Page 92 of Cherry Picking

“So you let me be wrong.” His voice climbs. “You let me be wrong out loud, for years, about my own damn children.”

“I don’t know if you recall, but you had a stroke and needed time to recover. I didn’t think that—”

“Don’t.” The sound he makes is closer to a bark. “Don’t you dare hang this on my health. I have been sick; I have not been a child.”

“That’s not what I—”

“I apologized to him for you.” It lands and takes all the air out of the room along with it. “Over and over. I told him you’d come around, that you just needed time, and I said I was sorry it was taking you so long.”

The words go through me clean, front to back. “I get that.”

“That’s what I gave him.” His breathing has gone rough. “The last real conversation I had with my son, I spent defending you. I told him to be patient with you. Do you understand what you let me do?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what? From knowing him?” A long scrape of silence. “He’s dead, Briggs. I can’t ask him a single question. I can’t yell at him. I sat here as the sun came up this morning and got furious at a man who’s been in the ground since November, and there’s nowhere for it to go.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I don’t want it.”

“Dad—”

“I don’t want it yet.” He coughs, and the recliner creaks again. “He stopped drinking. Did you know that? Right after you must’ve found out. He sat at my table that Fourth of July with a glass of Coke, and I gave him hell about it. He just laughed at me.”

I swallow heavily. “I don’t know what that’s got to do with it.”

“Neither do I because he never told me anything!” Murphy says. “So the pair of you kept me out of your lives. Congratulations to the both of you.”

“I didn’t know what it would do to you.”

“You decided. That’s your whole trouble.” His voice thins out. “You’d rather pretend a thing doesn’t exist than have to deal with it head-on.”

“Yeah, sometimes it’s easier that way.”

“Did he ever say it to you?” he asks. “Sorry. Did he ever get that far?”

“No.”

He doesn’t say anything for so long I check the screen to see if the call dropped. Then the fight goes out of him all at once. “Okay. I need a few days.”

“I’ve got New York Friday. Let me call you from the road.”

“Don’t bother. The conversation isn’t finished, but I—I can’t have your voice in my head for a while. I’d rather give it to you straight than leave you wondering why I’m not answering.”

The air in my lungs compresses. “Okay.”

“I hope you and Evie had a decent weekend. Before, well, before the noise started.”

I think about the bathroom mirror and the way she looked at me in the kitchen. “We did, actually.”

“Don’t do to her what you did to me, Briggs. If you listen to me about anything, let it be this. Don’t leave her in the dark. Let her know where your mind is.”

My throat tightens, the pressure behind my ribs returning. “I’ll try,” I manage, the words sounding hollow even to me.

“That’s a hell of a lack of commitment.”

“It’s all I’ve got right now, Dad.”