“I was actually pretty successful at it too,” he continued. “Finance, I mean. I got a job at a decent firm up in New York after graduation, and I was primed to climb the ladder quickly. My dad pretty much stopped talking to me though. It was like I no longer existed once I deviated from his plan. My mom would come visit me without him, and when I went home, he’d look right through me—pretend I wasn’t there.”
Dan moved the pancakes off the heat and added the last of the batter to the pan. He couldn’t bring himself to look straight at Harper, scared she’d see the lump sitting heavily in his throat.
“It didn’t even bother me that much. I almost preferred his silence to him constantly telling me what a failure I was. But it never made sense to me. Like, how could I be doing as well as I was in a job I had busted my ass for, and it wasn’t good enough? How could I be successful and happy on paper, but he hated me for that?” Dan shook his head to clear out the questions he’d never find answers to.
“But after he got sick, my mom fell apart. I came home to take care of her, do whatever she needed during that time.”
Dan could still see his mom with blue-black circles below her eyes from countless hours at his father’s hospital bed. Toward the end her back had taken on a permanent hunch, as if she could curl into herself and protect her body from the pain.
“I wanted to be there for her while she watched her husband die, no matter how I felt about him. But even in those last weeks, he still wanted to fight me, provoke me. It was like as long as he could find the breath to tell me how disappointing I was, he could keep living.” Dan fiddled with the spatula, hearing his dad’s harsh words echo over and over in his mind.
“Driving home after a particularly bad visit, my mom broke down sobbing and it ripped my heart out.”
He shut his eyes at the memory. The anguish on her face. The way her hands fisted and knotted together as she’d cried.
“She kept asking me why I couldn’t have just done what he wanted. Followed his footsteps. Continued the family name and reputation. She kept repeating how much easier everything would have been if only … Kept telling me how afraid she was. How everything was falling apart. Asking me how I could let them both down like this.”
A weighted silence fell over the kitchen. Dan turned off the heat and moved the last batch of pancakes onto the plate. “It was just never something I wanted to do. It wasn’t out of spite, I swear. I knew it wasn’t for me. But I would do anything to take that pain away from my mom. And, eventually, she told me she needed me to come on and help her run the practice or she’d lose it and her livelihood along with it. She’d only worked part-time when he was alive, and now she’s overwhelmed with the patients and money and bills and keeping everything above water. My dad had dictated everything. Told her where to be and when to be there. To suddenly have the weight of it all on her shoulders … She pretty much demanded I join the practice, saying it was my duty as a son.”
Dan tried to swallow past the guilt that made his throat thick. “So I contacted Callowhill that night. I had missed the application deadline but since I’d already been accepted once before, and I had the name to back me up, they accepted me quickly. It felt gross how easy it was to get a spot, to use the leverage I resented so much.”
Dan’s eyes were fixed on the countertop, countless images from those last weeks flashing through his mind in an endless loop.
“I never even told him. He died a few days after I was accepted.” Dan forced himself to look at Harper, to gauge her reaction.
Harper’s head was bowed forward, her hair forming a protective curtain around her features while her fingers twisted in her lap. He moved to stand in front of her and she finally looked up. Red splotches dotted her skin. Her big brown eyes were shiny with tears, and wet tracks stained her cheeks.
He loved Harper in every form she came in, but he hated to see her cry.
“Hey, none of that, okay?” He cupped his hands over her cheeks, using his thumbs to brush away the tears. “There’s no reason to cry.”
He kissed up and down her cheeks then gave them a sloppy lick, and she let out a choked laugh. She pulled him closer, clutching her hands around his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist. She crushed him to her so tightly, his breath caught. He nuzzled into her neck, rubbing soothing circles up and down her back. She mumbled something into his chest that he couldn’t make out.
“What was that?”