Page 82 of Awestruck at Dusk
Not only was I furious about Nathan not showing up or reaching out to me to explain why. But I was sodonewith my father’s lack of empathy in general.
I mean, Nathan had an assistant now. Couldn’t he have asked her to call me, just like my father did when he was too busy? I’d put up with this behavior for years now being my father’s daughter, and I was finally growing tired of it. And how hard could it be as a father to set forty-five minutes aside from an entireyearto sit with your daughter at church to commemorate your wife’s death?
Un-fucking-believable.
I’d love for him to just tell me,hey, I don’t feel like going because it makes me feel like this or that. But he never talked to me about Mom or told me how he felt about her death or anything for that matter. I knew it must’ve been devastating for him; I liked to assume.
I wished he would just tell me something.Anything.
The only feelings he would convey would be those of apprehension toward my safety. That’s it. The conversation we had in the ladies’ room on my birthday was one of the most enlightening I’ve ever had with him, and we all know how that went. What had to happen for him to start blurting things out?
I walked over to him, kissed him hello, and took a seat in front of him.
“Kiddo?” He leaned in with lowered eyebrows, probably wondering what was wrong as he analyzed my face, which was already too revealing. “Where’s Nathan?”
Exerting more pressure than I should’ve, I bit my lower lip to avoid bursting into tears again in the middle of the packed steak house when my phone buzzed on the table.
It was 7:15 p.m. when Nathan finally called me.
“Hey,” I said, meeting my father’s gaze, as in,try to catch up, because this is part of the reason why I’ve been crying.
“Where are you?” Nathan whispered. “I can’t see you. You said St. Patrick’s, right?”
“Mass began at 6:00 p.m. I left twenty minutes ago.”
Nathan cursed over the phone, and I reminded him he was inside a church. He told me to wait as he stepped out.
“Murph, I’m so sorry. I swear I thought you said 7:00 p.m. I arrived at 7:05 p.m., but I thought it weird that you hadn’t arrived, and the place is practically empty. I mean, there’s like tourists and such, but I—shit, love, I’m so terribly sorry. Are you at Sparks?”
“We are.” I rested my elbow on the table and cupped my forehead.
“I’ll be right there.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I said I’ll be right there.”
I ended the call and tossed my phone into my bag.
“I’m sure he got caught up with work,” my father began to excuse Nathan.
“Please… don’t take his side.” My voice was more of a warning than a request.
“Nathan loves you, kiddo,” he said, reaching his hand out to me, grabbing it, that is. He squeezed it for a few seconds and released it. “I’m sure it’ll be easier once Nathan and I open our firm. We’ve been discussing it this past couple of months. He’s mentioned something about it, yes?”
“Your—firm?” I glared at him. “Whatfirm?”
“I believe Nathan’s a bright young man. Full of potential. I see a lot of myself in him. We’ve been talking about how he should hold on to his position for the rest of the year at Chapman & Payne before we partner up for our new firm.
“I have quite a lot of contacts. Contacts that I would love to hand over to him freely. Toourfirm. I believe we can make a great team, and you’ll both have a secure future, too, economically speaking.”
I signaled one of the servers to come and ordered a Coke from him. I literally felt like I was about to faint. My father was trying to turn Nathan into a revamped mini-him. And by doing so, he might as well be taking him away from me because if he didn’t have time right now, imagine running an entire firm? How would that make things easier for Nathan?
In his mind, my father was supporting us—our future, in granting Nathan the opportunity to own a legal firm with him as a partner.
My father kept rambling about how it was a great idea. About how Nathan was like the son he never had, among other things I failed to account for as I kept thinking about how this could play out in the future. In part because I was focused on bringing my blood sugar up to an acceptable level that would allow me to remain seated instead of dissolving away on the restaurant’s floor. And most importantly because I simply didn’t want to hear any of it anymore.
To learn from my father that they wanted to become so involved with each other and not from Nathan felt exactly like when they ganged up against me to sign the restraining order against Thomas. They insisted on keeping me in the dark. It didn’t surprise me coming from my father but from Nathan … why?
