“Can we talk?”
“You’re talking.”
David glanced at me.
“Privately?”
Mason shook his head.
“Anything you need to say to me, you can say in front of my dad.”
The word landed exactly where Mason intended.
David closed his eyes for a moment.
“I deserved what you said out there.”
Mason said nothing.
“The PR document wasn’t my idea.”
“But you went along with it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
David struggled for an answer.
Finally he sat on the bench across from us.
“Because I’m a coward.”
It was the first honest sentence I had heard from him.
“When Sarah died,” he continued, “I wasn’t just grieving.
I was terrified.”
His eyes moved toward Mason.
“She handled everything.
Your doctors.
Preschool.
Food.
Bills.
Bedtime.
I was always working, always telling myself providing money made me a good father.”
He looked down.
“Then suddenly she was gone, and you were looking at me like I was supposed to know how to replace her.”
“You weren’t supposed to replace her,” Mason said.
“I know that now.”
“You were supposed to stay.”
David nodded.
“I know.”
Mason’s jaw tightened.
“Then why didn’t you come back the next day?”
“I was ashamed.”
“The next week?”
“More ashamed.”
“The next year?”
David had no answer.
Mason leaned forward.
“You know what Dad taught me when I was little?”
David glanced at me.
“He said when you make a mistake, every minute you spend hiding from it makes the apology harder.”
David’s eyes filled.
“He was right.”
“Yeah,” Mason replied.
“He usually is.”
David laughed once through his tears.
Then his expression became serious.
“I did know about you.”
Mason went still.
“What?”
I felt my entire body tense.
David swallowed.
“I checked on you.”
My hands curled.
“How?”
I asked.
“Online.
School pages.
Newspaper articles.
Social media when you got older.”
Mason stared at him in disbelief.
“How long?”
David hesitated.
“Years.”
The word hung in the tunnel.
“Years?”
Mason whispered.
“I knew you played soccer.”
“When?”
“Middle school.”
Mason stood.
“You knew where I was?”
“Yes.”
“You knew who my dad was?”
David looked at me.
“Yes.”
Something changed in Mason’s face.
Until that moment, some part of him had probably believed David had disappeared completely.
That perhaps distance had become ignorance.
But David had watched.
He had known.
“You saw me break my arm?”
“I saw a Facebook picture.”
“You saw my eighth-grade championship?”
“Yes.”
“You saw Dad working fundraisers for my travel team?”
David’s voice became barely audible.
“Yes.”
“And you still didn’t call?”
David started crying.
“I kept telling myself you were better without me.”
Mason shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
“You kept telling yourself you were better without having to face me.
”
David had no response.
Mason picked up his bag.
For a moment I thought he was leaving.
Instead he stepped toward David.
“When you messaged me three months ago, I thought you had finally become brave.”
He held David’s gaze.
“But you only became brave because somebody told you there was something in it for you.”
David covered his mouth.
Mason’s next words were quiet.
“I forgive the scared thirty-one-year-old man who panicked after Mom died.”
David looked up hopefully.
“But I don’t forgive fourteen years of choices in one night.”
The hope disappeared.
“Maybe someday,” Mason continued.
“But if there’s ever a relationship between us, it starts with the truth.
No cameras.
No interviews.
No company stories.
No pretending you ‘lost touch.’”
David nodded rapidly.
“Anything.”
“And you never call yourself my father in public again.”
David flinched.
Mason looked at me.
“I already have one.”
PART 6
I thought that was the end.
It wasn’t.
Two days later, Patricia called.
