“Listen, Dr. Zane—”
“Oh, God, please. Call me Chris. Or . . . or whatever you want.”
“Okay. Chris.” The name felt strange in his mouth. He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “Look. Not having any contact with you . . . it left a mark. I didn’t grow up hating you, and my mother never mentioned you in any way, except to tell me you left before I was born. But I always did feel a little . . . thrown away.”
His father nodded, his mouth wobbling. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
“But I’ve had a really good life. My mother is the best, and I have . . . I have people. And my wife, she was . . .” His eyes stung. “She was incredible, and we were very happy.” He cleared his throat. “So you didn’t ruin me. I never knew you, so you couldn’t. But I always wondered how I could be . . . tossed away like that.”
Chris nodded. “It had nothing to do with you,” he whispered fiercely. “Nothing. I was selfish. Completely self-absorbed. That’s the reason. I took the easiest, most cowardly path possible. I let your mother deal with everything alone, and I believe I’ll have to answer for that someday. I carry that with me. Every day, Joshua.” His voice broke.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Tim the bartender asked if they wanted a refill, and they both said no.
There was a perfectly symmetrical H carved into the table, and Josh traced it with his forefinger. A master carver, with the seraph base perfectly even. Well done.
“Why don’t you stop?” he asked his father.
“Stop what?”
“Feeling guilty.” He dragged his gaze away from the H and looked at his father’s face. “I don’t say this to be unkind, but we were probably better off without you.”
Chris gave a pained nod.
“It seems like you’re a better man now than you were then.”
His father bowed his head. “I appreciate that more than I can say,” he whispered.
Josh looked at him. Weird, to think that half of his DNA came from this stranger. Then he stuck out his hand. “I forgive you.”
His father’s mouth opened slightly. He took Joshua’s hand and gripped it tightly. Josh squeezed back, and they stayed that way for a long minute before Josh withdrew.
“Do you . . . do you want to meet my family?” Chris asked. “Your . . . siblings?”
“Oh, God, no. I don’t see a reason to put this on them.”
He couldn’t tell if his father was relieved or disappointed. “Okay. Um . . . would you like to see pictures?”
“Uh . . . sure.” Huh. They had that in common, that hesitation of speech when they were unsure how to answer.
His father pulled out his phone, turned it back on and tapped the screen, then handed it over. “That’s at Christmas last year,” he said.
Josh looked at the screen—three kids, the girls in red dresses, the boy, tall and gangly, wearing a blue crewneck sweater. The older girl—Ransom—looked cheeky, and Josh felt a faint smile at the idea. He had a cheeky half sister who looked like him. Last week, he hadn’t known that.
“They look happy,” he said, handing the phone back.
“Thank you,” Chris whispered.
“What kind of things do you do together?” he asked.
“Oh, we, uh . . . well, we all like games and movies, so once a week, we have family night. And we go bowling sometimes. Ransom and Sawyer love baseball, so we go to a Cubs game once a year or so. Um . . . we do yard work together. Sometimes we go to the lake. We, um . . . we have a place up north. In Wisconsin.”
“That sounds nice.”
More tears fell from his father’s eyes. Well, Josh hadn’t inherited that trait. He was not a weeper. Sometimes, he wished he were. “You don’t have to tell them about me,” he said.
“I . . . I might.”
“That’s up to you. I don’t plan on visiting you again, Chris. I don’t need a father. I think it’s too late for us to be anything to each other.”
“I looked for you. On Ancestry.com. I thought maybe you’d . . . put yourself out there to track me down. One day, my kids will probably find out they have a brother.”
“Half brother.” Josh paused. “That’ll be a difficult conversation.”
“It will be.” His father studied his face. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want from me? I would do anything to at least try to make it up to you. To start, at any rate. This has been such a shock, but I’m so glad to see you. I truly am.”
Josh inhaled slowly. “Thanks. I just wanted to meet you. I wondered what you looked like. I wanted to know what kind of person you are.” He paused. “My wife thought I should. She thought it would be good for me. I think she was right.”
His father’s face spasmed, but he got it under control. “Okay. But if you want, just reach out . . . you know, for anything. Anything at all. If you change your mind, if you’re ever in Chicago, we could—”
“Right now, the answer is no. But thanks.”
“Can I give you my card just in case?”
“Sure.”
Chris pulled out his wallet, withdrew a card and wrote a phone number on the back. As he did, Josh committed his face to memory.
If being fatherless had left a mark on Joshua, abandoning a child had left a scar on Christopher M. Zane. He looked older than his years, careworn.
At least he’d had the grace to admit his wrongdoing without trying to justify it.
They got up from the table, and Josh could see that his father’s hands were shaking as he tried to zip up his coat. It was oddly touching.
Chris pulled out his wallet and left a twenty on the bar. “Leaving us so soon?” Tim the bartender said.
“Yeah. Tim, this is Joshua. Joshua Park.”
“Nice to meet you,” Josh said.
“Tim,” Chris blurted. “Would you mind taking our picture? Josh, if that’s okay with you.”
He hesitated. But his mom would want to see it, he suspected. And if not, well, he would have it, and in some small way, it would be nice to have a picture of him and his father, no matter how unimportant he had been for all these years.
Lauren would have liked that.
His father handed over his phone, and Josh did the same. They stood side by side. “Okay, look at me and smile,” Tim said. Josh obeyed, and then he felt his father’s arm around his shoulders. “Next phone, one, two, three, done. How do you like them?” He handed back the phones.