Chapter 12 - The Apology Lucy Refused to Make Easy
Arthur asked to meet Lucy alone with the therapist present.
Lucy agreed.
Charles waited outside.
Afterward, Lucy came out holding Rose’s sealed-envelope photocopy.
Charles had never given her the original.
Apparently her therapist had helped her choose one page from Rose’s letter.
Lucy sat beside Charles in the waiting room.
“Dad apologized.”
Charles waited.
“He said he was angry Mom was dying.”
“That’s possible.”
“He said he started thinking everything in our house was something cancer took from him.”
Charles looked at her.
“What did you say?”
“I said we were people.”
Charles closed his eyes.
Rose’s daughter.
Arthur had apparently cried.
Lucy did not.
Then she asked him about the funeral day.
Why did he pack the overnight bag?
Why did he call them Rose’s kids?
Why did he threaten to find another place for them?
Arthur’s answer was ugly.
At least it was specific.
He had discovered the insurance structure that morning.
Vanessa was pressuring him to leave the suburban house quickly because the financial plan they built was collapsing.
He looked at Lucy and Emma and, for one terrible moment, saw only obligations attached to the life he believed he had lost.
“So he did it because of money,” Charles said.
Lucy shook her head.
“That’s not what he said.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the money made him angry enough to say what he had already been thinking.”
Charles felt the distinction.
Arthur could not blame the trust.
The trust merely removed his filter.
Lucy looked at the page in her hand.
“Mom wrote that he used to love being our dad.”
Charles nodded.
“He did.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it.”
She stared ahead.
“Then which one is real?”
That question had no comfortable answer.
“The man who loved you and the man who abandoned you can be the same person.”
Lucy frowned.
“That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
Because it meant love did not guarantee behavior.
But it also meant bad behavior did not erase every earlier good moment.
Lucy would have to decide what those contradictions meant for her.
Then she asked, “Do you want me to forgive him?”
Charles thought of the slap in the foyer.
Arthur’s cold shrug.
Rose’s coffin.
The money.
Everything in him wanted to say no.
Instead he answered the only way he could honor Rose.
“I want you to decide when you’re older what forgiveness means to you.”
Lucy looked at him.
“And now?”
“Now I want you safe.”
That was enough.
May you like
The financial fight was nearly resolved.
The harder family question had only begun.
