This was the first conversation of meaning my dad and I had had in five years, and the day and place it was happening on made me feel that John had his hand in it. “It’s about Jude,” I said, playing with the grass edging surrounding John’s gravestone.
“I thought you weren’t seeing each other anymore?” Dad cleared his throat; he was really doing this. Having a concerned parent conversation with his teenage daughter.
“We weren’t, but we kind of stumbled into each other last night.” My dad might be exhibiting a margin of strength, but I feared that telling him about the event leading up to Jude’s and my reunion would send him into another five years of absenteeism. “We worked things out and then, this morning, we found out there was something between us that we could never work out.” I also knew this information might send my dad into a downward spiral, but he was sitting before me looking so much like the beacon of strength I remembered as a little girl. Like a man that nothing could take down.
He nodded. “And what was that?”
I blew out a breath, the letters etched into John’s gravestone going blurry. “Jude’s last name is Jamieson.” Even as I said it, I still couldn’t quite believe it. I still didn’t want to believe it.
Dad sighed, rolling his shoulders. “I know.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“I know, baby,” he repeated. “I’ve known from the beginning.”
Okay, dad was having a moment. Another break with reality, but this one led him to lie through his teeth.
“Are you saying you knew from the first night I brought Jude home that his dad was Henry Jamieson?” I spelt it out a little clearer.
“I knew,” he said. “It took me a while, but yes, I figured it out.”
I wasn’t sure how much farther down the rabbit hole I could fall. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you were happy and because Jude isn’t his father and because I knew one day, if the two of you stayed together, you’d figure it out.”
“We figured it out.” I sunk my teeth into my lip.
Dad patted my leg. “And you’re wishing you hadn’t?”
I bobbed my head.
“Because you cared about him and wanted to be with him?”
Another nod as I concentrated on keeping myself together. This day was bending my mind so far, I was bracing for it to snap at any time. “You should have told me.”
“Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. Jude shouldn’t be judged by who his father is,” he said, grabbing my hand. “What Henry Jamieson did is unforgivable, but that doesn’t mean Jude is undeserving of happiness. We lost our John, but he lost his father.” His voice wavered, but he caught it. “Everyone lost something that day, and I was glad to see one seed rise up from the ashes.”
That seed had died in the ashes. It was a seed that’d never taken root. “He blames you.”
“And you blame his dad,” he said, his eyes moving between me and John’s headstone.
“That’s because he killed John,” I said. “I have every right to blame him.” Blame was the least of it for murdering my brother.
“It doesn’t matter who’s to blame and who isn’t when it comes to you and Jude, sweetheart. What matters is what the two of you want. Both of you are looking for an easy way out of this because it scares you,” he said, looking into my eyes with actual emotion and a presence I’d thought was long gone. “Caring for someone is scary because you both know how it feels to lose someone in the span of a heartbeat. But you can’t let fear dictate your life or else you’ll end up like me. Don’t live life hiding behind your past, live for right now. When you find someone you want to spend forever with, you don’t let them go, whether forever turns out to be a day or a year or a hundred years.” He rested his other hand over John’s grave. “Don’t let the fear of losing them keep you from loving them.”
There was the Wyatt Larson who could talk to anyone about anything, the man who’d operated the largest commercial construction company in the state before his whole world came to an end, lecturing me about living for the moment and not letting the past make you fear the future. I knew he wasn’t a hypocrite, that’s what he believed; he just was incapable of living like that now.
“I have lost him, dad,” I confessed, wondering if I’d ever had Jude.
Dad looked off into the distance, his expression flattening. “It always amazes me how when we’re sure we’ve lost something for good, it winds up finding us.”
I smiled. It was a sad one, but it still registered. My dad had said the same thing numerous times when I was younger and lost a favorite toy. He’d been right. As soon as I surrendered to the fact Teddy was long gone, he somehow popped up in the most obvious of places.
“Even if we did get back together,” I said, “how could we ever hope to move on from something like that? How can I look past his dad being Henry Jamieson? And how can he look past my family being the reason he lost his dad?” That question didn’t have an answer, and I wasn’t expecting one.
“I’m fool hearted enough to believe love can conquer all,” he admitted, lifting a shoulder.
I laughed a little, but it sounded all off since I was trying not to cry. “You are fool hearted,” I said, looking over at him. His words and voice were right, but his shoulders and head still hunched forward. He was a fraction of the father he’d been. But I’d take a fraction.