This was mind-boggling. “I expect that from Missy. Even from Big Mama. But I’ve never known you to mess in my business.”

“It’s time someone did, someone who knows what he’s doing, meaning me. Missy and Caroline love you and they mean well, but they have no idea what they are doing most of the time. Lucy thinks you don’t love her, that you are a runner, and she’s just a refuge for you.”

“It’s not true.” A runner? He’d never run from anything in his life.

“I know. I can see that you love her.”

“I have to call her. Right now.” He began to dial.

“Brantley. You are a grown man. Do not make me take that phone away from you. What you need to say to her needs to be said in person. But you and I are going to talk right now. This is a talk we should have had a long time ago.”

“You’ve got my attention.” If they got this over with he could get on with his call.

“I knew I had made mistakes but after talking to Lucy I realized how bad they were. I taught you to be a runner when I took you to Ireland after Eva and Alden died.”

No. Not having this conversation. Not now.

“I am NOT a runner. I don’t even know what that means. What am I supposed to be running from? Or toward? That makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. What do you think you’ve been doing ever since it happened? Refusing to come home for more than a few days at a time.”

“I am an adult,” Brantley said through clenched teeth. “I don’t live there anymore!” Or he didn’t. He did now. Maybe. Oh, hell. He was homeless!

Charles went on as if Brantley had not spoken. “Having a job that takes you all over the country.”

“That’s my job—how I earn my money! I am a restoration architect. People can’t pack up buildings and bring them to me!” Good thing his dad couldn’t ground him anymore for his tone of voice.

“Never coming home for summer when you were in college, or holidays if you could get around it.”

“I worked! I went skiing! That’s what college kids do! You should be glad I didn’t lie around all summer. No matter what you think, Merritt isn’t the end all and be all!”

“No?” Charles met his eyes. “You were pretty satisfied with it for a while there—until things didn’t go like you wanted. Then you ran again.”

The wind went out of his sails. And it was too bad too. He’d love to sail away. If he knew how to sail a boat. Which he did not.

Charles closed his eyes and shook his head. “Son, I am sorry it took Lucy to make me see that you are in crisis. I should have taken better care of you back then, and maybe you wouldn’t be going through this now.”

His heart rate picked up. And he began to sweat. He could not hear this.

“I’m not going through anything except losing Lucy.”

“That’s not true and you know it. You went warp speed on the girl because you needed safety among all your memories and you found it with her.”

Lucy was comfort and sanity. But she was more than that. She was everything.

“I love Lucy,” he said.

Charles nodded. “I know you do. But you can’t hide in her.”

“Look, Lucy is making complications where there are none and apparently she has sold you on it. This is simple. It should be easy. There are no problems.”

“Then why,” Charles asked, “are you and I sitting in a townhouse in Nashville on Christmas Eve, where neither of us wants to be? Son, it’s time you faced your grief. I failed you once, but I will not fail you again.”

Failed him? His dad had failed him? Oh, God. That was almost funny.

“No,” Brantley said. “You didn’t.”

“How can you say that?” For the first time Brantley saw how upset his father was. “You were eighteen and had lost two of the most important people in your life. I am your father. Did I get any help for you? No. I took you out of the environment where you should have been adjusting, that should have been your comfort. Home. Then I took you straight to a dorm room at Vanderbilt. No wonder you were never comfortable at home again.”

Brantley’s mouth went dry and every muscle in his body tightened. It was one thing to hide the truth, but to let his father blame himself was unthinkable.

“Brantley,” Papa had once told him, “be a boy as long as you can. It’s good training for when you have to be a man.”

He had certainly taken that to heart. But it was time to be a man, no matter what else he lost.

“Dad,” he said carefully, “you are wrong. Nothing was your fault. It was a hard time for all of us.” It was now or never, and it had already been never too long. “And none of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for me. If I hadn’t done what I did, we’d all be in Merritt right now doing what we used to do at Christmas. Nobody would be grieving and nobody would be buried.”

Good; it was out. There was no turning back. Even if Charles never wanted to see him again, at least that would be honest.

Charles looked thoroughly perplexed. “Son, I have no idea what you are talking about. You didn’t do anything.”

In for a penny, in for a whole life. Of course, that life was as fake as everything in this townhouse.

“I should have told you a long time ago. You may never forgive me. And that’s all right; I’ve got it coming.”

“Son, I could never—”

“Don’t say what you could never do, until you hear me out.” He’d started now. On with it. “The morning it happened, Mama had told me twice to take a shower and get dressed. It was going on eleven o’clock. I was playing video games and I kept telling her just a minute. She was pretty aggravated with me to begin with and, I admit, I was tired of her nagging me. I didn’t see what difference it made when I took a shower. So anyway, Papa called to say his car was broken down on the interstate. He’d been down to Birmingham for something. Some early breakfast meeting, I think. He was about thirty miles out of town. Of course, you know that part I guess. Anyway, he wanted me to come get him.

“She came in there where I was and said, ‘Brantley, your grandfather has had car trouble and needs you to come get him. Now, I’ve already told you. Put that remote down and get in that shower. Right now. It’s hot and he’s sitting in his car on the side of the road. You need to get there before the wrecker does.’ Well.” He closed his eyes. “It made me mad. Stupid. I was about to top my high score. I threw the controller down and said, ‘Why do I have to do everything?’ Funny. I never really did much of anything. I’ll never forget the look on her face. She put her hand up and said, ‘Pardon me, my little prince. I’ll do it myself!’ And she left. And you know what? I was glad. I still didn’t get dressed. I sat there and played that stupid video game until—well, you know that part. That’s what I was doing when you came to tell me. You had to send me to the shower before people starting coming.”

There it was done. Charles’s eyes had never left his and his expression remained neutral the whole time.

“And?” Charles said.

And what? Wasn’t that enough? “Don’t you get it? She left mad. First, if I had gone, it wouldn’t have happened. A minute sooner or later, it wouldn’t have happened. Second, she was so mad at me. If I had not been hateful, if she had not been mad, she would not have had the wreck.”

Charles put his head in his hands. “Oh, Brantley. Oh, Son.”

“Even if we can’t come back from this, even if you never forgive me, it’s a relief that you know. I’m tired of living a lie.”

Charles looked up and met his eyes. “Son, I knew about this. I always knew.”

That could not be true. His father could not know this and not blame him. “But how?” he asked because he could not get the question out about the lack of blame.

“Your mother called me on the way to pick up Alden. She was pretty steamed at you and she ranted for a minute or two. Then we started laughing. We kept saying back and forth to each other, ‘Why do I have to do everything?’ It was pretty laughable, considering the extraordinary effort we put into making your life easy. But we decided no video games for the rest of the summer and no taking the Play Station with you to Vandy. And then she said, ‘Oh, Charles, what are we going to do for entertainment when he’s gone?’ I assure you, Brantley, she was not mad at you. You were normally so obliging. You were just lazy that morning and had had a gut load of being told what to do. And you sassed her. That’s what teenagers do, though you not as often as most.”

Brantley was speechless. Or very nearly. There was something else he had to know.

“Big Mama?” It was all he could get out.

“Of course she knew. Your mother called her after she called me. She said we were being too hard on you. ‘He’s a good boy and he works hard!’ That’s what she said every time you needed punishing. Brantley, this is nothing. Please, for the love of God, Son, let this go. I should have talked to you about it at the time, I guess, but I never knew you were feeling guilty. And I was half crazy myself.”

It couldn’t be this simple—free absolution that he didn’t deserve. “Still, if I had gone—”

Charles shook his head. “Brantley, it was an accident. An accident. Do you think I haven’t wished a million times that I had told Eva to stop and get me, that I’d ride with her to pick up Alden? Or to let me go instead? The fact is, a semi blew a tire on the interstate and landed in your mother’s lane. It seems outrageous to say, considering what it did to our lives, but what happened isn’t complicated. And we’ve got some life left. We need to live it.”

He would not have welcomed relief even if it had come. “Still. The last thing I ever said to her was mean. Nothing will change that. And you know she told Papa, so the last thing he knew was that I wouldn’t come get him like he asked.”