"All this time." His voice was tight. Controlled. The kind that preceded an explosion. "All these weeks, Tobias. Do you have any idea what that was like?"
"I—"
"Do you know what we thought?" His voice rose. "Do you have any idea what goes through a parent's mind when their child disappears? When there's no call, no message, nothing?"
"Richard—" my mother started.
"No." He cut her off. "He needs to hear this." He turned back to me, and now I could see it—the fear beneath the anger, the sleepless nights compressed into fury. "We thought you were dead. Do you understand that? We thought someone had hurt you. We thought you might have hurt yourself. Every time the phone rang, I braced myself for the police telling us they'd found a body."
The words hit like physical blows.
"I didn't think—"
"No, you didn't think." He paced now, the rigid control cracking. "You ran away like a child. No note. No explanation. Just gone. And we were left to explain to three hundred guests that our son had vanished. To face Elizabeth's family. To answer questions from the police, from the press, from everyone who wanted to know what kind of parents raise a son who does something like that."
"I'm sorry—"
"Sorry?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You're sorry. That's wonderful. That fixes everything."
"Richard, that's enough," my mother said firmly.
"It's not enough." But some of the fire drained from him. He stopped pacing, rubbed a hand over his face. "Do you know what the worst part was? Not the embarrassment. Not the scandal. The worst part was not knowing if you were alive. Waking up every morning and wondering if today was the day we'd get the call."
I didn't know what to say. I'd been so focused on my own escape, my own survival, that I'd never fully let myself imagine what they were going through.
"I'm sorry," I said again. It felt inadequate. "I should have contacted you. I should have let you know I was safe. I was selfish and scared, and I didn't think about how it would affect you."
My father was quiet for a long moment. The anger was still there, but something else was creeping in. Exhaustion, maybe. Or relief.
"So you ran," he said finally, his voice flat. "Because you're gay. Because you thought we'd—what? Disown you?"
"I didn't know what you'd do. I just knew I couldn't keep pretending. And I was too much of a coward to face you."
He stared at me, his expression impossible to read—shock, confusion, perhaps even hurt.
"So instead of talking to us, you disappeared. Let us think the worst. Put your mother through hell." His jaw tightened. "Because you assumed we'd react badly."
"Yes."
He laughed again, harsh and bitter. "Well. You weren't entirely wrong, were you?"
He walked to the window, standing there with his back to us, shoulders rigid.
The silence stretched. One minute. Two.
"Richard," my mother said softly.
"I'm processing." His voice was clipped. "Give me a moment."
So I waited, watching my father stare out at the Manhattan skyline, struggling with whatever war was happening inside him.
When he finally turned around, his face was still tight, but the anger had simmered down to something quieter.
"I don't understand it," he said. "I'm not going to pretend I do."
My stomach dropped.
"But disappearing like that—" He shook his head. "That I understand even less. Whatever you were afraid of, whatever you thought we'd do—was it worth what you put us through?"
