I don't answer right away. My brain is already calculating, running through logistics. When. How. What I'd need to arrange, who I'd need to talk to, how quickly I could make it happen.
"If you won't go alone, then I'll come too."
I stare at him. "Dad, no..."
"I mean it." His eyes are clear, and I can’t detect any hesitation.
"If that is what it takes, we both follow that girl wherever she goes."
"This is your house." My voice is barely a whisper. "Yours and Mom's."
"My whole life is standing in front of me, Callahan.”
He gives me a shake, and I nod. “You. You are my whole life. You and that girl who fell into our lives and made us both remember what living feels like."
He pauses, and something shifts in his expression.
"I owe it to your mom to make sure you are happy."
I can't see. My vision has gone to water. My dad who has shrunk his world to the size of a workshop for over a decade. He's telling me he'd leave it. For me. For her. For the life he can see we need even when I couldn't see it myself.
"We'll find another way," I manage. "You can't leave home."
"I'd leave all of it." His voice doesn't waver. "Callahan, listen to me. Your mother would haunt me properly if I let you lose your girl because you were worried about your old man and his workbench."
He pulls me back in a hug that contains thirty years of fatherhood and everything he's never been able to say out loud. I bury my face in his shoulder.
"We'll find a place for me with a good workshop," he says into my hair. "Big windows. Southern exposure. Your mother likes southern light."
"Dad, I love you."
"A porch, too. And a big kitchen." I can hear the smile in his voice. "Your girl is big on kitchens and porches she can kiss you on."
I snort, but he's right. He's so right.
"I love you very much” he tells me. "And I'd do just about anything for a few grandbabies."
I study my father, and I know I don't deserve him. This is the bravest thing anyone has ever done for me. Braver than any fire I've ever run into, braver than anything I've everfaced. He's offering to leave everything he knows, everything he built with my mother, everything that keeps her close to him, just so I can be happy.
I pull him into another hug, before I shove him away.
"But you'll have to wait a long-ass time for grandbabies, you crazy old man."
"It's okay." He pats my back. "Younger than Brad Pitt, remember?"
I roll my eyes, and for the first time, I can breathe again.
He gestures broadly, his hand sweeping to encompass the living room, the house around us, the workshop visible through the window.
"Just so you know," he says, "all of this?" Another gesture. "It means a lot of money. And we haven't really used that well, you and me. We've just been sitting on it, living small."
I frown, not following.
"What I'm saying is that it means a lot of freedom. For you and for her. Medical school is expensive. Starting a life is expensive. And your mother and I built something here that was always meant to give you options."
He cuts me off with a look when I want to protest.
"Let me do this, Cal. Let me give you two this. It's what fathers do.”
