Although Dair was shocked his father had this deep of an insight into himself, and could speak the words out loud, Dair had no response.
“Say something, Alasdair,” Bally ordered harshly.
“Were there others?”
Bally shook his head.
Dair watched closely but his father never broke eye contact.
So it was just Helena.
He was shocked by that too.
“Ye loved her? I mean, before Mum?”
“Very much so,” Balfour admitted. “And to this day, as much as Helena could feel this emotion, I think she loved me too, in the way she could. This isn’t an excuse, though I would tell myself it was as I continued doing what I was doing, but I convinced myself she needed me. I was the only happiness she had. But the truth is, I think I was.”
Fuck.
Dair examined his father’s face and saw he sincerely thought that, so he didn’t want to say what he had to say.
But they were speaking in truths here.
“Then I hate to tell ye this, and I truly do, but she has so many clothes, even Blake thinks they’re too much, and she had a twenty-something boy toy she kept at Treverton. He’s been there for years. Blake had to confront him and deal with a blackmail threat to get him gone.” As Bally sat, openly staggered, Dair finished, “Dad, what I’m saying is, Helena enjoyed her life to the fullest, with or without you.”
Balfour stared at him for long moments before his attention drifted to the window.
Christ.
He’d had to say it, he couldn’t not.
However…
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“It was a paltry excuse anyway,” Bally said to the window.
Shit happened in relationships.
Dair had heard stories from his mates—women who were stressed by having careers and still being expected to do everything at home, or being cast as a mom when they have children, their partners losing hold on the fact they’re still women, and on the flipside men whose partners lost interest in their sex lives and weren’t willing to work on regaining their intimacy, or the partner got so lost in the family life, they forgot they had a relationship to nurture—where he couldn’t condone, but he could understand why they strayed in search of the kind of connection they weren’t getting at home.
However, carrying on a decades-long affair was an entirely different thing.
Dair ate the samosa to give his father some time.
Balfour was still talking to the window when he said, “I dinnae think your mother will ever forgive me.”
“And I hate to say this as well, a bit less, but I still do. I think you’re right,” Dair told him.
Bally looked back at his son. “I’ll let her call the shots. I’ll text Davi to let her know I’m there whenever she’s ready to talk, but I’ll leave her alone in the meantime. And I’ll finish this in the way I didnae conduct myself the entirety of it. With some decency.”
“That would be appreciated.”
Balfour put some salmon in his mouth in a manner he was doing it by rote, not with any appetite, and when he swallowed, he said, “Now we need to talk about Blake.”
That ominous sensation came back to his throat at his father’s tone, and he asked, “Blake?”
“In dealing with Signe, some things have come to light about Blake I feel ye should know.”
