Some Bright Someday (Maple Valley #2) - Melissa Tagg Page 0,102
it was filled with more awkward intensity than any one sentence should be able to hold. Lucas didn’t respond. Instead, he took his time adding a waffle to his plate, slathering on butter, syrup, walnuts. As if he had any appetite at all.
Finally, when he couldn’t find any other reason to stall, he walked to the table and sat across from his father.
Dad didn’t wait more than a moment. “I don’t have any excuses, Lucas. But I can give you the facts if that’d help. I met Nancy Johannson three years after your mother died. She was a nurse on the base. You and Kit were still living with your aunt at the time.”
Lucas cut a square from his waffle but didn’t bother lifting it to his mouth.
“Eventually Noah came along. We weren’t married and Nancy wanted him to have her last name. She doesn’t have siblings, wanted to keep the Johannson name going. I didn’t argue. And . . . and I suppose I became comfortable with things as they were, thinking of my life in two parts.”
Lucas couldn’t avoid meeting his father’s gray eyes any longer. “Except there wasn’t really two parts. There was the family you actually cared about and invested in and the family you didn’t.”
“I did come visit, Lucas. When I realized you’d be better off with your grandparents, I moved you here. I thought it was the right thing at the time.” He rubbed his jaw, frustration in the movement. “I know I was—I am—a pitiful excuse for a father.”
“What I don’t get is why.” He cut into his waffle again, but once again, only pushed the bite around his plate.
“Why didn’t I tell you about Nancy? Or Noah? I wish I had an explanation that makes sense. At first, I think I felt guilty for being happy with Nancy but later—”
“No, why you left us in the first place.” Was it the accusation in his brash words that seemed to steal every last ounce of rigidity from his father’s bearing? Or the hurt he wished he could’ve concealed, the rasp in his voice surely giving him away?
Dad shifted in his seat, one hand clenching the edge of the table, the other rubbing his chest. He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed. “It was a mistake.”
“Obviously.”
“It was . . . it was the horrible decision of a man who didn’t know how to exist without his wife.”
“If you expect me to feel bad for you—”
“I don’t. Lord knows, I don’t expect anything from you.”
Lucas finally gave up on his waffle and abandoned his fork. “Then why are you even here? Did you know Flagg was sending Noah and you suddenly got worried we’d all discover the truth? Or . . . ?” He saw the shift in his father’s eyes, realized what it meant. “Oh. Right. Of course. You were playing chess with Noah’s life just like you did mine. You sent him to Flagg. Probably even suggested to Flagg that he send him to me.”
Dad didn’t argue.
“So maybe you wanted us to figure out everything. Wanted some kind of relief from your guilt.”
His dad looked him square in the eye. “Yes, maybe that. But maybe I’ve also seen enough of my firstborn’s life from afar to know he’s what my youngest son needed. Lucas—”
He stood so swiftly, he bumped the table, sending his fork clattering to the floor. “No. If this is going to shift into some conversation where you tell me you admire the man I’ve become, I don’t want to hear it. If there’s anything honorable in me today, it’s not because of you.”
He sounded wilted and bitter, he knew. More like an angry teenager than an adult who just last Sunday had felt the blossoming of a renewed faith. Who just yesterday had reveled in Jenessa’s whispered assertion that he’d make a good father.
But he was really just a wounded son.
And he wasn’t ready for this.
“Dad, I don’t have any more to say right now.”
“I have one more thing to say—”
He started toward the door. “I’m not in the right head space for this.”
“It’s not about me or the past. It’s about your future.”
He halted.
“I’ve been talking to a JAG officer about appealing your dishonorable discharge.”
He turned. Slowly. “That’s impossible. There’s a time restriction—”
“The review board makes exceptions in special circumstances, and we’ve already convinced them these are special circumstances. They’re going to grant you a hearing, Lucas.”
He could only stare at his father, speechless, numb.