PART7

He rubbed his hands together.

“My boss has been questioning some of my decisions. The promotion I expected didn’t happen. I thought the birthday dinner would be a chance to show him that everything in my life was going well.”

I said nothing.

“He kept talking about his house renovation and the places he’d traveled. Danica wanted the evening to be impressive. She said if everything looked perfect, people would see us differently.”

“Did you believe that?”

“I wanted to.”

He looked toward the window.

“Then you arrived in that jacket, and I started worrying about what people would think. I didn’t stop to ask why I was thinking that way. I just wanted the evening to go smoothly.”

“And when it didn’t?”

“I blamed you.”

He looked ashamed.

I sat quietly.

I knew what it was like to worry about money, to feel as though one bad season could undo years of work. I had lived through droughts, crop failures, falling commodity prices, and nights when I lay awake wondering whether I could pay the bank and still put food on the table.

But I’d never believed that the solution was to pretend my family didn’t exist.

“What happened with your promotion?” I asked.

Shane hesitated.

“My boss said I needed to improve my judgment. He said I was too concerned with appearances and not focused enough on the people who actually did the work.”

I looked at him carefully.

“Did he give you examples?”

“Yes.”

“Were they fair?”

He sighed.

“Some of them.”

I nodded.

“Then perhaps you should listen to him.”

Shane looked surprised.

“You’re not going to tell me he’s wrong?”

“Would that help you become better at your job?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

“Then I won’t tell you something just because it’s what you want to hear.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“I’ve spent years trying to build a life that looked successful. I bought a bigger house than we needed. I agreed to expenses I wasn’t comfortable with. I let Danica plan things I couldn’t really afford because I didn’t want people to think we were struggling.”

He paused.

“The watch on my wrist? I put it on a credit card.”

I looked at the watch lying on the side table.

“How much?”

“Almost twelve thousand dollars.”

I didn’t whistle.

I didn’t criticize him.

I simply asked, “Can you afford it?”

He stared at his hands.

“Not comfortably.”

“Then why buy it?”

“Because I wanted to look like the kind of man who could.”

I let out a slow breath.

“Shane, I’ve owned land, equipment, livestock, and machinery worth more money than most people would guess. I’ve also spent entire weeks driving a truck that barely started in the morning. None of those things changed what kind of man I was.”

He looked at me.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He didn’t answer.

I placed the photograph on the table between us.

“Your mother and I weren’t rich when we started. We had very little. We learned to save, to work, and to be careful about the promises we made. When we had money, we used it to build something that would last.”

I touched the frame.

“This picture isn’t valuable because of the hotel. It’s valuable because your mother was standing beside me.”

Shane picked it up again.

“I should have looked at it last night.”

“Yes.”

“I should have asked you about it.”

“Yes.”

“And I should have told Mom—” He stopped.

Then he corrected himself.

“I should have told Bo to stand up for you. No. That’s wrong too. I should have stood up myself.”

I nodded.

“That would have been better.”

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Can you forgive me?”

I looked at him for a long time.

“I love you, son. I’ve loved you every day of your life. But forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t happen.”

He nodded slowly.

“I understand.”

“I hope you do. Because if you apologize today and go home tonight believing the only problem was that you embarrassed the owner of a hotel, then you haven’t learned anything.”

He looked down at the photograph.

“What do you want me to do?”

“That’s not a question I can answer for you.”

“Dad—”

“You’re forty years old. You have a wife, a son, a job, and a life you’ve built. I won’t tell you how to live it. But I will tell you this: you can’t spend the rest of your life measuring yourself by the opinions of people who would think less of you for loving your father.”

He sat quietly.

After a while, he asked, “What happens now?”

I glanced toward the conference-room door.

“Now, the hotel finishes its review. The evidence determines what happens at the hotel. Your relationship with your wife is something the two of you have to address honestly.”

“And us?”

I felt the question in my chest.

“That’s up to the choices we make from here.”

He nodded.

Then he did something he hadn’t done since he was a boy.

He reached for my hand.

I let him hold it.

We sat that way for a few minutes, two men who shared the same face in different stages of life, neither of us certain what the next chapter would look like.

Then Shane said, “There’s one more thing.”

I waited.