Chapter 5: Everything He Left Out
Liam picked up the envelope.
He turned it over once, then set it back on the table without opening it.
"Before I look at anything in there," he said, "I need to know the rest of it.
The parts you've left out."
My father wrapped both hands around his mug.
"What do you think I've left out?"
"You said you found out about Diane's letter years later.
That a letter came." Liam's voice was even, the way it got when he was being careful.
"Who sent it?"
My father was quiet.
"Someone knew where to find you," Liam said.
"Diane passed and someone reached out to you directly.
Who was it?"
"Her sister," my father said.
"Margaret.
She and Diane were close.
Margaret felt I had a right to know, even if she didn't particularly want to tell me."
"Did Margaret know who I was when I started working for you?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Yes," my father said.
I sat forward.
"So Diane's sister knew.
You knew.
And you both watched Liam drive your car for six years and said nothing."
"Margaret wanted nothing to do with me after she sent the letter.
She made that very clear.
Whatever I chose to do with the information was my business, not hers." He looked at Liam.
"She did ask me, once, whether I'd spoken to you.
I told her I hadn't found the right moment."
"And what did she say?"
"She said some moments don't wait to be found." He set down his mug.
"She was right."
Liam leaned back in his chair.
I could feel him processing — the same way he processed everything, slowly and completely, turning it over until he understood the shape of it.
"I'd like to meet her," he said.
"I thought you might.
She's still in the area.
She's in her seventies now.
She never married." My father paused.
"She has photographs.
Of your mother, when she was young.
Things I don't have.
Things you should probably have."
The kitchen was very quiet.
From the living room came the sound of the television, low, and my son laughing at something.
"Why did you really hire me?" Liam asked.
"Not the version you told us outside.
The real reason."
My father looked at him steadily.
"Because I was a coward who wanted to know his son without having to admit he had one."
It was the most honest thing I had ever heard my father say in my life.
Liam nodded once.
Not forgiveness — not yet — but acknowledgment.
The recognition that a true thing had been said.
"And when I started seeing your daughter?" Liam asked.
"I was furious."
"Because of who I was to you, or because of who you thought I was?"
"Both," my father said.
"And neither made sense, and I knew it, and I said what I said anyway because I had spent fifty years building a wall around everything I was ashamed of and your relationship with her felt like it was going to bring the whole thing down."
"It did," I said.
"Yes." He looked at me.
"It did."
I thought about the morning my key card stopped working.
I had stood outside the gate of the house I grew up in, my suitcase beside me, and I had told myself I would not cry.
I hadn't.
I had called a cab and gone to Liam's apartment and sat on his second-hand sofa and felt, underneath the hurt, something that took me years to name.
Relief.
Relief that the wall was down.
That I was on the outside of it.
"I need to ask you something," I said to my father.
"And I need you to answer me honestly."
"All right."
"If Liam hadn't looked the way he looks.
If our son hadn't had that face.
Would you have come?"
My father didn't answer immediately.
He looked at the photograph still lying between us on the table.
"I'd like to tell you yes," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"No," he said quietly.
"It isn't." He was silent for a moment.
"I had the address for three years.
I drove past the street twice.
I told myself I was waiting for the right time." He looked up.
"I don't know if I would have come without a reason I couldn't argue with.
And that is the most shameful thing I've said today, and I've said several."
I looked at him across the table.
Eight years.
Two drive-bys.
A photograph in his jacket pocket.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
"I'm not ready to forgive you.
I want you to know that clearly.
But I'm also not going to ask you to leave." I glanced toward the living room, where my son had turned off the television and was now, apparently, explaining something at length to his sister.
"They deserve to know their grandfather.
Whatever happened between us doesn't change that."
My father's throat moved.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me yet," I said.
"You still have to get through dinner."
Liam stood up and opened the refrigerator.
He stood there for a moment looking at its contents with the focused expression of a man who has decided to do something useful with his hands.
"I hope you're not particular about pasta," he said to my father.
My father looked at the back of Liam's head.
At the man he had hired to drive his car.
At his son standing in his daughter's kitchen about to make dinner.
"I'm not particular about anything anymore," he said.
From the living room, my son's voice rose with sudden urgency: "Dad!
Dad, come tell her I'm right!"
Liam closed the refrigerator and went.
My father and I sat alone at the table, and for the first time in eight years, the silence between us was not a wall.
It was just silence.
But underneath it, I could feel something shifting — something that had not finished moving yet.
May you like
The envelope was still on the table.
Neither of us had touched it.
