Chapter 5 - Tears of Atonement
Rebecca walked into the room as if stepping across an active minefield, her eyes locked on Peter's sunken face. For an entire year, she had refused to speak his name. She had burned photographs, spent hours in therapy venting her fury at the father who had walked out on her mother's darkest hour, and had forbidden Simon from even mentioning his whereabouts. Now, the monstrous villain of her imagination was gone, replaced by a dying father who had endured the agonizing isolation of hell to keep her mother alive.
""Dad?"" Rebecca’s voice broke into a high, childlike whimper. She fell to her knees beside me, burying her face into Peter's hospital blanket. ""Dad, oh God, Dad, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry for everything I said! I hated you, Dad! I called you a coward! Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me hate you?""
Peter turned his head weakly toward his daughter. With monumental effort, he lifted his left hand just an inch off the mattress, allowing his trembling fingers to touch the crown of her head. ""No, Becca... no apologies,"" he whispered, his eyes swimming with tears. ""You were protecting... your mother. That's what... I raised you to do. You were strong. You took care of her... when I couldn't.""
Simon approached the other side of the bed, his tall frame shaking with silent, wracking sobs. He fell to his knees and wrapped both of his large hands around his father's frail wrist. ""Dad, I threw your tools away,"" Simon choked out, his voice thick with unmanageable guilt. ""I cursed you every time I drove Mom to the clinic. I told Maisie she didn't have a grandfather anymore. Dad, please, look at me! How could you do this alone? How could you sit in that room by yourself while we were all five miles away?""
""I was never alone, son,"" Peter gasped, his monitor beeping faster as his heart struggled against the overwhelming tide of emotion. ""Every night... I looked at your pictures. Every morning... Colin told me... how strong you were being. Simon... you became the man... I always hoped you'd be. You took care of your mother. You held the line.""
""We would have figured it out, Peter!"" I cried out, leaning over him so he could see the fury and love wrestling across my face. ""We would have declared bankruptcy! We would have sold the house! We would have lived in a one-bedroom apartment together! Love isn't about running away to save someone from debt, Peter! We were supposed to endure it together!""
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Peter looked deeply into my eyes, and for a brief second, the exhaustion and haze of medication seemed to vanish, replaced by the profound, piercing clarity of the young man who had proposed to me under the seaside pier thirty-five years ago.
""You say that now, Lydia... because you survived,"" Peter whispered, his words deliberate and heavy with absolute conviction. ""If we had shared the debt... you would have skipped the trials. You would have settled for palliative care... to save our money for my hospice. I know you. I loved you too much... to let you be noble. My life was over... the day the doctor found that mass in my spine. Yours wasn't. If I had to be the villain in your story... so you could have a story left to tell... then I’d do it again. A thousand times over.""
