Page 12 of Father Knows Best (A Family Affair #1)

I put him in therapy after Margot’s death.

It was all I could do. Every time I pulled him into my lap and held him, I wanted to ask him if he wanted to talk about what happened, if he wanted to talk about her or if he had questions or—I don’t know.

Anything. I planned on letting him throw anything at me.

But that first night after she died, I sat on the edge of his bed and pulled him into my arms with every intention of being there emotionally.

I found it, however, impossible to say any of the things I’d planned to say. A knot formed in my throat each time I attempted, and the idea of speaking Margot’s name aloud—to our only child—I honestly thought it would kill me. As much as having her hurt me, losing her almost destroyed me.

So Sutton went to therapy to talk, and after a few months, he seemed better.

My eight-year-old got better, and I was getting worse, so I buried myself in women to ease the sting.

And those talks I meant to have–when I was stronger, that’s what I always told myself–they simply never materialized.

And when I was ready to have them, Sutton wanted nothing to do with me.

I have major regrets now, but those regrets drove me here, to this barstool, having this evening, loaded with discomfort.

Sutton shoves the pan of steaks aside, and braces his hands on the counter, eyes like his mother set on me, malice flaring his nostrils.

“Parker bought the property, he was always going to buy the property, so why you needed to come here and lay down marriage advice like father of the year–”

“Father of the year? A man mentions his only son’s impending wedding and one comment about marriage and suddenly I’m asserting that I’m father of the year ?” I ask, pressing my hand to my chest, struggling to keep my tone even keel.

Avery steps between us, standing at the corner of the bar. She extends a hand toward each of us, her fingertips grazing my palm. “Let’s just calm down,” she offers softly, and as much as I don’t want to upset or fluster her, I know we aren’t calming. We’re just getting started.

“The most rewarding feeling in the entire world is giving the person you love everything they want,” I repeat my words from earlier, my gaze moving between my son and the woman he is marrying. “I meant that.”

Sutton snorts, letting me know he finds hypocrisy in my words. “Sure.”

I lick my lips. “Sure, what?”

“Sure that you really believe that the best feeling in the world is giving the woman you love everything she wants. Sure that you believe you did that. Sure that you’re believing that you are in a position to give relationship advice. Sure to all of it, George .”

George. I’m usually referred to as “my father” or “Geo” but to be George… It hurts.

“Say what you so very clearly need to say,” I calmly tell him.

He pushes off the counter and brings his palms together, the sound of his hands rubbing the only noise in the kitchen.

Avery stands with her hands still reaching for us, fingertips dusting my palm, her face scrunched in anxious discomfort.

Still gorgeous, but now visibly distraught.

I don’t want to upset her, but I don’t want whatever is happening between my son and I to be a secret, either.

Families never get stronger with secrets.

“Do you really want to do this? Do you want to go here now after so carefully making sure to never go here for the last twenty-seven years?” he asks, a vein in his forehead pulsing.

“Go where?” I ask, glancing at Avery, whose eyes are indelibly pinned on Sutton.

Another sadistic laugh before those knowing hazel eyes find mine.

My chest tightens, seeing the pain in his expression, thinking that I put that pain there, that I made him this buttoned up man that he is.

“Did you really think you were going to tell me that my mom passed away when I was eight and that I’d never once in my life look her up?

That I wouldn’t research my mother and her death? ”

At some point, as the years drug on and Sutton got into junior high and started using the computer, I feared this.

My brother Ford told me not to fear it, but to embrace it.

Sit with Sutton and go through news articles together, point out what’s true and what’s not, and why the news printed what they did–because there is a big reason why.

He even suggested that I attend therapy with Sutton, and choose a time of the day to openly discuss Margot, like over dinner or in the morning with coffee.

But I didn’t take my brother’s advice. I wanted to. I did.

I simply couldn’t.

“I–” I don’t know what to say. I knew you would?

I wondered if you did? I thought you’d come to me?

Give me the benefit? I lick my lips and speak through my rapid pulse despite its efforts to clog my senses.

“I have no excuses. I should have talked to you about things all those years ago. But… it was hard,” I admit.

Even with the way I carefully worded that, it feels like I'm shirking my responsibilities.

And when I lift my eyes from the counter and find my son, I find he feels the same way.

“Right. Because a confused, heartbroken kid is supposed to ask his father why he treated his mother so shitty?” he asks, his voice no longer raised, his tone devoid of rage and anger.

Treated his mother so shitty? Truth be told, a lot has happened in the last twenty-seven years and I’ve suppressed, blocked and shoved down so many painful things in an effort to put one foot in front of the other, day after day.

But the things they said about me when she died—the tabloids, the papers, the local news—I remember.

I didn’t care then because it served a greater good, and the people who knew me—my brother Ford, his wife, my friends—they knew it wasn’t true either.

The problem is, I never considered that my son didn’t know me, not the way other adults in my life did.

I made passive assumptions, and now I see how misguided I was.

“What—please, explain to me who I was to your mother, in your eyes,” I urge, trying my hardest not to show him the hurt he’s causing at the startling accusation that I was a bad husband to Margot, that I treated my wife poorly.

It’s bitter on the tongue, his reality, and I can’t stomach swallowing it, but I refuse to project my emotions–he’s entitled to his.

After all, it’s my fault he has no reason to think differently.

“The newspaper articles all say the same thing, George.”

“Sutt,” Avery interjects, saying his name so softly I don’t think he even hears.

He comes around the large kitchen island, the one that I helped him select when renovating this house a few years ago. We’ve never been close, but we’ve had moments of feeling like things weren’t impossible. I will never lose hope.

Sutton strokes a hand down his face, leaning over the bar to get as close to me as he can.

He drops his voice, not in privacy but in exasperation, and I see now that my son hurts .

“There’s grainy surveillance footage out there, too, George.

So it’s not what I think I know, it’s what the world knows about you, and the way you treated her. ”

My mind reels–surveillance footage? Grainy images of Margot and myself flood my mind, images I haven’t revisited in so many years.

Not enough years. I never want to see those old security camera images again.

For the rest of my life. I swallow against the sudden rock of emotion holding my throat tight, making my lungs seize.

“And how did I treat her?” I ask quietly, calmly. Avery comes around the bar, behind me, and stands between myself and my son, again, mediating.

“Baby,” she says softly, pressing her fingers into his stomach, encouraging space between us.

“You had an affair. Probably many, if I know you. But you had an affair and my mother confronted the husband of the woman you were sleeping with. He lashed out, and he wanted to hurt you for sleeping with his wife, and he killed her.” He shrugs as if this is fact, with no possible room to negotiate.

“I saw the footage. I read the articles. Don’t tell me it isn’t true.

” The way the last word comes out of him rattled and broken sends a knife through my heart.

I look at Avery, whose eyes are damp and wide, focused on me.

She’s reframing me with everything she’s just heard, looking at me now through a different lens, a new lens where I am not quite the man she reckoned I was for the last year.

Hell, maybe not. Maybe Sutt’s already filled her head with his truth.

I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is because I’m a shitty fucking father. Clearly.

I get to my feet and step back, giving Avery and Sutton space. If I know you , he said, and he doesn’t, but that’s my fault, my choice—that’s on me. “Sutton, I?—”

He raises a palm, silently halting my efforts to explain myself, to explain to him everything that he doesn't know. And there’s a lot.

He actually knows nothing, nothing real at least. “We don’t need to suddenly sort things out.

We are fine as is, okay? Just—stop trying to play the father card.

You can sell property without that angle. We’ve done fine until now.”

There’s so much I want to say, but when I look at Avery, I know that now isn’t the time. They’re exhausted. She’s worked all day, they’ve been planning a wedding on top of moving her in and Sutton’s already in a mood–nothing positive can come from me staying.

“Sutton, I want you to know that I’m deeply regretful of how I handled things after your mother passed.

I had every intention of explaining things to you once you were old enough but…

I kept waiting for it to hurt less. I kept thinking, as soon as it doesn’t feel like I’m dying to even speak her name, that’s when I’ll talk to him, that’s when I’ll tell him everything, explain the newspapers, everything.

But that time didn’t come, not as quickly as I thought it might. And years passed and… I just…”

“You allowed a therapist to get me through the loss of my mother, gave me open internet access to discover the truth, and then you showered me with everything I could possibly want to make sure the world viewed you as the best father ever?” The words rush out fast, stacked on top of one another, and before I know it, Avery yelps, and Sutton has my dress shirt in his fists, his whiskey breath hot against my face.

“What do you fucking want from me, George?” he shouts, shaking me as his bottom lip trembles.

“Stop!” Avery screams, her voice shaky with fear, tears gliding down hot pink cheeks. “Sutton, stop it!” She cries as I stare into my son’s eyes. I see the moment he really hears her, and he releases me, stepping back, swiping his palm over the lower half of his face.

“Go. You need to go.”

I look at Avery. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She doesn’t say anything, but stands there, arms wrapped around herself, her large diamond glittering beneath the bar lights.

I leave, arriving at home with no memory of the drive. All I had on my mind was my son, and how to make things right after so many years of doing it wrong.