FIVE YEARS EARLIER
When Hugh drops me off after school on Friday, I walk into the house to find Dad sitting at the kitchen table. Usually, when he takes the afternoons off from the office, he doesn’t actually bring his work home. But today, the kitchen table is covered in binders and sheets of paper, pens and a cup of coffee. Dad is hunched over the table, his tie loose, one hand in his hair, one hand holding up a sheet of paper in front of him that he’s intensely studying.
The house is silent. Jamie and Chase will be upstairs. Ever since Dad moved the PlayStation 2 into their room, they have become hooked on video games.
I pull out a chair and sit down at the table across from Dad. It’s been a week now since he made his promise, and he hasn’t broken it. That’s the only reason I sit down, because I am slowly trying to trust him again, just like I used to before it all went wrong. I rest my cast up on the table and smile at him. “You’re working from home?”
“Not working,” Dad says as he quickly glances up at me without lifting his head. His smile mirrors mine, but I can see that it’s forced. There are stress wrinkles around his forehead. “Figuring stuff out.”
“What do you need to figure out?”
“You wouldn’t understand. At least not yet. You will one day,” he says. Heaving a sigh, he sets down the sheet of paper in his hand and rubs at his temples. “Why does everything have to go wrong at the same time? Why do I have accounts missing the same week that two of my guys quit?” he mumbles, though I think he’s talking to himself. Dad’s company, Grayson’s, used to run smoothly, from what I can tell. Structural engineering or something. Offices all up and down the west coast. Successful. Or at least it used to be. The past few years . . . not so much. The pressure is stressful for him, and I’ve always figured that it’s the stress that has led to his short temper.
“You’ll fix it,” I tell him. It’s what Mom would say if she was here, but she’s not, so I’ll do the reassuring for her. I’m trying to stay on Dad’s good side and I don’t want him to get stressed. I don’t want him to get mad. “That’s why you went to college. To be able to know how to fix things.”
“No,” he says. He lifts his head. “I went to college so that I could provide for you.” He pushes the papers in front of him away and then rests his hands on the table, interlocking them as he edges forward. “Tyler, let me tell you something. When I was a teenager, I was an idiot. I didn’t care. School? Lame. I almost got kept back a grade in high school, not because I wasn’t smart enough, but because I didn’t put in the effort. Oh, your grandma . . . I drove her insane.” He stifles a laugh as he rolls his eyes. “I was sixteen and in love with your mom. I’d steal my dad’s truck and sneak out to see her. We’d drink cheap beer together. And then . . . Well, you know the story of the birds and the bees. We got a little surprise with you.”
“Yuck,” I mutter, wrinkling my nose at him in disgust. I already know Mom and Dad were young when they had me, that they were seventeen and still in school, and I really don’t need to know anything more. It’s gross.
“You won’t be pulling that face when you’re sixteen, let me tell you that,” Dad jokes, but then quickly raises an eyebrow at me and more seriously adds, “Or at least eighteen, please.”
“Dad,” I plead. My cheeks are burning hot.
“Okay, okay!” Dad laughs as he holds up his hands in surrender, then he focuses his soft gaze back on me again. “The point is: We cut the crap. We weren’t going to be the parents that were high school dropouts, living in some cheap house and struggling to get by. We wanted better than that for you. That’s why we stayed in school, graduated, and went to college.” He stops for a moment as his expression becomes solemn again. “Tyler, your mom did seven damn years of college with three kids. Law school. With three kids. Do you understand how hard that was?” I nod. I still remember all of the late nights Mom spent working on assignments. “Well, that’s how much she loved you. And me too. Because now you have everything you need, don’t you?” I nod again, and Dad sighs. He gets to his feet and walks around the table, sitting back down on the chair next to me, his hands intertwining between his knees.
“This is why I push you so hard, Tyler,” he explains, and now I finally understand the point of this story. “Not because I’m being a jackass, but because I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I want you to be successful. I want you to focus in school and get into a real good college. One of the best. We’ll even pay those Ivy League tuition fees.”
I furrow my eyebrows at him. “You expect me to get into an Ivy League school?”
“Well, why can’t you?” he asks, and my expression is blank. “Exactly. And then once you get your degree—in engineering, remember—I need you to run this company much better than I currently am. Okay?”
I don’t have the nerve to tell him that maybe I don’t want to get into engineering, maybe I don’t want to run his company. So I just smile and say, “Okay.”
And as his face lights up with pride, Dad pulls me into a hug full of warmth and love.