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“Is she?”
I looked over my shoulder, like Sam Wheeler was going to be lurking there (she wasn’t), then back to him.
“Yes, she is.”
“I think he wanted to be a good dad.”
My organs stopped functioning, such was my shock, because he was going to talk about his father.
“What?” I whispered.
He shook his head and looked back to the ocean, mumbling, “Nothing.”
I rubbed his back, Elsa Cohen, ace celebrity interviewer, at a loss to find the right question to ask to get her boyfriend to open up, to let go, tounload.
“Go on,” he urged. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
I tried another tack.
“Would you leave me if that happened to me?”
His jaw clenched, then he turned his head, looked down at me, and with a rueful smile, he said, “Not a chance.”
“Okay then,” I whispered.
He looked back to the sea.
I pressed to him, resting my cheek on his arm, and watched the waves crashing on the shore.
Eventually, he said, “The fish is probably already cold.”
“Worse things,” I replied.
“Yeah, but let’s go in and feed our people.”
If he was ready, I was ready.
I nodded.
He swung an arm out and I preceded him, but right when I was about to walk over the threshold, he succeeded in catching my waistband this time. He used it to haul me back, I hit his front, and then his lips were at the top of my hair.
I went perfectly still and listened.
“Genny and Duncan told me,” he said quietly. “His parents were a disaster. He never spoke of them. I don’t think he knew how to be one. How to be a dad. I think, even if they weren’t together, if she’d been a good mom, he could have taken direction. I think he was lost. I think he saw how natural it came to Tom, and how Tom had gravitated to me, and I think he let Tom have me, because he knew Tom would take care of me. I think he let Tom have me because he knew he couldn’t be what I needed.”
I was breathing shakily, listening to these words.
Listening to what could be excuses a son was making for a father who failed to be the dad he needed.
Or worse, what I suspected it actually was.
Listening to Hale figure out the staggering sacrifice Corey Szabo made so Hale could have the dad Corey wanted him to have.
The dad Corey couldn’t be.
“Okay,neshama sheli,” I said gently.
“She could have guided his way,” he said into my hair, touching me only at my waistband, but I felt his heat burning into my back like a brand.
