“Nice suit,” James said with a scowl.
“Hi, Dad.”
A long, heavy silence stretched between them. Dan sat back in his chair, scrubbing at his face, exhaustion settling in his bones.
“Tired? Being a desk jockey wearing you out?” his dad said acidly. “Surprised you could find time to grace us with your presence.”
“Dad.” Dan reached for his father’s hand again, but the man moved it out of the way. “Of course I’m here. When Mom called me I-I … she just told me. I’m sorry I—”
Harsh laughter cut off Dan’s words.
“Don’t pretend like you care, Daniel. We’ve never had to pretend before. Why start now?”
Dan’s heart sank. Even in the face of death, his father was going to play this game? Perpetuate their battle to his last breath?
“Dad, no matter what differences we’ve had, I want you to know, I’ll make sure Mom is okay. Always.”
His father stared at him for a drawn-out moment before letting out another cold laugh, spittle landing on his thin blue lips. The suffocating weight of his father’s disdain reduced Dan to the cowering boy he once was.
“Daniel, do you have any idea what it’s like to lay here dying and hear you tell me that? That you think you’ll care for that woman, when you’ve never once met a single expectation? With your fancy suit and pretty-boy haircut, you expect that to bring me peace? You were too spineless to become a doctor, too spoiled to do the one thing you were supposed to do, and yet I’m supposed to believe you’re suddenly going to step up and be something other than a stain on the family?”
A muscle in Dan’s jaw ticked. A swell of rage threatened to consume him.
It always returned to this point. No matter what paths their lives took, they always ended up right here: son against father, wants against expectations.
Dan resorted to his oldest defense.
Sarcasm.
“Glad you think I’m so pretty, Dad.”
James sneered. “You’re such a disappointment. Do you know that?”
“Gee, Pops, I had no idea. Wish you would have told me sooner.”
Dan pushed up from his chair, moving to the door. His hand was on the knob when his father spoke again.
“You act like it’s only me. She’s disappointed in you too, you know.”
Dan stopped, his back still to his father.
“You’ve let your poor mother down. She’ll lose the practice now. Did you ever think about that? I’m here dying, and that poor woman will be directionless because you couldn’t do what needed to be done three years ago for your family. But you come here, in your hotshot suit with your promises to save the day while you hold your mother’s hand. Don’t pretend to be the hero, Dan.”
Dan tried to control the anger that shook him. He wanted to take those words from the air and shove them down the man’s throat until he choked. He wanted to ask why. Why did it matter so fucking much what he did for a career as long as he did something? Why did a family legacy matter to his father so much more than the family itself? And Dan wanted to ask himself why he couldn’t have done it. Why he couldn’t have kept the peace, gone to school, gone into practice, done what he’d been told to do. Guilt wrestled with rage as Dan looked at his mom through the small window in the door, her back hunched in sorrow, her face turned down.
Dan didn’t have a perfect relationship with his mom—she nagged, he didn’t call enough, they bickered and poked at each other—but he loved her. And, regardless of how irrelevant his father’s opinion was, the idea of being a disappointment to her wrecked him.
There wasn’t one thing Dan could have said that would cut his father as deeply as those words cut him. So, he did the only thing he could. He walked out of the room to go check on his mom.
Now, as he stood in his closet, holding that same suit, he felt a stab of loss over everything that had changed.
He was no longer that guy who loved his job. No longer climbing the corporate ladder. No longer talking to his mom.
He was a twenty-six-year-old, dissatisfied student, failing a program he wouldn’t graduate from until he’s thirty, with concrete plans to take over a practice he didn’t want at his grief-stricken mother’s demand. He was a passive bystander in his own life, the wants of others dictating his future.
He shoved the suit deep into the back of his closet and locked those bitter memories back in their box.
* * *
“I’m going to pick up Harper,” Dan yelled to Alex an hour later, pocketing his keys and wallet. “I’ll meet you at Lizzie and Indira’s. You have the address, right?”