Chapter 22 - The Reunion
Three days later, I drove north.
Alone.
I told no one except Daniel.
And Sarah.
Fairmont was smaller than I remembered.
Main Street had a diner, a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a brick library with white columns.
I parked across from a modest single-story house.
My father lived there.
I sat in the car for twenty minutes.
Then thirty.
At some point, I laughed at myself.
I had negotiated acquisitions worth millions of dollars with less hesitation than it took me to cross one residential street.
Eventually, I opened the door.
The August air was warm.
A wind chime moved on the porch.
There were tomato plants beside the steps.
I walked toward the house.
Halfway up the path, the front door opened.
An older man stepped outside carrying a small watering can.
He wore jeans and a faded work shirt.
He stopped when he saw me.
I stopped too.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
His eyes moved over my face.
Then the watering can lowered slowly.
“Nathan?”
My name sounded unfamiliar in his voice.
But not wrong.
I swallowed.
“Yes.”
He didn’t move toward me.
I appreciated that.
Instead, he set the watering can down.
“I wondered if I’d ever see you.”
I looked at him.
“You knew I might come?”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“I just wondered.”
There were a hundred things I could have said.
Why did you leave?
Why didn’t you come back?
Why didn’t you find me when I became an adult?
Why did you let forty years pass?
Instead, I asked the question that had followed me for days.
“Did you write to me?”
His face changed.
“I wrote to your mother.”
“I know.”
He stared at me.
“You know?”
“I found the letters.”
Something in his shoulders seemed to loosen and tighten at the same time.
“Then you know I tried.”
“I know you wrote.”
He nodded slowly.
“That’s fair.”
We stood in silence.
Then he gestured toward the porch.
“Would you sit for a while?”
I almost said no.
Then I thought of the window.
The boy waiting.
The man who had stopped waiting.
I followed him up the steps.
We sat in two old chairs beneath the awning.
For nearly an hour, we talked.
Not about everything.
That would have been impossible.
We spoke carefully.
He told me about Dayton.
The machine shop.
The money he sent.
The letters he never knew were unopened.
I told him about college.
My mother’s final years.
The company.
He listened more than he spoke.
Once, he apologized.
I stopped him.
“Not yet.”
He nodded.
“All right.”
There was relief in that.
May you like
Not because he didn’t want forgiveness.
Because he understood I wasn’t ready to offer it.
