We’re safe. I need time.
Beverly also began messaging.
Her tone had changed completely.
She said there had been a misunderstanding.
Then:
I had no idea about your father. Why didn’t you tell us? We would have done so many things differently.
At breakfast, I read that line aloud.
My father lowered his newspaper.
“We would have done things differently?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“You understand what she means, don’t you?”
I did.
“She means she would have treated you better if she knew you had money.”
“I know.”
Dad folded the paper.
“That isn’t kindness, Simone.”
He looked at Beverly’s message again.
“That’s accounting.”
Roland came four days later.
He stopped at the gate.
I almost refused to see him.
Then I remembered my father standing five hours too late in that hospice doorway.
I thought about sixteen lost years.
“Let him in.”
