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They were questions he’d been asking himself all day. Since the moment he walked out of her cabin, his mind had been on how he could have handled himself better. He felt like he’d been a zombie, walking through his life but not really living it because all he could think about was her.
“Well, the first thing you did wrong was arguing with her about something you don’t know a whole lot about, son. You became the patriarchy in that moment, and these young women have been taught to fight that. Good for them, I say. World would be a better place if men shut up for a moment,” his father said. “Honestly, if your mother had been president, we wouldn’t have gotten into so many wars and that environment would have been spick-and-span, I tell you.”
It appeared that sarcasm had returned along with his father’s mental clarity. “I’m serious, Dad.”
“So am I,” his father insisted. “Did you listen to her or did you plow right on because you knew you were right?”
He’d come out here to talk to his dad because it had seemed more productive than his initial instinct. He’d thought seriously about grabbing a bottle of booze, hopping in his truck, and going to sit by some lake with his dog, bemoaning the fact that his woman done left him like he was in a bad country song. Now he was wondering if he’d made the right choice. “I wouldn’t call it plowing.”
“Ah, but it was. Do you know how I know what you did?” his dad asked. “Because I used to be the one plowing on through even when I was in the wrong field. Made your mother crazy. Our marriage got better when I learned to actually listen to her. Not to simply be quiet when she spoke, but to hear her.”
“I did hear her.” He’d listened, but they’d still had a problem, and he thought he might know what it had been. “Maybe I didn’t understand what I heard.”
“What did you hear?”
He’d been right to go to her the night before. She’d needed him and he wouldn’t have been able to sleep if he hadn’t known how she was doing. They shouldn’t have fought the way they had. He’d gotten emotional, and his fear had come out as anger. “I heard a woman who’d worked all of her life get kicked, and hard. I heard her wanting to give up.”
“Or maybe she’s tired and needs a break,” his father prompted.
“But she could lose her whole career over this.” He groaned because he realized he’d done everything his father was accusing him of doing. “Or maybe she needs to think about whether she wants the career at all. Maybe I’ve been so mired in my own misery that I can’t see straight. Why didn’t I jump at the chance to keep her here with me? I want that more than anything. I want a chance to see if we could have a life together, but I sabotaged it.”
“You don’t want her here when you have to take care of me. You don’t want her to have to watch you struggle while I lose my mind again. I only know what it looks like from the inside. It’s frightening, but I don’t have to constantly think about it. You have to live with it constantly, and you don’t want to bring someone you could love into that.”
Brynn wasn’t the only one who he hadn’t been listening to. “Taking care of you isn’t misery.”
“No, but watching me lose my mind is,” his dad said. “It’s not great to go through it, either, but if I had the choice, I’d go through it myself instead of watching it happen to someone I love. And there’s some selfishness in there. I know what you’re going through is hard, and I know that you struggle to ask for help.”
“I shouldn’t need it. I have a good life.” He didn’t have anything to complain about. He had a good job, a house to live in, friends. He’d had great parents.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t struggle. No one gets out of this life without pain. Sometimes I think the worst thing we did to our kids was teach them they always had to be stoic. We taught you that if someone else had it worse, you didn’t have a right to feel bad. That’s not healthy, son. You get to feel whatever it is you need to feel. You can have a good life and still have trouble, and if you shove that trouble down without dealing with it, without examining it and finding a solution, that’s what will bring you real misery.”
“That’s what Brynn’s doing.” He finally understood. His father had found the exact words that made sense to him. “She’s trying to figure out what’s missing in her life. She’s slowing down and giving herself time.”
