Chapter 10 - Dinner With My Father

My father lived in a house that was far less impressive than Sylvia always imagined.

There were no marble columns.

No ballroom.

No gold staircase.

Just books.

Photographs.

Old furniture.

And a kitchen that still had the chipped blue mug my mother used every morning before she died.

I stood in the doorway holding it.

“I thought you threw this away.”

My father shook his head.

“I tried once.”

“What happened?”

“I took it out of the trash ten minutes later.”

I smiled.

So did he.

We ate soup at the kitchen table.

No staff.

No polished silver.

No rules about standing.

My father watched me sit down as though the act itself meant something.

For both of us, it did.

“I owe you an apology.”

He said it before dessert.

I looked up.

“I thought if I pushed hard enough, you would see David the way I did.”

“You called him ambitious and shallow.”

“I was being polite.”

I laughed unexpectedly.

Then my smile faded.

“You also told me marrying him would be the worst mistake of my life.”

My father nodded.

“That was cruel.”

“It made me want to prove you wrong.”

“I know.”

He looked down.

“I confused being correct with being helpful.”

For a Chief Justice, admitting that seemed almost painful.

“I’m sorry too.”

He looked at me.

“I knew you didn’t trust him.”

“You didn’t have to agree with me.”

“I stopped calling because I was angry.”

“You were allowed to be angry.”

“I wasn’t allowed to disappear.”

His eyes softened.

“No.”

Silence settled between us.

Then I asked the question I had avoided for years.

“Why didn’t you come to my wedding?”

He took a long breath.

“Because David came to see me three days before it.”

I froze.

“What?”

“He asked me to stay away.”

My hand tightened around the spoon.

“He told me you said my presence would turn the ceremony into a security spectacle.”

I stared at him.

“I never said that.”

“I know that now.”

My heartbeat began pounding.

“What else did he say?”

“That you wanted to build a life without the Mercer name.”

I stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.

My father rose too.

“He lied to both of us.”

“Yes.”

The room blurred.

David had not merely benefited from our estrangement.

He had engineered part of it.

“I thought you chose your pride over me.”

My voice broke.

My father stepped closer.

“I thought you chose distance from me.”

Years of anger collapsed in one sentence.

He hugged me.

I had forgotten how it felt.

For several seconds, I became twenty-five again.

Before David.

Before Sylvia.

Before fear became routine.

Then my father whispered something that settled permanently inside me.

“We lost years.”

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He held me tighter.

“But we are not giving him another day.”