Unrequited(33)

She laughed. "Bet he was a good tipper."

"Shit, twenty percent at least, every time." I flipped my palm over, threaded my fingers through hers, and held on. "At the back of our property, there's a pond Dad had dredged deeper so Callum, my cousin, Adam, and our friends could do ridiculously dangerous dives and jumps off rope swings, zip lines, and a fake mountain of rock. He did everything he could to make my childhood awesome."

"I wish I'd known him better." Her fingers tightened around mine.

"Me, too. He taught me how to be a man. Taught me how to light a fire with rocks; how to tie a tie; how to shake someone's hand. He taught me to respect women, honor them, appreciate that they had strengths to bring to the table just like a dick—maybe better—because they weren't so interested in trying to prove its size."

"But he wasn't perfect," she guessed.

"No, he wasn't. I loved him and miss him so much, I feel like a limb has been torn off. But even he'd be the first one to tell you all he wanted for me was to be better than him."

"In what way?"

I looked down the dark country road we'd pulled on to. The farm wasn't much farther. "We went ice fishing in Alaska for New Year's. It was beyond cold, and my balls almost froze off. Polar bears and penguins were burrowing under snow caves while Dad and I and some other fools sat in wooden huts in the middle of the lake trying to catch fish that were half-frozen before we pulled them out of the water."

"Gives new meaning to the concept of flash frozen," she joked.

"No kidding. But there's something about being so close to the sky. The Northern Lights were insane. Every night I was half convinced a spaceship was going to descend out of the blaze of green and red and suck us up into the sky. And soon we were whispering like girls at a summer camp. He was saying how proud he was that I had made a success of flipping houses, and I was congratulating him on winning the bid for the Riverside project. Then he fell silent, and I thought he was asleep, but he wasn't. He was…choked up. He told me he was most proud of the fact I wasn't like him…that I'd been a good man to my girlfriends. He said he wanted me to be the man he wasn't and that he was sorry for breaking Mom's heart repeatedly."

"He said," I paused because my throat was thickening, and it was hard to speak. "He said I should find someone I could love with my whole heart and throw myself into that woman and cling to her. That if it was the right woman, she'd hold me tight, and we'd weather any storm that came our way. His mistake, he'd claimed, wasn't holding on to my mom tight enough, and the drift became so big between them that it seemed easier to get his fill other places. And then once the door was open, he found he couldn't say no to a pretty face or a sly invitation."

"Have you ever cheated?" she asked me softly after a mile of silence. I turned down the long lane leading up to the house. The row of white fencing and the allée of trees guided our way home.

"Never," I was glad to admit. "I didn't want to make any woman feel like my mom did. Mom has always been distant, and I saw her turn him away more than once. So I thought maybe she wanted to be left alone, and it was okay that he found relief somewhere else." I thought back to the times I'd seen her staring out the window watching for my dad's headlights and the tight smile she greeted him with whenever he came in late, saying that he had to deal with too much paperwork or that he'd taken a subcontracting crew out for drinks.

"But it wasn't."

"No, I guess not. She slept with his brother—my Uncle Pat. And you know, even that wouldn't have bothered me so much if Uncle Pat wasn't married to the nicest lady and had three kids, but now we've got two ruined families."

Her fingers curled tighter around mine, and from another person I might have viewed this as pity and jerked away, but Winter's life hadn't been easy.

"I'm sorry he had those clay feet," she said softly. "I know all about hating someone and loving them. Wanting them to be happy, but resenting the hell out of them too."

She understood then the confused emotions I had over my dad because I loved him while a small part of me despised him as well. I didn’t doubt that was what she felt toward Ivy—the only family she had left.

The conflicted feelings I had toward my dad were why I didn't go into business with him when I got out of college. I'd wanted to make my own way. But that night in Alaska stuck with me. Those were the last words of advice he'd given. And for all the mistakes he'd made, he’d wanted better for me, and I couldn't find any fault with that. I hoped she had gained the same perspective with Ivy, but that was her battle, and I couldn't force any conclusions on her.