Page 85 of Absolution

She nods. “Yes, it’s time.”

“I’ll drop you at the airport,” I offer.

She waves it off. “No, sweetheart. You’ve got work. It’s fine. I've already called a cab and its nearly here.”

I watch her for a moment, not ready for her to go. She’s standing taller these days, less glass-fragile than I remembered. Before her cab arrives, she walks over and puts a hand on my cheek.

“You’re not like him, you know,” she says softly.

“Mom…” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“No. The way you are with those kids, the way you took responsibility for what happened with Jackie… You’re not like him. And you’re not like me either. You’re someone better. Someone I could only ever hope for you to become.”

I swallow hard. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

She smiles gently. “Sweetie, no one can be perfect. No matter what I think. The closest we get is taking responsibility. Owning our mess and trying to do better. Andyou aredoing better.”

I nod, not trusting my voice. She kisses my forehead, like she used to when I was little, and walks out the door just before the first tear drops.

For once, I don’t feel like a boy shrinking under her judgment.

I feel like a man she finally sees.

My appointment with Dr. Nina isn’t until tomorrow. I can’t wait to tell her. Laughing to myself, I walk into the bedroom to get dressed. I feel like I’m in third grade again, rushing home to tell Grandma I made a new friend at school.

Grandma.

That’s another thing.

All my memories of her are fond. I adored her. She smelled like vanilla and always had my favourite cereal in the cupboard. I think I started worshipping my dad becauseshedid. The way she spoke about him, like he could do no wrong, like he walked on water, it sank into me early. Shaped how I saw him. How I sawmen.

And now? I feel guilty for loving her. For loving someone who made my mother’s life hell. Who took her only child and decided she wasn’t good enough to raise him. Who made sure I never heard her side.

She made my mom’s life miserable. And she loved me.

Both of those things are true. I don’t know how to hold them at the same time.

But tomorrow, I’ll try. Today, I go to work.

I love my job. It’s the one thing that’s never failed me.

I did try to nix the merger with my father’s firm, I thought it’d be simple. Clean break. Strategic differences.

But it wasn’t that simple.

Turns out, we had financial issues. Big ones. That’s the real reason the partners even considered the merger in the first place, something I wasn’t told until much later, after I’d alreadystarted making noise about pulling the plug. Being a senior partner doesn’t mean full transparency, apparently. Not when the cracks are deep and the foundation’s already starting to shift.

The truth came out in bits: an internal audit flagged discrepancies. One of the original name partners, retired now, had been skimming for years. Quietly. Smartly. By the time anyone caught on, he was dead. Gone with the money and the paper trail. No clean recovery, no public admission, just damage control and whispered meetings behind closed doors.

I was pissed. But not surprised.

They didn’t want the authorities involved. Too big a scandal. Too much risk. If word got out, it wouldn’t just sink us, it would destroy us.

So yeah, it was too late to stop the merger. The contracts were already in motion. The press releases half-written. My father’s name already worming its way into the firm.

But what I could do, what Ididdo, was step away from being the point person for it. No business trips. No more strategy calls. No more pretending I believed this was in anyone’s best interest but his.

I’m back to doing what I love now. Contracts. Depositions. Trials, though those are rare these days. Almost everything ends in a number. A settlement. A payout. Everyone’s got a price, even if they don’t admit it right away.

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