“Would you have left lunch for my funeral?” I asked.
He flinched as if I had struck him.
“That’s not fair.”
Answering pain by questioning fairness is one of Tyler’s oldest habits.
“Answer the question.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Liar.”
He looked away. He actually looked away.
The flowers trembled in his hand. He set them down on the nightstand like an offering at the wrong altar.
“I’m sorry about the text,” he said. “Charlotte told me it was minor.”
There it was again. Charlotte as translator between him and responsibility. Charlotte said. Charlotte believed. Charlotte misunderstood. Men like my father outsource moral failure and then act surprised when it returns with their own signature at the bottom.
“You didn’t come,” I said.
“I’m here now.”
That was perhaps the truest thing he could have said and the worst.
He took a breath. “The board is threatening to remove me as CEO if this falls apart. The company’s legacy—”
I laughed then, despite the pain it sent through my ribs, because the sentence was perfect in its obscenity.
“Get out,” I said.
“Caroline—”
“Get out before you say something even smaller.”
For a second I thought he might argue. Then he saw Marcus by the window and Officer Hayes by the door and finally, maybe for the first time in his life, understood he was in a room where charm had no jurisdiction.
He backed out without touching me.
When the door closed, I turned to Marcus.
“Can I be discharged tomorrow afternoon?”
His head snapped up. “Medically, that is a terrible idea.”
“So was choosing lunch over my life.”
“That is not a discharge criterion.”
“It is for me.” I shifted and nearly blacked out from the pain, but the decision had already locked in. “I have a gala to attend.”
He stared at me for a long second.
Then, to my immense gratitude, he said, “I’ll make arrangements.”
