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There was a knock at the door before I’d made it to the kitchen. The knock was oddly precise and commanding, and my brows dipped as I kicked my coat out of the way to open it, freezing in place, and fully understanding the lobby clerk’s apprehension.
The man holding my food was no delivery boy. He was tall, imposing, and could make you feel equally loved or hated with one cutting glance of his obsidian eyes.
“Franklin,” I breathed.
“You’ve done well for yourself,” Franklin said, his measured voice traveling from the living room. I chucked the food he’d intercepted from the delivery guy in the building lobby into the fridge. I didn’t have an appetite anyway.
“It’s my hus… It’s Daniel’s.” The apartment and every piece of ostentatious furniture belonged to him. There was nothing of me there, and I hadn’t cared. Maybe until now.
I grew uncomfortable under Franklin’s probing stare, because he was good at seeing to the heart of things.
“I’d forgotten how much you look like her,” he said before turning his pained expression away and venturing closer to the windows. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here. Why I hadn’t come sooner, or why I came at all.” He clasped his wrist at the small of his back, much like Cole did when deep in thought. “I’m here to apologize, son,” he whispered, cutting to the chase.
My breath left me on a ragged exhale. Hearing him call meson, hearing him say I probably wondered why he hadn’t come sooner, made me feel like a child. Like someone’s unabandoned child. And I hadn’t felt like either of those for so long. It hurt in the best way. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” He pivoted to me, his eyes showing me more than they ever had. Showing me what he already knew.
Oh God.
“I knew, Jasper. Not before that night, but certainly after. I lacked the finer details, but she was found on the threshold of your bedroom, and seeing the way you and Cole consoled each other when you thought I wasn’t looking…” His voice petered off as he took a second to collect himself. My nails pierced the fabric of the sofa I stood behind as I waited.
“Nothing was more telling than how broken he was when you left. I let you leave, and I became cold to the only blood relation I had left. She would be ashamed of me.Isashamed of me.” He looked over his shoulder and into the night clouds.
“You–youknew?”
“Did you think I would have allowed you to leave so easily had I not known? Did you think I cared so little for you?”
I’dcared so little for me that it hadn’t mattered how anyone else felt. I couldn’t see or feel anything through the drip-feed of pain I’d been hooked to.
“I let you leave because I was in too much pain to deal with what I already knew.”
“That I killed her,” I said around the fist in my throat.
He shook his head. “No. That it wasn’t your fault.”
I shuddered then, grip tightening on the couch back. I had so much to say, so much to refute, but it occurred to me that this visit wasn’t for me. Not really. This was every bit of Franklin releasing his aches and pains as it was about freeing me of mine. I wouldn’t tarnish this for him by telling him his feelings were a lie. I’d let him say his peace. I’d let him find his peace, too.
“I know she didn’t approve,” he said. “I know this because she’d written her thoughts down. It was her final journal entry.” He blushed as if ashamed to admit he’d read her private thoughts. “It helped. After she died…it helped.”
“I’d never judge you for that, Franklin.”
“My guess is she couldn’t sleep. Not with the way things were left. And so she went looking for you that night.” He scratched at the gray strands along his hairline. That and the slight wrinkles at the corner of his eyes were the only things betraying his age. Cole got his eyes from his mother, but every other physical attribute was a carbon copy of his father.
“I’m…” I searched for a better word than sorry, so sick of being it and feeling it and speaking it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“She wasn’t perfect, you know. Children often expect parents to be ideal, forgetting we’re human, too. We’re flawed, too. Selene had a temper, and an aptitude for wanting things her way.” He gave a slanted smile. “The latter was my fault because I’d formed a habit of never saying no to her. The former might’ve been my fault too for the same reason.” He placed a hand over his heart, as if indicating it was what currently ailed him. I was looking at an upgraded version of the stoic man I knew. He might as well have been touching his sleeve, because right then that was where his heart had taken up residency.
“I loved both her temper and her sometimes non-compromising way. But you boys didn’t see that side of her, because as a mother, she constantly strived for perfection.
“My point is, she was afraid. She thought she was running out of time, and wanted to reduce the heartache and suffering left behind. She wanted our family intact. She didn’t want me hurt and lashing out. She didn’t want you alone in the world with no family if things went bad. Sure, she was also your and Cole’s mother, so she had that to battle with, too. But she made a mistake, and by the looks of it, you’re holding on to that just so you can hold on to her.”
He sauntered closer to the window, staring at the cold, wet street below. “I bet she feels closer, doesn’t she? With you constantly reminding yourself of the pain, sharpening it so it never dulls…it keeps her near,” he whispered, speaking more to himself now. “I understand it. But we’ve gotta let it go.”
“How?” I asked, and he glanced back at me as if remembering I was there.
“Forgive her,” he said. And never had two words torn me so irreversibly apart.
Cole
