CHAPTER NINE
I find my father sitting up in bed the next morning, more alert than I've seen him since I arrived, color back in his face, the particular sharpness in his eyes that used to mean he'd already decided how a conversation was going to go before I'd even sat down.
"You look better," I tell him, setting my bag down in the visitor's chair, and I mean it, relief loosening something in my chest that's been tight since Gilda's call two days ago.
"I feel better. Doctors say the stents are doing their job." He watches me settle into the chair beside his bed, something assessing in his gaze that I recognize but can't quite place yet. "Gilda tells me you've been busy. Dax's arm. Lunch with Thane."
"News travels fast in this town."
"News has always traveled fast in this town.
You used to complain about it constantly.
" A faint smile, there and gone. He shifts against the pillows, wincing slightly at the movement, and reaches for the water glass on his tray before I can pour it for him, a small, stubborn assertion of independence I recognize as entirely his.
"There's a nurse on this floor, younger one, been checking my vitals every hour since I got moved down here.
Efficient. Doesn't waste a motion. Reminds me a great deal of someone I raised. "
"Dad, don't."
"I'm just making conversation." Though the glint in his eye says otherwise, the same glint he used to get running church when he already knew exactly which direction he wanted the room to go.
"Sit down properly, Niamh. I want to talk to you about something, and I don't want you standing at the door like you're planning your exit. "
I sit, more carefully now, aware of the shift in his tone, something more deliberate underneath the ordinary morning conversation.
He reaches over to the tray table, pours himself a glass of water with hands steadier than they were two days ago, and takes his time drinking half of it before he speaks again, like he's gathering himself for something he's been rehearsing.
"I've had a lot of time to think, lying in this bed.
More time than I've had in years, probably, since running a charter doesn't leave much room for reflection most days.
" He sets the glass down, meets my eyes directly.
"I know something's been sitting on you since Everhart died.
I've known it for three years, actually, though I never said anything, because I told myself it wasn't my place to push, and because grief does strange things to people and I figured you'd talk when you were ready. "
My stomach drops, the specific, familiar plunge of a conversation heading somewhere I've spent three years making sure it never goes. "Dad."
"Let me finish." Gentle, but firm, the same tone he used to use running church when a member wanted to interrupt before he'd made his point.
"I'm not trying to corner you. I'm dying, or I almost did, two days ago, close enough that it's rearranged how I think about waiting for things.
And I don't want to die, whenever that ends up happening, without telling my daughter I know she's been carrying something heavier than grief for three years, and that whatever it is, I love her anyway. Whatever it is, Niamh."
The room goes very quiet, just the low hum of the monitor, the rain starting up again against the window, my own pulse loud in my ears.
I think about the forty minutes under the fire road bridge, about Thane's mouth against my collarbone while Everhart rode a wet switchback alone, about three years of a lie so small it fit into two sentences and so large it reshaped my entire life around avoiding it.
I open my mouth to tell him. I get as far as, "That night, I wasn't actually," before something closes my throat entirely, some old, deep instinct that's kept this exact confession locked down for three years refusing to release it now, not here, not with him one bad hour away from a very different outcome than the one he got.
"I left because I couldn't forgive myself," I say instead, which is true, just not the whole shape of the truth.
"I was supposed to be his backup that night, and I wasn't where I was supposed to be, and I've never stopped believing that if I had been, he'd still be alive.
That's why I left. I couldn't sit at that table every week and pretend I didn't know that. "
My father is quiet for a long moment, studying me with an expression I can't fully read, something patient and searching underneath the exhaustion still evident in his face.
"Where were you," he asks finally, gently, no accusation in it at all, just a question offered with the specific care of someone who already suspects the answer and wants to give me room to say it in my own time.
I can't. Even now, even with the door this open, some part of me stays locked, three years of practiced silence stronger in this exact moment than whatever bravery got me through the drive here. "It doesn't matter where," I say instead. "It matters that I wasn't where I was supposed to be."
He watches me a moment longer, and I can see him deciding not to push, the same restraint he's shown me my whole life, the same restraint that let me leave three years ago without ever forcing the conversation neither of us wanted to have.
"Niamh." His voice softens further, moving away from the thing I couldn't say toward something else entirely. "I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually hear it before you answer."
"Okay."
"Sit at the table again. Not for me, not because I'm asking from a hospital bed and it feels cruel to say no.
Because it's yours. It was always yours, whatever guilt you've been carrying about that night.
I want to see you back in that chair before I go, whenever that ends up being, ten years from now or ten minutes.
I need you to know that seat's not conditional on anything you think you owe this family for leaving. It's just yours."
The request lands somewhere in my chest I don't have a ready defense for, all of it colliding at once, Gilda's revelation from last night, Thane's careful restraint, and now this, my father asking for the one thing I've spent three years telling myself I forfeited the right to.
"I don't know if I can just walk back in like nothing happened," I say finally, honestly.
"Nobody's asking you to pretend nothing happened.
I'm asking you to stop pretending you don't belong there.
Those are different things, Niamh. I should have said that to you the night before you left instead of letting you walk out with nothing but a note left behind. That's on me as much as it's on you."
I don't have an answer for that either, not one that feels adequate to the weight of what he's just offered me, so I take his hand instead, careful of the IV line, and hold it the way I used to when I was small enough to need holding more than he did.
"I'll think about it," I say, which isn't a yes, but isn't the flat refusal I might have given two days ago either.
"That's all I'm asking." He squeezes my hand, weaker than it used to be but still unmistakably his grip, and closes his eyes, exhaustion finally winning out over whatever reserves of energy this conversation cost him. "Whatever it takes, Niamh. Just think about it."
A nurse comes in a few minutes later to check his afternoon vitals, and I watch her work with the same professional appreciation I offered the one at County the day before, noting the careful, unhurried way she talks him through each reading, and I understand, watching her, some small piece of what my father meant when he said this town could use someone with my training.
It isn't really about the town needing a nurse.
It's about him wanting, quietly, for me to have a reason to stay that has nothing to do with a chair or a man or a debt I still haven't found the words to name out loud.
I sit with him another twenty minutes while he drifts toward sleep, his breathing settling into the slow, even rhythm I've learned to trust over the last two days, the monitor's numbers holding steady in ranges that no longer make my chest go tight with fear the way they did yesterday.
By the time I finally step out into the hallway, the weight of his request has settled over me like something physical, heavier than the guilt I walked in carrying, different in a way I don't fully understand yet but can already feel reshaping the ground under everything I thought I knew about why I left and what it would take to actually come home.
I don't call anyone on the drive back to the clubhouse.
I just drive, rain streaking the windshield, my father's voice looping in my head.
Whatever it takes, Niamh. Just think about it.
As if thinking is the hard part. As if I haven't been thinking about nothing else since I crossed the county line two days ago.