He’s got a navy sweater on over his button-down. The collar’s crooked. The sweater’s inside out.
Nobody noticed. Or he didn’t let them fix it.
Dad was never easy. But he was alwayshim.
Today, he looks smaller. Shrunk inside the frame of the strong man I used to know. The man who commanded a boardroom with a glance. Who once taught me how to throw a curveball using a grapefruit and an empty laundry basket because“real baseballs are for kids with more trust funds than brains.”
He looks up when he hears me, and for a second—one tiny second—I see it.
Recognition.
“Nolan,” he says, voice rough like gravel, but there.
A punch to the gut and a miracle in the same breath.
“Hey, Dad,” I say, dropping into the chair beside him. The metal’s slick with rain, but I don’t care.
We sit there for a while, listening to the rain hit the awning. He watches it like it’s a ticker tape parade just for him.
“You make the deal?” he asks after a long moment, tapping two fingers against the armrest.
His tell. His old nervous tic from mergers.
I swallow the knot in my throat. Play along. Because it’s what I do.
“Yeah,” I say. “Closed it yesterday.”
He nods once, satisfied. “Knew you would. You’ve got the Rhodes blood. We don’t lose.”
I almost laugh. God, if only he knew how much losing I’ve done lately. How much walking away has started to feel more like surviving than losing.
“You taught me well,” I say instead.
He grunts, the way he used to when he didn’t want to admit he was proud.
“You keep the sharks off your ankles?”
“Most days,” I murmur.
Another long pause.
“You still got the lake house?” he asks suddenly, turning his head toward me.
The lake house. We sold it three years ago. But the memory is still burrowed deep, tied to the marrow of who we were.
The dock that creaked in the summer heat.
The tire swing.
Me, my uncle, my cousin, Dad, and my Grandfather all fishing off the end, pretending we didn’t care if we caught anything.
“Yeah,” I lie softly. “Still ours.”
He smiles, and it's so pure, soyoung, that I have to look away for a second.
We sit like that.
Side by side.
