Page 108 of One Last Thing Before You Go

Thursday, June 7th

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

KNOX

Thursday, June 7th

Knox and I argued this afternoon. He's been trying to convince me for the past couple of months that his destiny is to go to art school. While of course, I think of the arts as being important, I want more for him. I see the life he has now—the life Melissa and I can provide for him—and it isn’t enough. Yes, as a university professor I made enough money to keep me quite comfortable after my tenure, but in this economy, it isn’t enough for me to give the two of them the life they deserve. Especially not after having paid Melissa’s medical bills. Or most of them.

I’m scared for Knox. And can’t help but wonder what the hell he’s thinking about wanting to take this path after the way he and his mother struggled financially for so long.

Becoming a successful artist… One who can support themselves, let alone a family, is so rare. A one in a million shot. And he’s just going to jump into it head first?

I admire his confidence and I am proud that photography—something that was our thing, something I taught him—is his passion. But can’t he pick something more stable?

I tried to reason with him, but it was impossible. And once he started raising his voice, calling me all these names, insulting me… I realized the resentment he still felt for me after all these years. It runs deep.

I don’t blame him for it. I know that it’s Melissa who fed him the lies. But like I’ve said many times, he already has a broken relationship with one parent—I’m not breaking the only one he still has.

I’m a disappointment to him. Someone who could never come through. I’m someone who doesn’t support him.

It crushed me, to see him like this. To hear what he really thinks of me.

Which is why I said what I said. Those horrible words I wish I could take back.

“I wish your mother had never told me about you.”

But it wasn’t about him. God, never about him. Knox is brilliant and so talented. All I meant is that maybe, if I had never known about him, he could’ve maintained this nebulous, vague idea of who I was. Without having evidence to how awful of a father I am.

I hate that I’ve been this monumental let down. I hate that he will forever think of me as this awful man who abandoned his mother in her time of need, who never wanted him, who is disappointed in him and unsupportive.

I wish I could tell him how much I love him, how happy I am he exists, how proud of him

I am. But he’ll never believe me.

Maybe once he cools down—once we both do—we can get through this.

I am just utterly terrified that I’ve ruined everything. That he hates me more now that he knows me. That maybe he’d liked me better if I had stayed away.

After I finish reading the passage aloud, neither my mother nor I speak a word for a good moment. There’s… so much information to process, my head is spinning with it. His relationship with my mother, for one. The fact that he never expected our argument to last ten years. How proud of me he truly was. His concern for my future. But more importantly, what the last words I ever heard him speak truly meant.

I don’t know what to say to my mother, so I go with the first thing that pops into my head: “He helped pay for your medical bills?”

She sniffles, and it’s only then that I realize she’s crying. “Yeah. He… He didn’t want me to have any debt hanging over our heads.”

I nod, my eyes still on the pages, running my index finger over his handwriting, feeling the indentations in the paper. “Did you love him?”

She clears her throat. “Yes… And no. Not the same way he loved me.”

So we’re both winners in that regard. Walter spent his whole life loving a woman who wouldn’t love him back—the same destiny that waits for me now. What other similarities do we share other than heartbreak?

“I wish I had. But I realized that maybe I was looking for something different in our relationship. A protector. I was never really sure whether I loved him as much as he loved me. I didn’t trust my feelings.”

“Right.”

“I… You can’t help how you feel, Knox. Or how you don’t.”

I laugh once, humorlessly. “You’d get along so well with someone I know.”