Page 31 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

FRIDAY

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

I turned to Dad with a start. He hadn’t spoken much at all today—not to me or his nurse—and he’d only eaten a few bites of applesauce for breakfast and soup at lunch.

It left me with an unsettled feeling in my gut, like something big was lurking around the corner, and I wasn’t sure why I felt like that at all.

We’d known for months that he was dying, that his days were severely numbered.

None of us had expected him to linger for this long, of course, and really, when I put it that way, he was likely well past his expiration date—as given by the doctors.

Yet there was still that feeling of being so unprepared, despite having known this whole time, and no amount of self-given pep talks seemed to change that.

But still, the knowledge was there. Logic was there. And I hadn’t expected him to speak to me at all, like my soul had just accepted with abrupt notice that my father was no longer speaking, just like that.

Guess I was wrong.

“You mean Melanie?”

He sucked in a restricted breath and nodded. “You get rid of her already?”

“She’s not my girlfriend, first of all,” I corrected. “And second of all, she’s spending time with her kids and brother-in-law today.”

He grumbled something unintelligible. His eyes were open but barely, aimed at the TV in the corner, though I wasn’t sure he was truly watching whatever was on.

“I wonder if Margaret will be waiting for me,” he muttered.

That brought me to tip my head to the side with question. Dad had never referred to Mom by her first name before, not in my presence.

“You mean after you die? In Heaven?” I guessed, taking a seat in the chair beside his bed.

His laugh was breathless, a smile never once gracing his face. “It’d be a cold day in Hell the moment I stepped foot past those pearly gates.” His gaze was slow to drift toward my face, recognition distant but there. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

I inhaled deeply and sat back in the chair, dropping my eyes from his stare.

“I don’t know what I think, Dad. Honestly, I’m not really sure there is a Heaven or Hell or whatever or if there’s just …

somewhere else to go. But”—I sighed and shifted my weight—“sure, I think that, wherever that is, Mom is waiting for you.”

“You don’t believe your wife is in Heaven?”

“I didn’t say I don’t believe in an afterlife,” I said, not wanting to fight with him in what could very well be his final days.

Minutes even, for all I knew. “I just meant I don’t know that I think there are separate places or if good people, bad people …

they all go to the same place. Like here, but for the dead. ”

“Then what the hell would be the point of all this if everything was the same after you died?”

I shrugged with a helpless tip of my lips. “I don’t think it’s my business to know.”

“Fool,” he grumbled. “Always a fool.”

I chuckled sardonically, shaking my head. “And you’ve always been a fuckin’ ray of sunshine, but here I am, aren’t I?”

“You have nowhere else to go. I’m all you have.

Killed your wife. Killed Margaret. God, she never knew how much I loved her, but I guess I always had a shitty way of showing it.

” He lolled his head to look at me again.

“You’re just like your old man, you know.

My blood is yours. We’re cut from the same cloth. ”

“So you’ve said before,” I muttered, seeing no point in arguing with him while feeling bristled by what he was saying just the same.

“I wish you would kill me too.”

The statement didn’t rock my soul instantly. At first, I glanced at him, snickered, like he might’ve been joking. But then he laid his hand against the bedrail and demanded I look at him again. A desperation had fallen over his features, his eyes watering with tears that left my hands shaking.

My father never cried. Not at my mother’s funeral or at the time of his terminal diagnosis. Seeing him on the brink now palpitated my heart, and I stared, unblinking.

“I want you to kill me,” he whispered, his voice trembling but the request clear as day.

I forced a chuckle, though I didn’t find anything funny. “No can do, Dad.”

To my horror, his face fell with disappointment. “But why not?” He sounded unhinged and ready to lose it all. “Don’t you want to be done with this? Aren’t you tired ?”

“I’m doing what I have to do for as long as I have to do it for,” I answered with an apologetic smile.

“God, please. Please kill me.” A flimsy hand reached out for me as his eyes watered and his composure broke. “I’m not asking; I’m telling you. Please, please, please kill me. You’ve killed before. Do it again, one more time. Kill me, please .”

“Dad,” I said, shaking my head, “stop.”

“You are my son ! My godforsaken, bastard son! Do what I’m telling you, dammit! Obey me, boy! Listen to your father!”

He was hysterical. His voice every bit as frail as he was.

Looking at me with begging eyes, his body nothing more than a skeleton with skin hanging loosely from the bones.

Fuck, maybe a better man would have killed him.

Taken mercy and ended his life. But I bore enough smudges on my soul. I didn’t need or want this one.

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing from the chair and heading for the door. “I already took the lives of others in your name when you forced me to join the Army. I will not take yours too. And it’s been a long fucking time since I was a boy .”

***

Dad’s cries ceased some minutes later, and I reentered the room to watch the rise and fall of his chest. He looked miserable, even in sleep. There was nothing peaceful or comfortable about this, and although he hadn’t told me as much, I felt guilty about that too.

I sighed, scrubbing my hands on either side of my face.

I had to get ready for work. Had to eat something and feed the dog.

Yet I didn’t want to do anything but sit here and watch over him.

Grace had mentioned she’d stop by tonight to sit with him for a bit before the night nurse came, and that should’ve been enough to ease this anxiety, but it wasn’t.

My eyes traveled the perimeter of the room.

This office had been such a forbidden place when I was growing up.

Hell, this entire wing of the house had been off-limits for my whole life until he came home on hospice.

Now, I looked around, wondering why it’d seemed so sacred back then.

It was just a bunch of stuff, accumulated by a successful asshole of a man throughout his career and life.

None of it mattered. None of it had changed the outcome at the end.

Something called to me—a whisper to my soul maybe—and I wandered toward the vintage desk, shoved against the wall to make room for Dad’s bed.

The heavy oak, stained a dark mahogany in color, was as pristine as I was sure it’d always been, with only a thin layer of dust across its top to show its lack of activity in the last nine months.

I ran my hand over its surface, smearing away the evidence of time passed to reveal the gleaming polish beneath.

Then I touched the expensive designer pens in the black steel cup.

Then I lifted the plaque with his name engraved into it, wondering why he needed to be reminded of who he was, even in his own home.

I opened the top drawer, surprised to find it unlocked, and there, lying in the center, was an envelope with Dad’s name written in Mom’s handwriting.

It was none of my business. I should’ve left it alone. But I picked it up, turned it over, and found that it’d never been opened. All these years later, it remained sealed, and without a second thought, I slipped it beneath my shirt and hurried out of the room before Dad could wake up.

***

“Who’s Richard?” Melanie asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

I was mid-thrust, breathless, when I looked at her through a sex-induced haze, disbelieving.

“You’re asking this now ?”

She laughed against my shoulder, her fingers digging into my back. “I’m sorry. I just …”

My hand tangled in the strawberry-blonde mess of her hair and tipped her head to the side as I kissed her neck.

I muttered against her skin, “My dad.”

After the afternoon I’d had with my father, I’d been looking forward to this time with Melanie.

She had spent the day with Charlie and her boys, going through some of her husband’s things and looking at old photographs from when they—Melanie; her husband, Luke; and Charlie—had been younger.

I arrived at my office with Lido later than usual, shaken up and bothered by my father’s incessant begging for me to end his life, when I received a text from Melanie, asking if she could stop by later to smoke and expel some pent-up energy.

I’d said yes, of course, eager to engage in anything that might push the thoughts of my father from my head, but it was more difficult than I’d expected.

He never seemed far from my mind, and the tiniest thing pulled him back in, put him at center stage, and now, with his name just barely leaving the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t find it in me to think of anything else.

Not even the woman of my literal dreams sitting in my lap.

The desire for sex warred with anxiety and dread, and I struggled to stay in the middle of carnal passion. It was slipping away, more rapidly than I preferred, and I whined pathetically as Melanie turned her head to scatter kisses along my jaw and cheek.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, her hands squeezing the back of my neck.

“I’m sorry,” I groaned, knowing the fight was futile.

I shifted beneath her, separating our bodies with deep-rooted regret. She said nothing though, and there was no resentment to be found anywhere on her face.

“Time for that cigarette?” she asked, cupping her palm against my cheek.

Not a bit of annoyance or disappointment touched her beautiful blue eyes, and I lifted one side of my mouth in a half smile.

“Yeah,” I replied gruffly. “Let’s do it.”