He Missed Our Daughter's Birthday Again novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Zero

Roderick's POV

Leah told me to go and ask my father who Grandpa Cliff was.

She said it from the ultrasound room, with gel on her stomach, looking straight at me.

"Don't come back with a story," she said. "Come back with the answer."

So I left her with her sister and drove to the house on the lake.

My father was in the library with a glass of water and the financial pages.

He folded them when I came in.

"Roderick. How is Leah?"

"Who is Grandpa Cliff?"

He didn't move.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A six-year-old called you that on a phone this morning. In front of fifty people, in the lobby. He said you were bringing him a friend for the pickle rabbit."

"Ah." He set the glass down. "I took a toy to the oncology floor once. A boy I'd seen in the hall. I introduced myself, and the child seems to have taken to it."

"You introduced yourself."

"I'm a sentimental man."

"You've never been sentimental in your life."

He smiled, patiently, and I felt the same cold I'd felt as a boy when he explained why I couldn't have a dog.

"You've been under strain," he said. "Go home, son. Let the test come back, and we'll all be in a better frame of mind."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true."

I looked at him for a while.

He had never lied to me that I knew of.

He had only ever managed me.

I walked out, and in the hall I took the stairs to the office he had kept in the east wing since his retirement.

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