I believed something terrible had happened. I believed Walter had died, and Terrence, grieving in the worst possible place to grieve — mid-flight, strapped into a cockpit with a hundred passengers depending on his steady hands — had finally cracked and decided to say the name out loud one last time before it was too late to say anything at all.
I gripped the armrest, certain I was about to hear the words that would explain years of silence between my husband and the man who’d raised him.
“Twelve years ago, on this exact date,” Terrence continued, “I married the love of my life. She doesn’t know I’m about to say this next part, because she’s not actually supposed to know I’ve spent the last two months quietly finding my way back to a man I spent eight years refusing to speak to.”
I felt my whole understanding of the last several minutes rearrange itself.
I felt my whole understanding of the last several minutes rearrange itself.
“My father left when I was four years old,” Terrence said. “Walter married my mother when I was six, and for the next twenty-three years, he was the only father I ever really knew. He taught me to fly a Cessna off a grass strip when I was sixteen, sitting right beside me in the co-pilot’s seat, telling me I had good hands for it before I’d even fully believed that myself.”
He had good hands for it before I’d even fully believed that myself.
“My mother passed nine years ago,” Terrence continued, his voice unsteady now in a way I’d genuinely never heard from him, not in twelve years of marriage. “Walter fell apart after that. Started drinking heavily, worse than anything I’d ever seen from him growing up. I was grieving too, and instead of staying close to the one person who understood exactly what I’d lost, I pulled away completely. Told myself I was protecting myself from watching him fall apart the same way I’d just watched my mother’s health fall apart. I didn’t speak to him for eight years.”
I didn’t speak to him for eight years.
