“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“But things haven’t gone as we’d hoped here. Your da has quite a few tumors. Dr. Irvine took biopsies of all of them, and some are treatable, but there’s one on his hip that is quite large and has spread to other parts of his body. Dr. Irvine . . . he . . .” Maw’s voice breaks.
Her quiet weeping chokes me up as my mind whirls with confusion.
“I’m dying,” Da finishes for her as she lets out a sob.
Dying.
My heart shatters into a million pieces.
Bone cancer.
Tumors.
Dying.
I can’t seem to wrap my head around the actual facts; all I can focus on is why I’m just finding out about this now.
“You should have told me sooner,” I choke out.
“It wasn’t your right to know. We knew what we were doing,” Da says, and that sets the spark that lights the raging fire inside me.
“To hell it’s not!” I shout, standing now. “You’re my goddamn father, and it’s not only my right but my responsibility to know when you’re sick, when you need help . . . when you’re fucking dying!” I roar into the phone as every emotion I’ve ever had about my da bubbles up and pours out of me.
“Rowan,” Da snaps, but I don’t care—I keep pushing forward.
“You’ve known you’ve had cancer for the past few months and didn’t tell me. When I asked you if you were sick before you left, you lied to my face.”
“We didn’t want to worry you,” Maw repeats, always trying to play the peacemaker. Well, which is it? I didn’t deserve to know, or they didn’t want to worry me? It’s always like this with them—Maw trying to smooth things over while Da and I light up the room with our anger.
“Ever care to think that I could have helped you? That’s what family is for. And if you needed help with the coffee shop, Maw, I could have helped. I’ve already been helping—”
“You made it quite clear you wanted nothing to do with the shop,” Da says, the stubborn arsehole throwing that in my face once again.
“People change,” I say with a clenched jaw. “But you’re too stubborn to see that. You can’t possibly look past the history that clogs your wee brain and see that people change. People try to make their lives better, to make something of themselves.”
“How’s that going for you?” Da asks. “Haven’t seen that pottery for sale anywhere. Haven’t seen you live out the dream you wanted, that you threw your family away for.”
What?
Where the hell did that come from?
“I didn’t throw you away,” I say, knowing we shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. Da has cancer, a realization I’m sure he’s having a hard time accepting. And knowing him, he’s twisting and turning that confusion and fear into anger. He did the same thing when Callum passed—he directed all his anger at me. “I’m still here, taking care of the town’s business like you wanted me to. Isn’t that enough?”
“Not when you disrespect the MacGregor clan. We might be simple, but we’re good people.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“You don’t show it.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I don’t think I’ve been this angry in my entire life. It feels like my soul is physically being stolen from my body with every passing breath, replaced with a darkness that’s spreading through every limb, every muscle, every goddamn bone.
None of this matters—none of the history between my da and me matters right now, not when he’s dying. He might want to continue our age-old argument, but I don’t have time for that.
“Where are you?”
“Rowan, you don’t need—”
“I swear to God, if you don’t tell me, I’ll track you down. I can look at your credit card statements. I can figure it out, so make it easy on both of us and tell me where the fuck you are.”
Maw rattles off an address that I write down on a piece of paper. She tells me they still have another conversation with the doctor and not to worry, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing they say will matter at this point. My mind is made up.
“We don’t need you to come here,” Da barks into the phone.
“Seems like you’d rather die than admit it, but you need me more than you think.”
I hang up and toss my phone on the table. My knuckles turn white as I grip my dining table, and before I can even register what I’m doing, I pick it up and chuck it against the wall. Wood splinters from the crash as I roar, “Fuck!” and then dig my hands through my hair.