Chapter 14 - THE PROMISEThe doctor kept talking.
Treatment.
Percentages.
Surgery.
Options.
I heard almost none of it.
I had watched cancer take Helen.
Now it had come for me.
When we told Margot, she didn't cry immediately.
She became angry.
“No.”
I wished refusal were medicine.
“Sweetheart—”
“No.”
She stood.
“You said you weren't leaving.”
My heart cracked.
I remembered a five-year-old girl asking whether her father would still love her.
Now she was thirteen, facing another possible loss.
“I don't want to leave.”
“But you might.”
“Yes.”
She began crying.
I opened my arms.
She collapsed against me.
“Everybody leaves.”
“No.”
“Mom did.”
“She died.”
“Grandma died.”
“Yes.”
“And you might die.”
“Yes.”
I would not lie to her.
She deserved better.
“But listen to me.”
She looked up.
“People dying is not the same as people abandoning you.”
Her face crumpled.
“The love stays.”
“That's stupid.”
“Probably.”
She laughed through tears.
I smiled.
“But it's true.”
Treatment began.
It was brutal.
Emmett drove me.
Hannah cooked.
Margot sat beside me during chemotherapy and complained about school until I forgot to be afraid.
Then one afternoon, the hospital received a delivery.
A blanket.
No name.
Only a card.
Phoebe once sat beside me when I thought my life was over. Someone should sit beside her father now. No response necessary. — Claire
I kept the blanket.
Six months later, my scans improved.
A year later, the doctor used the word remission.
Margot cried harder than anyone.
Life, stubborn thing that it is, continued.
At sixteen, Margot asked to meet Claire.
Emmett nearly refused.
I reminded him:
“Her life. Her decision.”
The meeting took place in the same therapist's office where Claire and I had spoken years earlier.
I waited outside.
Forty-three minutes later, the door opened.
Claire emerged first.
She had tears on her face.
She looked at me.
“She's extraordinary.”
“I know.”
Margot came out.
I stood.
“Well?”
She took my arm.
“Let's go home.”
We walked toward the elevator.
Then she stopped.
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“I forgive her.”
I looked at her.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Then she added:
“But I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen.”
I smiled.
“That's not what forgiveness means.”
She nodded.
The elevator opened.
Before we entered, Margot looked back at Claire.
“Maybe someday we can have coffee.”
Claire smiled through tears.
“Only if you want.”
The doors closed.
I thought that chapter of our lives had finally ended.
I was wrong.
Because eight years later, on the morning of Margot's own wedding, she handed me a champagne glass.
May you like
And said:
“Grandpa, I need you to give one more toast.”
