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32
Connor had bought the top three floors of the building. The third floor down held an Olympic-sized pool, along with various weight rooms and a variety of saunas. It was a fully-loaded luxury gym 2000 feet above the ground.
The pool room was dark. The only illumination came from the lights under the water, which cast a shifting, sparkling blue glow everywhere.
Armin the bodyguard stood at the doorway to the pool room. I could see Connor on the far end, sitting on the side, his feet dangling in the water.
“Just keeping an eye on him, ma’am,” Armin said as I walked through the door.
I didn’t have the energy to tell him not to call me ‘ma’am,’ so I just said, “I’ll take it from here.”
He nodded. “I’ll give you some privacy. Just call out if you need me.” Then he stepped on the other side of the doorway, leaving me alone with my future husband.
I walked down the side until I got to the deep end. “Hey,” I said.
For the first time, Connor looked up at me. He almost seemed surprised I was there. “Hey.”
“Can I join you?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down on the edge of the pool beside him and dangled my bare legs in the water, just like him.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I sorta figured.”
He didn’t laugh or smile. He just stared out blankly at the water.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered.
He nodded, but just kept staring out into the pool.
We stayed like that for a couple of minutes, completely silent, before he spoke.
“I thought it was going to be really hard to see him, back there in the morgue. But it wasn’t. I went in there bracing myself to see my father, but… that wasn’t him. That wasn’t the man I knew all my life.”
I stayed quiet and listened.
“The thing is, the man I knew all my life… I hated him. Hated him. So I should have been glad he was gone. But I wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
“I think I would have been glad he was gone… except I got to see a completely different side of him last night at dinner. It’s weird… in a way, that wasn’t my father, either. The guy we had over for dinner? I was meeting him for the first time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him try that hard, ever, to be nice to somebody. To just be… human.”
My heart ached to hear that. It meant that the only time Connor had seen him be gentle and considerate was around me. One evening of kindness over a lifetime of conflict was a tragically short time.
“And I liked that man I met last night,” Connor continued. “I liked him. I wanted to get to know him. But now…”
Connor’s features twisted in pain. For the first time since we had heard the news, I saw an emotion on his face.
“I spent the last thirty years of my life hating him… and just when I thought I might get him back… I lost him for good.”
He doubled over, put his face in his hands, and sobbed.
I held him, cradled him against me, and cried with him too.
