“Putting off telling me you’re in the hospital,” I said, “or putting off telling me our daughter’s been secretly visiting you all week instead of going to class?”
⸻
“Both,” Gordon admitted. “I have liver failure, Paige. It’s been building for a long time, longer than I ever told either of you. The damage from the years I was drinking finally caught up completely. The doctors gave me a few months, maybe less.”
⸻
I sat down slowly in the chair near the door, working through the shape of that sentence, three years of careful distance between us suddenly collapsing into something considerably heavier than I’d been prepared for that morning.
⸻
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“Two months ago,” Gordon said. “I told Roy right away. I couldn’t figure out how to tell Sienna, given everything with the custody arrangement, given how carefully we’ve both kept things structured since the divorce.”
⸻
“So instead of telling me,” I said, “you told Sienna directly, and let her figure out how to sneak around an entire week of school to see you before it’s too late.”
⸻
“I didn’t tell her to skip school,” Gordon said. “I called her myself, three weeks ago, and told her about the diagnosis. I asked her not to come, actually, until we figured out a proper way to arrange it with you.”
⸻
I turned to Sienna, who was still holding her father’s hand, tears now sliding freely down her face.
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” I said. “You know I would never have kept you from seeing him, not for something like this.”
⸻
“I didn’t know that for sure,” Sienna said. “You two barely talk. Every time his name comes up, you get this look on your face. I didn’t want to ask and have you say no, or make it into this whole complicated conversation with lawyers and custody schedules while he’s actually dying.”
⸻
“So you decided lying to me for a week was the better option,” I said.
“I know it wasn’t,” Sienna said. “I panicked. Uncle Roy offered to drive me, and it just seemed easier than figuring out how to ask you the right way.”
⸻
Roy, standing quietly near the window through most of this, finally spoke. “I should have called you myself, Paige. I let Sienna talk me into keeping it quiet, telling myself it was just until Gordon figured out how to have the harder conversation with you. That’s on me as much as anyone.”
⸻
I sat with all of it for a long moment, the anger I’d been carrying since Thursday afternoon slowly reshaping itself into something considerably more complicated once I understood the full picture.
⸻
“How much time does he actually have?” I asked, looking at Roy instead of Gordon, needing the answer from someone who wasn’t trying to manage my reaction to it.
⸻
“The doctors said weeks, not months, as of last week’s scan,” Roy said quietly. “Could be sooner.”
⸻
I looked at Gordon, three years of careful, cordial distance between us suddenly feeling like an enormous waste of time neither of us actually had the luxury of anymore.
⸻
“You should have called me,” I said. “The day you got the diagnosis. I would have found a way to make this easier for both of you, Gordon. I’m still her mother. I’m still the person who has to help her carry whatever happens next.”
⸻
“I know,” Gordon said. “I think I was ashamed, honestly. Of needing help from you, of all people, after everything I put you through before the divorce.”
⸻
“That’s not a good enough reason to let our daughter skip an entire week of school and lie to me every single morning,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
⸻
