Page 50 of Secrets at Seaside
“I’m sorry.” He rose to his feet and paced again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Isn’t this something you should have told me?”
“I promised your father I wouldn’t. He was given a year to live. He knew that was going to be his last summer with you. His health was declining, and—”
“Oh,man.” Tony sank back down to the couch. He couldn’t imagine what his father had gone through. “When did the drinking begin?”
“I don’t know exactly, but sometime soon after he received the diagnosis.” His mother paused, and the answers became clearer.
“He wasn’t drinking at a work party that night, was he?”
“No.” A whisper.
“Mom. He…he killed himself when he crashed into that tree? It wasn’t an accident?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was stronger but shaky. “We’ll never know. But the father you were with that last summer is not the man your father always was. Surely you know that.”
“He was always tough on me.”
“Yes. Because he didn’t want you to make a mistake. Parents worry, honey. When your child tells you he wants to be a pro surfer, as a parent you want to protect them from failing. To parents who aren’t surfers, you might as well have said you wanted to go to the moon or be a rock star. It was all so foreign to us. Your father and I were businesspeople. Straight and narrow, follow the road put forth by your elders. College, graduate school, family. Solid path. You threw us for a loop. Not that we didn’t want to support your dreams, but…”
“It’s okay, Ma. I get it. I know how it must have sounded, but I was driven. I lived and breathed surfing. Still do. I made it, and I hate that Dad never got a chance to see that. He never got a chance to move past the hard time he gave me and be proud of what I’d done.”
“Oh, honey.” Her voice trembled, as if she were crying. “Even back then your father was proud of all you’d accomplished and the fact that you were on your way to becoming the best. But he saw that summer as his last chance to make a difference and guide you in the way a father should.” She paused for a beat, and when she continued, her tone was softer. “He just didn’t know how to get so much out in so little time. And the alcohol didn’t help.”
Tony’s eyes teared up. “ALS.”
“It’s not genetic, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“It’s not that, although it is a relief. I just wish I had known. Maybe I could have talked to him about…everything.”
“He loved you, Tony. He loved you so much. All those times his anger got the best of him, he wasn’t aiming that venom at you. He was angry about the disease, about leaving us before he was ready. You just got caught in the line of fire.”
TONY TOSSED THE phone onto the couch and buried his face in his hands. Amy stood on the wrong side of the screen door with her heart in her throat.ALS. She’d heard him say it, and now he was falling apart. Who was he talking to? Who had ALS?
“Tony?”
Tony spun around, eyes red and watery. She read his silent plea and forced her legs to carry her inside. He didn’t stand from where he sat on the couch. He simply reached a hand out, and as she took it, the air shifted, became heavier. He drew her down onto his lap, and her arms instinctively circled his neck. She held him as his breathing hitched and his grip on her tightened.
“That was my mom,” he said against her shoulder. “My father…was sick.”
His sadness pressed in on her through the weight of his large hands splayed on her back and his warm, stubbled cheek against her. Amy closed her eyes and hoped she could offer a modicum of the strength that he’d always offered to her.
“I’m sorry, Tony.”
She felt him nod.
“He had ALS, Amy. ALS. I had no idea.” His voice trailed off.
Eventually his grip eased and he gazed sadly into her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
She kissed him to soften the hurt threaded in his voice. He deepened the kiss, turning it hot and urgent, greedy for comfort she was more than willing to give. Amy was the first to draw back, wanting to show him the love she felt so deeply and to fill her own need to bring him respite from whatever was tearing him up inside.
There was nothing she could say to take away the hurt she saw in his eyes. He pulled her closer, and she knew he needed to be loved the way she’d loved him all those years ago. She needed to take away the ache of sorrow and fill him with comfort in a way only their love could. She kissed his jaw, his neck, the tender spot at the base of his neck. She pushed at his tank top, running her hands over his muscles, and he kissed her like being with her was the only place on earth he ever wanted to be.
Chapter Fifteen
OVER THE NEXT few days, Amy and Tony talked about his father’s illness and the magnitude of what his father must have felt. Tony was angry at first about his parents keeping it from him. As he came to grips with his new reality, Amy gave him the time and space to deal with it in the way he dealt with most things. He threw himself into surfing and working out. He was up before dawn for morning workouts, then beat his body up for most of the day, and when he’d return, he and Amy would talk until the wee hours of the morning and then make love until the pain and confusion was once again held at bay.
