Chapter 17 - MARGARET WITHOUT THE HALO

I did not forgive my father.

I did not exile him either.

We had coffee.

It was awkward.

He apologized badly.

"I was an idiot."

"That's not enough."

"I know."

"Stop saying that. Mom does it too."

He laughed.

I hated that we had the same laugh.

Thomas had stopped gambling twenty years earlier.

He remarried.

His wife had died.

He had another son.

My half brother was nineteen.

That information made me stand up and walk around the room.

"You have a son?"

"Yes."

"Does he know about me?"

"Yes."

"Of course he does. Apparently I'm the last person briefed on my own family."

Thomas looked down.

Fair.

Margaret joined us later.

The three of us did not heal.

We argued.

Margaret accused Thomas of abandoning us.

Thomas accused Margaret of blocking letters.

She admitted she had blocked some.

He admitted he stopped sending them too easily.

I listened until I could not.

"Enough."

Both stopped.

"You don't get to rewrite this into one clean explanation for me."

Neither argued.

Good.

I sold the old house.

Not because it was cursed.

Because I did not want it.

The buyer was a young family with a baby.

I repaired the cabinet before closing.

Then changed my mind.

I left the small dent.

Not as a monument.

Because houses do not need to pretend nothing happened.

The divorce moved toward final settlement.

Ryan's company was liquidated.

My guarantee cost me money.

A painful amount.

I paid it.

I had signed it.

Ryan lost almost everything he had built.

He took a salaried project-management job.

The first week, he called me.

"My boss told me no today."

"How did you survive?"

"Barely."

I laughed.

He did too.

Then he said, "I should've heard you say no years ago."

"You did."

A pause.

"You're right."

The next day, the clinic case settled.

Leah received compensation and funding for future fertility care if she wanted it.

She did not know whether she did.

That was allowed.

Then Naomi called with the final divorce date.

Friday.

I looked across the mansion at the family room.

Margaret was on the floor with the twins.

Thomas sat stiffly in a chair, meeting his grandchildren for the third time.

Messy.

Nothing like the life I had planned.

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For the first time, that did not feel like failure.