Page 144 of All Too Well
My father nods. “When she got sick, she lied for months. Months and months she told me the doctors didn’t find anything. It wasn’t until she collapsed that she confessed. I only had a year left until I was fully retired, and she knew I’d go AWOL if that was what I had to do to be there for her.”
And here my father was willing to do the same for her.
“Why didn’t you push back?”
He chuckles and sighs. “I pushed with all I had, but she was tired. She wanted to live out the rest of her days in the garden,pulling weeds or watching us do it for her. She wanted to see Rose, you, and everyone else without tubes and wires everywhere. When she told me that this was her choice, I felt as though someone ripped my heart out. It wasn’t my choice, Lachlan. I would’ve chosen one more day, one more hour, one more minute with her. There is nothing in this world I wouldn’t have done to keep her with us. I know you blame me. I know you think it was my fault that she gave up, and while some of it might have been the exhaustion from battling her mental illness, it was her choice to live out the rest of her days how she wanted.”
All this time I’ve assumed that it was because my father didn’t ask her or show her how he could finally be there. The years that he left her alone, I thought was his decision because of his career choices.
I saw my mother suffer time and time again as he’d leave.
A tear falls from my eye, and I swipe it away.
“You made leaving look easy,” I say, my throat growing tight.
“Easy?” Dad huffs. “It was never easy, son. Leaving you and your mother was horrible. Even if she wasn’t sick and I didn’t know how things were going to happen, I would’ve hated it. However, knowing that she was going to suffer and I couldn’t stop it was absolute agony. I spent six months out to sea, sick to my stomach. I’d call every chance I could. I emailed ten times a day. I sent things so that she’d have to get out of bed and had Denise come check on you both. There was no joy in my deployments. I didn’t go sightseeing when we were in a port. Instead, I found somewhere quiet to video chat. Every single time, I asked her to please just let me leave the service and I’d figure it out. Her answer was always the same ... do it and I’m gone.”
It’s funny how I’m basically doing the same thing, only in reverse.
“I think I fucked up, Dad.”
“With?”
“Ainsley.”
He leans back with a smile. “Let me guess, you told her she couldn’t leave her job for you?”
I nod.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t take her choice to love you away. Don’t make her choose, Lachlan. Just be her choice.”
thirty-one
Ainsley
“Yes, Mr. Krispen, I’m sure.”
“I don’t understand. You got the exact position you wanted,” he says, pacing the room. “You wrote one of the most evocative pieces this company has seen, we gave you carte blanche to write about politics, and you want to quit?” he asks, clearly mystified.
I’m sure to anyone else this looks like a mistake, but ... it’s not. It’s Lachlan.
It’s the man I love, and he’s a dumbass, but there’s no one else in the world for me.
So I’m going out on a high note and searching for jobs.
“It’s truly what I want.”
“To be unemployed in New York City?”
I smile. “I’m moving to Ember Falls.”
He groans and tosses his hands up. “For the love of God. You fell in love, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I answer honestly.
