“Because I watched him throw up blood into a gas-station sink on the way back from his oncologist,” he said. “Then I watched him wipe his mouth and ask whether you’d called about your biopsy. He was half bent over, couldn’t stand straight, and all he could talk about was you.”
I closed my eyes.
“That does not make it right.”
“I know.”
“It does not.”
“I know.”
“He let me believe he didn’t care whether I lived.”
“Yes.”
The word landed without defense.
“He let Elise believe it.”
“Yes.”
“Jonah.”
“Yes.”
“My grandchildren will know their grandfather as the man who walked out on me during cancer.”
Wade’s face tightened. “Randall knew what it would cost.”
“No, he didn’t. He isn’t here to pay it.”
Wade looked at the floor.
I wanted to hurt him.
The realization was so clean it startled me. I wanted to find the exact words that would pierce him because he had been present for something I had been denied. Randall’s illness. Randall’s fear. Randall’s death.
