Page 92 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

“I want to argue, but I think I hear what you’re saying. I just don’t know ... it confuses me that ... I can’t think of a time when he wasn’t the best dad in the fucking world.” Tears stung the corners of his eyes as grief he kept buried bubbled up.

“He was, Luke,” Neil said softly, his tone so even and comforting. “To you, he absolutely was the best dad in the world. That doesn’t have to change. And. And you can accept he was as imperfect as the rest of us. He still left you. And you tried to fill his shoes, but you were never going to be able to, Luke. You can’t fill the shoes of someone you idolised because the bar you are holding yourself to isn’t real. You can’t live up to a false representation of him.”

Was that what he was doing? His head spun.

“Do you mentally punish yourself for not being him, Luke? For not being able to fill his shoes when he died?”

The fingers were back, squeezing his throat, but he took a deep breath, forced them to loosen their grip. He blew out a breath. Then, another. He heard a crack, and then the opened bottle of water appeared in his hands.

“Sip it, Luke.”

He did as Neil instructed, focusing on his breath as he did so.

“With your permission, Luke, I’d like to suggest we focus on a few themes in our upcoming conversations. Firstly, we need to reset the view you have of your father. Secondly, I think we need to address that what you were asked to do, while still a teen yourself, was unreasonable to ask of a child and was always going to set you up for failure. Third, I think your addictions and your situation are more entwined than you perhaps realise. And finally, we need to find a way for you to forgive yourself.”

“What am I forgiving myself for? I fucked up.”

Neil huffed and shook his head. “You didn’t, Luke. You were still a teenager. And what you did was more than anyone could ever ask of a teen. You did so much more than you gave yourself credit for. You held your family together. Your sister is fine. Your mum is fine, although you may want to talk to her about your father and ask her about his flaws. What you did was incredible, Luke. I wish you could see yourself as I see you.”

“But I complained. I hated having it forced on me.”

“Because back then, you didn’t have the maturity. You were still a teen. My teens complain because I ask them to take the bins out on a Friday morning. They complain when I ask them to unload the dishwasher. Punishment still felt unfair because you didn’t have the maturity to understand the value of the lessons yet. Of course you complained. None of it was fair. None of it was your fault. You need to forgive back then Luke. Now Luke needs to apologise to that kid who did his absolute best, who tried his hardest, who made all those sacrifices. You need to love him and hold him and cherish him for doing everything he could to walk a mile in shoes he was too young to fill.”

While Luke had no fucking clue how to do any of it, just hearing the words spliced his heart into two pieces. And a decade of grief spilled out onto the floor of the mill building.

Willow looked at the clock. Luke should be wrapping up his early-afternoon session in the next few minutes. She’d offered to go with him, to wait at a nearby coffee shop while he had his appointment, but he’d been pretty clear.

He needed to do this step alone, and he’d wanted the time on the tram home to process his thoughts.

Instead, she’d focused on what she could control. The bathroom shone. She’d found a whole heap of content on Shamaze by content creators whose entire platform was house cleaning. The bedding in the bedroom was changed. And she’d found a whole new appreciation for taking care of what was hers. In Malibu, they’d had a housekeeper, but there was a simple satisfaction in making the apartment look nice for when he got home.

She’d tried to call her mom. Again. Five times since she’d gotten back from Mallorca. Luke’s powerful honesty had reminded her that she needed to be honest with her family. And that included talking to her mom about what was going on. It would fester forever if she didn’t know how much her mom knew, or didn’t ask her to take her side.

As she put the ingredients she’d bought for dinner into the fridge, her phone rang, and she glanced at it hoping it was her, but it wasn’t.

“Hi, Sasha. What’s up?”

“I wish I was the bearer of better news, but I received a torrent of legal suits against you from your father. He’s contesting the freeze placed on all your funds and his until this is resolved. He’s suing you for breach of contract. Apparently, in the depths of your legal contract with him, it says you need to give him twelve months’ notice. He wants paying for last month and this, plus emotional damages and a whole bunch of other bullshit.”

Willow placed a hand on her bump and rubbed it in circles. “I expected him to be angry. But I honestly thought he’d negotiate. I didn’t expect him to go on the attack.”

“They’ve asked to see everything you have. I think it’s a reach on their part while they try to figure out how much you actually know. I’ve just reiterated our line all along. That they need to assume that anything in the office of the house we are contesting is yours, is known.”

“I don’t want to negotiate or share a single thing we don’t need to, at this point. Let’s just proceed with legal action. There’s precedent for cases like this, right?”

“There is. Parents have been siphoning child actors’ money since the start of film. But in your case, we have to untangle a few things. Your dad’s egregious management contract that you signed before you were old enough to know what you were signing is separate to his responsibilities as a parent to look after your income. Could you look through all those records you have? Specifically email. I know you’ve already sent me everything you thought was relevant. But send me everything. Double-check the emails between your dad and the accountant to look for language about how best to siphon and filter money. I want to make sure we nail all of those who are complicit.”

Willow sighed. “How long does something like this go on for?”

“I don’t want to mislead you here, it could be a couple of years.”

Willow thought about the baby. Did she want to be dealing with this with a newborn? But there was much money at risk. “What if we decided an amount of money I’d be willing to settle for? See if he’ll take it?”

“I mean, is it possible to have some kind of without prejudice meeting whereby we flesh him out, sure. But your dad’s lawyers have made it clear that he feels there is no case to answer to. And the tone is exceptionally vigorous given the stage we are at with the suit. My gut tells me, if we offer something less than our original starting amount, they’ll smell blood in the water.”

She sighed and wandered to the small coffee table and lit a couple of the candles she’d put on there. “Fair point. I was just thinking of the baby, when it comes in November and being in the middle of all this.”

“How are you feeling, by the way? How are things with you and Luke?”

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