Take This Regret (Take This Regret #1)(53)
Author: A.L. Jackson

When they found him, he was in a coma, and too much damage had already been done. He was lost apart from the machine that kept him alive.

They’d left him on it for three days, and no one had even bothered to tel me until they had removed him from life support and announced his death.

Sitting on my bed, I stared down at the pictures in my hand, my jaw clenched as the first real wave of emotion hit me.

Anger.

Had he thought so little of me, his own son, that no one around him had thought it important enough to call me and let me know what was happening with my father? That I might have liked to have known that he was dying?

Had he ever cared at all ?

And why did I care?

Why on the fringes of the numbness I felt was there pain? Why had the emptiness in my chest begun to ache?

I dropped the photos back into the chest and pushed away the reminders of how little I’d meant to my father. I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling, hating that this was all we’d ever been, all we’d ever be. That to him, I’d been nothing more than a disappointment; and to me, he’d forever be the ass**le who didn’t care.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I glanced at the nightstand.

nightstand.

Seven fifteen.

The ache in my chest expanded but in an entirely different way. Our seven-fifteen call s had become rare, only because I was usual y with Lizzie during that time, but I still always call ed if it happened I wasn’t spending the evening with her. Tonight, she had beaten me to punch. I wondered if it was Lizzie or Elizabeth who had known how badly I’d need to hear their voices tonight.

I pulled the phone from my pocket, rol ed to my side as I tucked my pil ow under my head and lifted the phone to my ear.

“Hi, Daddy.” Her sweet voice assuaged the weight on my chest and chased the fog from my brain.

She’d been so scared this afternoon, fearing I was leaving her, not understanding what was happening or why I’d reacted in such a way. It was that voice that had touched me, had shaken me—one that I could never ignore.

“Hi, sweetheart. How’s my girl?”

She sighed, the sound wrapping me up in her tiny arms. “Just thinking about you, Daddy.”

And for the first time tonight, I smiled.

My mother sat in front of me while I stood with my hands resting on her shoulders. Tremors rol ed through her body as she tried in vain to hide the tears she shed for a man she had never stopped loving.

I squeezed her and hoped it gave her comfort, a quiet reassurance that I was here.

Though we felt as if we didn’t belong, my mother and I blended in with the sea of black—black suits, black dresses, and black umbrel as that protected from the ceaseless drizzle of rain, the air heavy and damp. A black casket gleamed bright and ominous in the middle of it all . It was covered in what seemed to be thousands of white and yel ow flowers and a mil ion raindrops. My father’s last spectacle, his final farewel .

Samuel Clymer, my father’s business partner and probably his only true friend, rose to give the eulogy. He moved heavily to the podium, cleared his throat as his eyes flitted over those in attendance, and looked upon my mother and me for a moment longer. He was a man I’d known all of my life, tal and stocky, his cheeks round and red. From my childhood, I remembered him with a ful head of brown, curly hair; he now was balding and wore wire-rimmed glasses that he continual y pushed up his nose.

His voice cracked as he spoke kind words of my father and told of a man different from the one that I’d known.

When Samuel finished, he moved aside and lifted his glasses to wipe his eyes with a white handkerchief.

The minister began the last prayer, and my father’s casket was lowered into the ground.

With the prayer, I bowed my head and wil ed tears that never came.

Instead, I watched with a hol ow ache as my father’s widow stood to throw the first handful of dirt into his grave.

She was young, younger than I was, her black-skirted suit perfectly tailored to fit her perfect body—another prize my father had won.

As she threw the dirt, Mom reached up and clutched my hand. She held her breath in grief as the soil scattered and showered through the flowers. She failed to stifle a cry with a tissue against her mouth. I kneaded her hand in mine as everyone who had gathered to grieve my father went forward to pay their last respects; some faces familiar, distant relatives and old friends, as wel as many strangers.

Voices were hushed and respectful as they passed by.

We waited until the crowd cleared before Mom stood, and together we went forward. Mom whispered at the edge of his grave, indecipherable words that bled together, maybe a prayer, maybe a goodbye. Then she reached down and tossed a handful of dirt onto the black casket below.

I knelt and dug my hand into the mound of soft dirt, cold and foreign. I fisted it and wished we had ended things differently, that I could mourn my father as a real son should.

I felt sick as I dumped the handful of dirt over his casket and murmured an unheard goodbye.

The limo turned onto the private drive lined with wiry elms and lush oaks. The sun had broken through the clouds, and rays of light glinted down through the branches as we passed by.

Mom and I sat in apprehensive silence as the driver fol owed the path that curved around the sweeping grounds and came to a stop in the circular driveway in front of the enormous house we had once call ed home. It was an imposing three-story colonial, its roof pitched as it stretched for the sky. Evergreens towered over its height, impressive and strong, so much in the way my father had viewed himself to be.

From the backseat of the car, Mom gazed out at the house I had grown up in. Her grief was suffocating, and I found it hard to breathe in the confined area. She looked at me, her face wet and splotchy as she shook her head as her lips trembled.

“I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I had no words to comfort my mother, so I reached out and drew her to me, hugged her while she sobbed against my chest. She’d told me once that she’d never stopped loving him, but I’d never understood the depths of that love until I’d first seen her in the hotel lobby when I’d arrived, her face ashen—devastated.

“We don’t have to stay.” I rocked her as I spoke, unsure if my offer was more for her benefit or mine.

She sniffed, pulled away to wipe her eyes and nose with a tissue, and looked back at the house. “No.” She slid her watery eyes to me, swall owing back the emotion. “We should stay.”

Even though I didn’t want to be here, I knew she was right. In the very least, I owed my father this, a measure of respect in his passing and my presence as his family and friends gathered to say goodbye. Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted me here, but in the end, I was what I was—his son.