“No one else is here,” she says. “Your father’s sick. I thought it was just bronchitis, but now I think it’s more. I thought about calling your mother, but I’ve only met her briefly and—”
“When did you meet my mother?”
“Today, and I have no sense of how he’d react to me calling her. That’s why I’m here. He’s really sick.”
“Define ‘sick.’ Why do you think it’s more than bronchitis?”
“He’s coughing up blood, Shane.”
Blood. The word punches me in the chest. “You’re sure?”
“Very and that can’t be good.”
I run my hand through my hair. “I guess we all forgot to tell you he has cancer.” I reach for the door at the sound of her intake of air, yanking it open. “And he gets angry when he’s reminded that he does.” I leave her behind, stalking down the hallway and through the now dark lobby, not slowing until I’m at my father’s closed doors.
I’m about to knock, but my father erupting in a coughing fit sounds on the other side. Knowing how he despises seeming weak, I wait and wait some more, but he continues to hack eternally. A blade of pain slices through me and I lower my forehead to the door, telling myself This is bronchitis or something other than the cancer traveling from his brain to his lungs. Sometimes I pretend he isn’t dying. Most of the time I pretend he isn’t dying. It’s how I cope, perhaps because it’s how he copes, but there are moments of reality like this one that gut me and turn me inside out. To hell with knocking.
I open the doors to find my father sitting behind his desk in profile and hunched over. Mindful of his privacy, I shut us inside the office, rounding the desk to find he’s leaning over a trashcan. My gaze lands hard on the blood tingeing the napkin in his hand, the sight driving that proverbial blade of dread a little deeper. So does the way he avoids looking at me and the next bout of coughing that leaves his lips stained red.
Desperate to help him, though I doubt he would do much but kick me if our positions were reversed, I grab the bottle of water on his desk, and hand it to him. “Drink,” I order.
He accepts it and damn if his hands don’t shake, a sign of weakness he’s never shown, not even during chemo. I watch him tilt the bottle up, choking as he tries to swallow, but just when I’m about to take it from him, he starts gulping. Half a bottle later, he’s wiping his mouth and straightening. “This didn’t happen,” he orders.
“It did happen,” I say. “Mom—”
“It didn’t happen,” he growls, rotating to face his desk, and I can almost see that invisible wall, which he habitually slams between us, fall into place, about ten feet higher than normal.
I inhale and let it out, standing and rounding the desk, arms crossed as I stare down at him. “The cancer has spread,” I say and it’s not a question.
“I’m being treated.”
“That’s a ‘yes.’”
His gray, bloodshot eyes meet mine. “Yes. What did you want when you came in here?”
“More chemo?”
“Yes.”
“When?” I press.
“Starting Monday, which is why I’m trying to get my goddamn work done. Why are you here?”
I ignore the question. “Does Mom know?”
“No one knows. That’s why I said this didn’t happen. Keep your mouth shut.”
“She deserves to be told.”
“Why? So she can worry more than she already does?” His expression tightens, his fingers laced in front of him on the desk as he leans forward. “Back to business. What are you here for?”
The cold reserve of his tone matches the look in his eyes that tells me that wall is now a block of ice. Anger starts to form in my gut. “Why,” I say, “when you’re dying, would you help Derek take this company into deeper, darker places, rather than help me secure a different future for him, and for everyone involved? Why, Father?”
“Son, I’m on the sidelines keeping score with one agenda. This company has to survive, and thrive, in my absence. You want to restore its ethical virginity, do it. Make it happen.”
“You’re as on the sidelines as a quarterback and apparently you’re going to go into your grave lying to me.” I lean forward, pressing my hands on the desk, challenging him. “Do we amuse you, Father?”
He stands, mimicking my position, all signs of his sickness fading into the hard man that built an empire on secrets and lies. “I assure you, nothing about handing over the reins to Brandon Enterprises amuses me. If you can’t second-guess your brother, you can’t handle this company.”
“I’m not competing with my brother and we both know it. I’m competing with you. It doesn’t have to be this way. You have the power to change everything. Help me get us free of all this dirty money.”
“Help you? Who’ll help you when I’m gone? If you can’t take what you want, then someone else will take it when I’m gone.”
Our eyes connect and hold, a silent war between us, and while I pride myself on control, the absolute ability to contain what I feel, I am tested by this man that I both love and hate. He is destroying us, as cancer is destroying him. “Do the right thing before you die,” I bite out. I turn and start walking, making a fast path to the door, my hand coming down on the knob.