Page 143 of The Thief
"You made your choices."
"Aye, I did. And they were shit choices. That cost me my son; cost me any chance of being the father you deserved."
"You had chances. After Mam died, after the arrest. You could have chosen differently."
"I could have. I should have. But I was angry, son. Angry at the world, at myself, at God for taking your mother. And instead of dealing with that anger, I let it poison everything good in my life."
I remember those days after Mam's funeral. Dad started drinking more, fighting more, disappearing for days at a time. Coming home with bloody knuckles and empty pockets, choosing violence over grief.
"You left me alone."
"I did. And that's the thing I'll regret until the day I die." His voice breaks slightly, and I realize this conversation is as hard for him as it is for me. Maybe harder.
"You could have been out by now," I say. "If you hadn't killed that guard."
"A different man did that, an angrier man, full of rage and self-pity. A man who couldn't accept responsibility for his actions."
"What changed?"
"Time. Therapy, though I fought it for years. Meeting other men who'd lost their families to their own stupidity. Understanding that rage is just fear wearing a mask."
He sounds different than I remember. Older, yes, but also calmer. Like prison has worn away the sharp edges that made him so dangerous to everyone around him.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I love you, son. Always have, even when I was too drunk or too stupid to show it properly. And because this Harrington fella, he's going to try to use our relationship against you."
"We don't have a relationship."
"No, we don't. But we did once. You were my boy, my pride and joy. And men like Harrington, they'll use whatever emotional leverage they can find."
"I can handle Trace Harrington."
"Can you? Because he seemed to think you had weaknesses he could exploit. People you care about, things you'd die to protect."
"Everyone has weaknesses."
"Aye. But smart men don't let their enemies know what they are. And this man, he's done his homework. He knows things about you that took me twenty minutes to tell him I wouldn't share."
The implication is clear: Trace has other sources, other ways of gathering information about my personal life. Our mole, probably. Someone who's been watching me, reporting on my relationship with Tríona.
"Da, I have to go."
"Wait. Before you hang up... I know I don't have the right to ask for anything. I know I burned every bridge between us years ago. But if there's ever a chance, if you ever think you might want to try..."
"Try what?"
"Being family again. Father and son, whatever that looks like now. I'm not asking for forgiveness, not asking you to pretend the past didn't happen. Just... if there's ever a possibility of something better than this silence."
The request hits harder than it should. Part of me wants to hang up, to keep the wall I've built between us intact. But another part, a part I thought had died years ago, remembers what it was like to have a father who taught me how to fight, how to survive, how to take what I needed from an uncaring world.
Before the drinking. Before the anger. Before everything went to hell.
"Maybe," I say finally. "After this is over, after Trace is dead... maybe."
"That's more than I deserve. Thank you, son."
"Don't thank me yet. And Da?"
