I put my arm around him. He felt so thin. So light.
“You could have told me,” I said. “About Mom. About the Fridays. About all of it.”
“You never asked,” he said.
“I asked once. Who the beans were for. You said ‘people.’”
He looked at me sideways.
“Well,” he said. “That was the answer.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Then I cried a little more. Then I laughed again.
“I had a lawyer,” I said. “I had a lawyer’s name written on the back of the envelope. Doug Pratt. I was going to call him Monday. I was going to fight the county. I was going to go after Brent with everything we had.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you let me?”
My father was quiet for a while.
“You could’ve won,” he said finally. “Maybe. Lawyer might’ve found a loophole. Grandfather clause. Something. And Brent would’ve stood up on that deck every morning for the rest of his life hating this garden. Hating me. Hating whatever it made him remember.” He shook his head. “Lawyer can make a man stop complaining. Can’t make him stop hurting.”
