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“I came to let you know, and to ask for your blessing,” Manning continued.
“My blessing?” Dad asked, sounding uncharacteristically surprised. “How come?”
“Because I respect you, and because your opinion means more to me than anyone’s outside of Lake’s and Henry’s. We’re going to marry with or without your approval, but it would mean a lot to me—and to Lake, I think—if you were there.”
Dad sniffed. “What makes you think I’d even consider that? That I would do that to Tiffany?”
“I might let you shame me into feeling bad if I thought your concern for Tiffany was genuine,” I said.
“It is,” Dad said to me. “Apparently you think I’m something of a monster, but I’m not. Your sister is my first born, my blood. Regardless of how you see things, I love her. She’s been through a lot. All of which you’ve missed.”
“But I have been there every step of the way,” Manning interjected. “I know you care about Tiffany. You know I care. You said I was a good husband to her. Am I wrong to say after all you and I have been through, that you trust my judgment?”
After a tense moment, my dad nodded for Manning to continue. “You’re not wrong.”
“Sir, I love Lake. I have for longer than I’d like to admit, but hiding it from her and you and even myself only did everyone in the family a disservice.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m trying to do the honorable thing by bringing this to light.”
My heart pounded. This was a moment sixteen years in the making—our ‘coming out’ in a sense. We’d been inseparable for years, but we might as well have been sixteen and twenty-three again, standing before my menacing father and asking his permission to love each other. I was thankful not to be that girl now, because she wouldn’t have walked out of this room with Manning—but I would, no matter my dad’s response. “I feel the same,” I said. “It has always been Manning for me.”
“And Lake for me,” Manning echoed. “Like you, I’ve only ever tried to do the best by her, to love and protect her—and now I can do it with every fiber of my being. Without worrying about what anyone else says or thinks.”
My dad worked his jaw side to side as his eyes clouded. Though I feared his reaction, it wasn’t enough to get me to back down. Not with Manning at my side.
And my father certainly didn’t intimidate Manning. “She’s my only concern,” Manning continued, “my only priority, and I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to worry about her anymore. She’s safe and happy and cared for.”
My dad had clenched his mouth shut, his lips a bloodless line. Anger darkened his face. I couldn’t understand how any of what Manning had professed could upset him. I opened my mouth to defend Manning’s love for me, and mine for him, with a ferocity my father had never seen. But I stopped when I saw the tears in his eyes.
He set his elbow on the desk and hid his face with one hand. Was he crying? “Go,” he said after a moment. “Leave.”
I’d read the emotion on his face as anger because sadness was so unfamiliar there. I was too surprised to do anything other than let Manning pull me out of the study. Once we were alone in the hallway, I looked up at him. “What just happened in there?”
“He cracked a little—and that’s good. Believe me.”
“I don’t even know what that was.”
“Regret. Pain. You’re his daughter, Lake. Of course he worries about you with an intensity neither of us will understand until we have our own children.” He glanced at the door behind me. “All I did was relieve him of a worry that has weighed on his shoulders for years.”
I couldn’t help getting choked up, mostly because my emotions were all over the place. Even though I was touched, my pride was still wounded. “If that’s true, then why’d he kick us out?”
“It’s probably hard for him to let you see him that way.” Manning reached for my Pinot, so I handed it over, even though he rarely drank wine. Maybe he’d been more nervous than I’d thought. “I’ve learned a lot from your dad,” he said after a sip, “including the fact that I hide my vulnerabilities from the people I love the same way he does.”
“You don’t do that with me anymore,” I said. Manning would never be able to help being protective of me and our life, but now we made decisions together that affected us, including the one to be here today. He’d come a long way from the days of keeping me in the dark with the misguided intentions of protecting me.
“Like I said, I’ve learned from him,” Manning said. “Shutting down his emotions helps nothing and only hurts the people he loves.”
