None of those things can touch me so long as Avery is standing at my side.
I kiss her, holding her close for a long while. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For loving me. For being with me. I never would’ve come here if not for you.” I press my lips to her forehead. “You were right, Avery. I had to do this. I’m glad I did. And now I’m ready to leave.”
“Yes.” She smiles lovingly and nods. “But not without this.”
She carefully picks up the framed painting and a puzzled look comes over her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. There’s something—” She turns the frame around.
Taped to the back of it is a yellowed envelope. One bearing my name and the address of Baine International’s office in New York, written in my father’s bold scrawl.
“What the hell?” I remove the envelope and lift the brittle seal. “There’s a letter inside.”
I take it out and unfold the single sheet of handwritten words.
My father’s words, a confession dated only weeks before his stroke.
Chapter 26
Nick’s father is awake when we arrive at his room the next morning.
His bed is tilted up to a reclined sitting position, his head turned away from the door. He doesn’t seem to notice that we’ve stepped inside. His breathing remains slow and even. His frail body unmoving.
We spent the night in an area hotel, though I don’t think Nick got more than a couple hours of sleep. Twice I woke to find him pensively pacing in the dark. Before the sun came up he was already showered and dressed, seated on the hard-cushioned sofa with his father’s letter unfolded in his hands.
He must have a hundred questions for the old man slouched on the bed inside this room. We are here with the full awareness that we won’t get answers now. Everything William Baine might have said to his son throughout his life is contained in the five-year-old letter Nick has likely memorized by now.
As we walk into his father’s room, Nick is silent, as if studying him through a new and unfamiliar lens. When the grizzled old face finally swivels in our direction, I see drawn and sallow cheeks that contain traces of the younger, handsomer face I adore. The straight line of the nose. The squared jaw. The startlingly bright blue eyes that stare warily at us as we approach.
There is a guest chair next to the bed. Nick offers it to me but I shake my head. I’ll stand with him. I will always stand with him, no matter what he has to face.
Nick clears his throat. “I came yesterday, but you were asleep.”
No warm greeting. Just a flat statement of facts. My heart squeezes to hear the distance that exists between the man I love and the one who fathered him.
“This is Avery,” he says. “She’s the reason I’m here.”
Nick glances at me, the intensity of his gaze telling me that he doesn’t simply mean I’m the reason he’s in this room. He means something deeper than that. I squeeze his hand, hoping he understands that he means the same to me.
I look down at the fragile, dying old man in the bed and it’s hard to reconcile him with the father who pushed his son away so harshly and repeatedly. At least now I know why.
I give him a slight nod of acknowledgment. “H
ello.”
He doesn’t respond. His guarded gaze slides back to Nick as if he’s bracing for a confrontation he fully expects is coming.
“I spent a lot of years being angry with you,” Nick says, his deep voice toneless and unreadable. “I spent almost two decades being afraid of you. Hating you.”
His father’s face is stoic, but those brilliant blue eyes are filled with uncertainty. Even fear.
Nick frowns, slowly shaking his head. “Growing up, all I wanted was to be close to you. I couldn’t understand why you despised me. I kept trying to figure out what I did. I knew you never wanted me. You never made a secret of that.”