“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he continued. “I know I should have told you, but I wanted a normal summer, and I wanted you to have a normal summer. I just wanted to get to know my daughter again. Can you forgive me?”
His plea cut her to the core, and she let out an involuntary cry. Her father was dying, and he wanted her forgiveness. There was something so pitiful in that, and she didn’t know how to respond. As he waited, he reached over and she took his hand.
“Of course I forgive you,” she said, and it was then she began to cry. She leaned toward him, resting her head on his chest, and noticed how thin he’d become without her even being aware of it. She could feel the sharp outline of the bones in his chest, and she suddenly realized that he had been wasting away for months. It broke her heart to know she hadn’t been paying attention; she’d been so caught up in her own life that she hadn’t even noticed.
When her dad put his arm around her, she began to cry harder, conscious that there would soon be a time when this simple act of affection would no longer be possible. Despite herself, she remembered the day she’d arrived at his house and the anger she’d felt toward him; she remembered storming off, the thought of touching him as alien to her as space travel. She’d hated him then and she loved him now.
She was glad she finally knew his secret, even as she wished she didn’t. She felt him running his fingers through her hair. There would come a time when he would no longer be able to do this, when he would no longer be around, and she squeezed her eyelids shut, trying to block out the future. She needed more time with him. She needed him to listen as she whined; she needed him to forgive her when she made mistakes. She needed him to love her the way he had this summer. She needed all of it forever, and she knew it wouldn’t happen.
She allowed her dad to hold her and wept like the child she no longer was.
Later, he answered her questions. He told her about his father and the history of cancer in his family, he told her about the pains he’d begun to feel as the New Year rolled in. He told her that radiation was not an option, because the disease was present in so many of his organs. As he spoke the words, she imagined the malignant cells moving from one spot in his body to the next, a marauding army of evil that left destruction in its wake. She asked about chemotherapy, and again his answer was the same. The cancer was aggressive, and while chemotherapy might help slow the disease, it couldn’t stop it, and it would leave him feeling worse than if he’d done nothing at all. He explained the concept of quality of life, and as he did, she hated him for not telling her earlier. Yet she knew he’d made the right decision. Had she known, the summer would have unfolded differently. Their relationship would have taken a different course, and she didn’t want to think of what it might have become.
He was pale, and she knew the morphine was making him sleepy.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked.
“Not like it did. It’s better,” he assured her.
She nodded. She tried again not to think about the malignant cells invading his organs.
“When did you tell Mom?”
“In February, right after I found out. But I asked her not to tell you.”
Ronnie tried to remember how her mom had acted back then. She had to have been upset, but either Ronnie couldn’t remember or she hadn’t been paying attention. As usual, she’d been thinking only about herself. She wanted to believe she was different now, but she knew that wasn’t completely true. Between work and spending time with Will, she’d spent relatively little time with her dad, and time was the one thing she could never get back.
“But if you’d told me, I would have been around more. We could have seen each other more, I could have helped you so you wouldn’t be so tired all the time.”
“Just knowing you were here was more than enough.”
“But maybe you wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital.”
He reached for her hand. “Or maybe watching you enjoy a carefree summer while you fell in love was what kept me out of the hospital in the first place.”
Though he didn’t say as much, she knew he didn’t expect to live much longer, and she tried to imagine life without him.
If she hadn’t come to stay with him, if she hadn’t given him a chance, it might have been easier to let him go. But she had, and nothing about what was happening was going to be easy. In the eerie quiet, she was able to hear his labored breathing, and she noticed again how much weight he’d lost. She wondered whether he would live until Christmas, or even long enough for her to visit again.