I turned to him abruptly. “Why would that matter?”
My dad focused on deadheading a rose bush. “I couldn’t leave the mess like it was. So here we are.”
I was about to press him on his decision-making, but he kept talking.
“Let’s walk before we eat. I have a few things I need to say to you.”
I swallowed hard and fell in step beside him. We walked past the pool and pool house to the gravel path that led to the towering Versailles-style hedges.
“Harrison, I owe you an apology,” he began.
I’d prepared myself for a discussion about the state of Ashford Holdings’s stock price, so the quiet admission was the last thing I expected.
“Forwhat?” I asked incredulously.
He let out a soft chuckle. “Too much to get into all of it, but the most pressing one is for keeping you in the dark about the testing I was having done. Drew’s been beating me up about it. I don’t have any excuse other than that I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
“Well yeah, it’s everything, Dad. It’s your health. After what we went through with Mom?—”
“Which is exactly why I didn’t think I should tell you,” he interrupted. “Why stress you out before I knew for sure whether or not I had a reason to?”
“Because you shouldn’t have had to go through something like that alone,” I protested.
He started to speak but stopped abruptly.
“What?” I demanded. It looked like he was keeping yet another secret. “Did something change with your results?”
“No, no, I would’ve already told you if it had. I learned my lesson about keeping you out of the loop. I’m fine, and I’ll tell you if my status shifts,” he said quickly. “I’ll never hide my health concerns from the three of you.”
“Okay, good,” I said with a satisfied nod.
We walked on in silence.
“You know another anniversary is coming up.”
Losing someone to cancer meant a thousand sad milestones.
“Of course I do,” I said quickly. I hoped he didn’t want to make a big deal about it. I preferred to mark the day she was diagnosed—the day our world turned upside down—quietly, on my own.
“It’s just got me thinking, you know? After my scare, everything started shifting into focus. I’m seeing myself in a new light, and I don’t like what I’m discovering. For too many years now, my way of coping with the pain has been closing myself off from everyone. Your mom used to call me on it, but now that I’m on my own…”
We both stared at the gravel crunching beneath our feet as we walked, each caught up in our memories of the incredible woman we’d lost.
“You’re like me in that way,” he continued. “You box up the hurt and do your best to maintain business as usual.”
He was right, but I was still shocked at the comparison. Drew was always the one who was compared to Dad. The one who looked the most like him. The one who was the closest match to his personality. I’d never really stopped to think about waysIwas like Dad too. I hadn’t thought he ever noticed, either.
“That tendency has served us well most of the time,” he said. “It allows us to focus, to push through tough times with a level head. That can be a very good thing. We’re both unstoppable when we put our minds to something.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “It works.”
“Partially.” He watched me out of the corner of his eye for a few steps. “It’s way too easy to use that single-minded focus as a crutch. We both tend to retreat into whatever problem we’re solving and ignore what we’refeelingbecause it’s too messy or complicated or scary.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” I insisted. “I’m not scared of anything. I can handle whatever life throws at me.”
My father paused and turned to me. “Can you, though?”
Thoughts of Gwen resurfaced, but then again, they were always right there, no matter how hard I worked to push them aside. I didn’t answer him as we continued walking.
