ask.
There is a brief pause.
“Not particularly,” he replies.
I’m sure he is lying. My father is always doing something, even if it is only reorganizing a cabinet that does not need reorganized. But he hears something in my voice.
“I need you.”
The words leave me quietly. I can’t remember the last time I said them to anyone.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Where are you?”
“At the office.”
“I can be there in an hour.”
“No.” I rub a hand over my face. “Can we meet somewhere?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a restaurant a few blocks from here. The Italian place on Madison.”
“I know it.”
“One?”
“I’ll be there.”
After the call ends, I remain seated with the phone still pressed against my ear.
For years, I have convinced myself needing someone was the first step toward losing control. Yet my father heard the words and came without question.
By the time I reach the restaurant, Dad is already seated in a quiet booth near the back.
He wears a navy sweater beneath his winter coat, and a pair of reading glasses rests on the table beside his phone.
He stands when he sees me, studying my face in the same careful way he has since I was a child.
“You look terrible,” he says.
It is so blunt that I almost laugh.
“I appreciate that.”
“I think honesty is one of my better qualities.”
He pulls me into a hug before I can object. My body stiffens automatically, then slowly relaxes. Dad holds on longer than he normally would.
When he releases me, his hand remains on my shoulder for a moment.
“Sit.”
A server brings coffee before we order.
Dad waits until she leaves before speaking again. “What happened?”
I stare into the dark surface of my cup, then force my attention back to my father.
“Aubrey went Christmas shopping on Saturday.”
He doesn’t speak, just lets me pause and gather my thoughts.
I continue, “She said she would be home before dinner.”
My father’s expression remains neutral, but I see understanding begin to form before I say anything else.
“She was late,” he says.
I nod. “Her phone died. She lost track of time because the stores were packed, and she was trying to finish her list.”
“How late?”
“About an hour and twenty minutes.”
Dad folds his hands on the table. “And what happened?”
“I panicked. I called her repeatedly. I called Sawyer. I checked the lobby cameras. I was about to start calling hospitals.”
Dad’s face tightens. “Did you know she was Christmas shopping?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“And that didn’t matter,” he says as if he understands immediately.
“No.”
He leans back slightly. For a few seconds, he looks past me. I know where he has gone. It’s exactly where I went on Saturday.
“I started remembering Mom,” I say.
His gaze returns to mine. The grief that crosses his face is brief but unmistakable.
“I remembered you pacing through the house. Calling her. Telling me it was traffic.”
Dad looks down at the table. “I thought I’d hidden it better than that.”
“You didn’t.”
A sad smile pulls at one corner of his mouth. “I was trying.”
“I know.”
The server returns to take our order. Neither of us has looked at the menu, so Dad orders soup and sandwiches for both of us.
When we are alone again, I continue, “I saw everything happen to Aubrey.”
Dad’s brow furrows.
“In my head,” I explain. “I saw her on the subway tracks. Hit by a car. Lying in a hospital somewhere while I stood in the apartment, doing nothing.”
My fingers tighten around the coffee cup. “I knew it wasn’t rational.”
“It doesn’t sound like rational thought had much to do with it,” he cuts in.
“No,” I confirm.
“Did she come home safely?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“And what did you do?”
I look down at the table. “I held her. I told her I thought she was dead. She asked why this kept happening. I told her about Mom.”
I take a slow breath. “I told her I loved her.”
My father’s eyes soften. It should feel good to say it aloud. Instead, shame follows immediately.
“And then I told her I didn’t know if I could do this.”
Dad’s expression stills. “Do what?”
“Love her.”
He studies me for several long seconds. “You told Aubrey you loved her and then suggested you might not be capable of staying with her?”
“I didn’t say I was leaving.”
“Did she understand that?”
I think of her standing in front of me with tears on her face, still trying to convince me that one terrible night did not define who I was.
“No.”
Dad exhales through his nose. “That girl loves you.”
It feels like a knife to my heart. “I know.”
His eyebrows turn up. “Do you?”
The question irritates me. “Of course I do.”
“That was not what I asked.”
I look at him sharply.
“Do you understand what it means that she loves you?”
I glance away.
“It means she deserves someone who doesn’t lose his mind every time she is late. It means she gets to decide what she deserves.”
My jaw tightens. “You didn’t see me.”
“No. I saw you after your mother died.”
The quiet words stop me.
Dad leans forward, resting both forearms on the table. “I saw you stop talking about things that mattered. I saw you build walls so carefully that most people never even realized they were there.”
“I was functioning,” I say, trying to defend myself.
“You were surviving.” The word lands too close to something Aubrey said. “That is not the same thing.”
I take a deep, defeated breath. “I know.”
“Do you?” Dad’s tone is not harsh, but there is an edge beneath it now. “Because it sounds like you are preparing to abandon the first woman you have ever truly loved so you can return to a life that never asked anything from you.”
“I am trying not to hurt her.”
“No. You are trying to avoid being hurt.”
The distinction cuts through every defense I have constructed.
I stare at him, and he doesn’t look away.
“You are dressing it up as protection because that makes it sound noble. It’s not.”
Anger flares before I can stop it. “You have no idea what was happening in my head.”
His expression changes; the softness disappears. “You think I don’t?”
The question is so quiet that I immediately regret my words.
Dad looks toward the window again. “I spent years waiting for you to come home.”
My anger collapses.
“After your mother died, every time you were ten minutes late from school, I imagined a police car pulling into the driveway. Every time you didn’t answer your phone in college, I wondered whether someone would call to tell me I had lost you too.”
I had no idea. The realization makes me feel ashamed.
“You never said anything.”
“You were a child. then you were a young man, trying to build a life. My fear was mine to manage.”
“How?”
“Badly, at first.” A faint smile crosses his face. “I checked the clock too often. I drove past your school once because you were late getting home.”
I blink. “You never told me that.”
“I was not proud of it.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Eventually, I learned that loving someone means accepting that you cannot guarantee their safety.”
“That sounds simple when you say it.”
“It was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
Our food arrives, but neither of us touches it. The server senses the mood and leaves quickly. Dad folds his napkin once, then sets it beside his untouched plate.
“You know what I remember most about your mother?” He smiles. “The arguments. She was stubborn.”
“I remember,” I say as a small smile creeps up.
“She once refused to speak to me for two days because I’d bought the wrong curtains.”
“She cared about curtains that much?”
“No. She cared that I’d bought them without asking.”
That makes me laugh quietly.
Dad’s smile deepens for a moment before sadness returns around the edges. “I remember burned dinners. Mortgage payments. You getting the flu and vomiting across both of us at three in the morning.”
I cringe. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be. It was horrific.”
The warmth fades from his expression, replaced by something deeper. “I remember ordinary life, Dean.” He pauses. “Not just the day she died. For a long time, grief tried to rewrite our marriage into a tragedy. It made that final day feel larger than every day that had come before it.”
He looks directly at me. “But your mother’s life was not defined by the way it ended.”
The restaurant seems to grow quieter around us.
“Our love was not a mistake because I lost her.” Dad’s voice roughens. “If someone had told me on our wedding day exactly how many years we would have, exactly how it would end, and exactly how much it would hurt …”
He stops and swallows. “I still would have married her.”
The words settle heavily in my chest.
“I would still choose every morning I woke up beside her. Every argument. Every holiday. Every night we sat on the couch after you went to bed and talked about nothing important.”
His eyes shine, but he doesn’t look away. “I would choose the pain again because it came after a life I would never give back.”
I lower my gaze. For nineteen years, I have viewed my mother’s death as proof that love creates unbearable loss. My father views the same loss as proof that love existed first.
“I don’t know how you lived through it,” I admit.
Dad smiles sadly. “I had you. You needed a parent. You needed someone to show you that losing your mother didn’t mean life ended for both of us.”
“I’m not sure you ever moved on.”
“I didn’t move on from her. I moved forward with her. There is a difference. Your mother is in every good thing I gave you. Every tradition we kept. Every story I told. She is in the way you hold Liana.”
My chest aches.
Dad leans back. “And now you are standing at the edge of a life with Aubrey, trying to decide whether fear deserves the final word.”
“I don’t want to become controlling.”
“Then do the work to not become controlling.”
The simplicity of the answer frustrates me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you talk to someone who understands trauma. You learn what happens in your body when the panic starts. You make a plan that doesn’t require Aubrey to surrender her freedom so you can feel safe.”
Therapy.
I have spent my entire life believing therapy belonged to people who couldn’t solve their own problems. Saturday night proved I can’t solve this one alone.
Dad watches the realization cross my face. “You don’t have to face this alone.”
“I already made her cry.”
“You will probably make her cry again.”
I give him a hard look.
He shrugs. “You’re going to disappoint each other or say the wrong thing.” His expression grows serious. “But there is something else you need to consider.”
“What?”
“Liana.”
I stiffen. “This has nothing to do with her.”
“It has everything to do with her. You know what it was like to lose your mother.”
My jaw tightens. “Yes.”
“Then don’t take away Liana’s chance to have one because you are afraid you might lose love again.”
The words strike so hard that I stop breathing.
Dad doesn’t soften them. “You’re thinking only about the possibility that Aubrey could leave or die.” He leans closer. “What about the possibility that she stays?”
I cannot answer.
“What about twenty years of Christmas mornings? School plays? Sick nights? Birthday cakes?”
Images rise before I can stop them. Aubrey standing beside Liana on her first day of school. Aubrey asleep in our bed with a child curled between us. Aubrey laughing in my father’s kitchen.
Then an image of another baby in her arms.
Exactly the kind of life my father said he would choose again.
“You are so focused on protecting yourself from the ending that you are willing to erase the entire middle,” Dad says.
I stare at him for a long time. The fear hasn’t disappeared. I still imagine every awful possibility when I think about how much Aubrey matters to me.
“What if I can’t change?” I ask.
Dad’s expression softens. “You already have. You called me.”
Dad reaches for his sandwich at last. “You should eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have looked terrible since you walked in. Food may not fix your emotional crisis, but it will make you less unpleasant while you have it.”
A reluctant laugh escapes me, and he follows up with his own smile.
We eat in relative silence. Dad gives me the space to think, something he has always been better at than most people.
For most of my life, I have treated love as something that happens to other people. An unpredictable variable best removed from any plan.
But my father chose my mother, even after knowing what loving her ultimately cost. Aubrey chose me, even after seeing the worst part of me. Liana deserves more than a father who mistakes isolation for safety.