Page 329 of Chaos has a Name
Ethan didn’t say anything.
“The bottom line, son, is that I couldn’t do it. I went to the bar and got drunk because I was inches from taking my life to escape.”
Ethan glanced over.
He didn’t want the excuses.
Ethan knew that if it meant saving his oldest son, or ending his miserable existence that he’d made for himself, he’dALWAYSsave CJ.
In.
A.
Heartbeat.
“Did I mean that little to you as a seventeen-year-old that you’d choose booze over me?” he asked. “Because I have children, and I’d let a mob of angry people rip me to pieces while alive to save them. I’d die to save them. I just can’t figure out why you didn’t want to save me. Ever.”
It was time to be honest.
For the longest time, Wyler tried to decide when would be the right time to give what he knew to his son. He’d carried that deep in his soul.
Protecting it.
Now, it was best he shared everything so that Ethan could start to heal. Wyler knew that if he died, Ethan would carry this anger with him.
And that was the last thing he wanted.
It was time for both of them to start to heal before it was too late. Wyler was going to do chemo, but he knew that he had like a ten percent chance of surviving.
The odds…
They weren’t in his favor.
Now, he was fighting for them, just so they could have a little more time left with each other. His goal was to make it one more Christmas.
That’s all he wanted.
“You need to know something, Ethan.”
He shrugged.
“I need to know a lot of things yet, Wyler. Most of them why I’m so fucked up in the head and heart. Just when I start putting me back together, I get my feet kicked out from under me. I just want peace.”
Wyler figured it was the time.
“When your mother was dying, I stopped by the cabin while you were at school one day. She’d asked Timothy to get me there, and he did. He dragged me there by my ear.”
Ethan listened.
Because if he spoke, he was going over the edge. If his wife was dying, Ethan wouldn’t leave her side. He’d hold her hand until her last breath. It was confusing to Ethan why someone would have to force a person to do that.
“When I got there, she asked me to do her one favor when she passed. She asked that I take care of you, and I not let anything happen to you.”
He wasn’t shocked.
Not by Timothy having to drag him there, and not that his mother loved him. There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t show him.
Even sick, she gave him everything she had.
