“Come in?” I call out.
The door cracks open and I see Edward standing there.
“Oliver,” he says my name softly, “I need to tell you something.”
Edward practically raised me. Hired as the family’s valet before I was even born, he became a father-like figure in my life while my own father spent most of his time at the office. He steps further into the room. His face is hard to read in the dim lighting of the room.
A part of me wants to demand to know why he woke me up, but I also know Edward. He wouldn’t wake me up without a reason to.
“Yes?”
I see the expressionless look on his face start to melt away. It reveals stress and worries hidden behind it.
“Well.”
“What is it, Edward?”
He swallows, “I just received a call from the hospital.”
Shit. What did my father do? Did he harass a nurse? Throw a hissy fit when they wouldn’t let him get his way? Or maybe he’s had a reaction to one of the medications and they need someone to go calm him down.
“What has he done?” I ask. “I suppose I have to go clean up his mess.”
Again.
“Oliver,” he says my name again, reaching out for my arm. He grabs it.
“Your father passed away an hour ago.”
“What?”
I don’t think I fully process what Edward’s telling me. It doesn’t make sense. A few hours ago, he was talking about how it wasn’t anything huge. This is a weird dream, a sick joke. I look past Edward, toward my door, expecting my dad to come walking through it with a grin on his face.
“The heart attack wasn’t minor. He knew last night that he likely wouldn’t make it through the night.”
That doesn’t make sense. Why would he lie about something like that?
My world feels like it’s now moving in slow motion. My mind can’t keep up. He’s dead. I know Edward wouldn’t joke about it. I know Edward wouldn’t tell me that without being sure, but I can’t accept it. My father is dead.
I expect to feel the warm sting of tears at the corners of my eyes. I expect to feel my heart fall in my chest or nausea to overtake me. Instead, all I feel is this empty blankness. I feel like something just isn’t right in the world like a piece is missing.
He’s dead – and I never imagined a world without him in it.
Chapter Four
Cassidy
My alarm wakes me up, blaring in the darkness of my bedroom. Groggily I roll over, grabbing for my phone blindly until my hands grasp it. I’m surprised I slept until my alarm went off. Normally, Lucy wakes me as she crawls into my bed, saying that she didn’t want to sleep alone.
I guess she’s worn out from yesterday. Mom said something about taking her to the park. Once my phone is in my hands, I cut the alarm off immediately, thankful when the alert sound stops. I clear out my notifications and check emails. Finally, I check the news.
It’s a habit that developed back when I was working as the Windsor’s PR representative. I was always checking, waiting for the next scandal to sneak up on me. Working for Crosby is a lot less stressful of a job, but I still check the news. Just in case.
The headline that I see before me takes me by surprise. My eyes open wide. No coffee necessary this morning. Right there, in a bold headline, ‘Alan Windsor, dead at 59.’
I click the article, scanning through it. His assistant reported that he collapsed the night before and was rushed to the hospital. He had a heart attack, evidently, and that’s what did him in. Not many details are known.
Immediately, I feel torn.
Alan was a thorn in my side from the beginning. He was always conniving behind my back. Alan was always pushing Oliver away from me, pushing him to do whatever he thought was for the best. He pushed Oliver down a road that I couldn’t follow and while Oliver is an adult and can choose his own path, I know that his father influenced it heavily. I know that if his father weren’t telling him what he should or shouldn’t do, the issues never would have arisen.
If it weren’t for Alan, I would still be in New York. Lucy would have her father in her life. I wouldn’t have given up my dream job because he wouldn’t have pressured Oliver into getting himself into the mess that he had.
I don’t think I ever really knew Alan Windsor. I don’t think a lot of people did. I remember him saying he was excited to be a grandfather, but he never met Lucy. He never even tried. I remember the small smiles of approval that I found myself seeking while working for him and the realization that that’s what his children felt growing up with him.
I wonder if I should reach out to Oliver, check on him. I wonder how he’s holding up. Is he a mess or is he holding strong? But I tell myself not to. He hasn’t bothered to reach out to me about his own daughter, sending checks each month as if that’s a way to make up for it.
Instead, I give myself a moment of silence to mourn for Alan and feel the worry and pain that I feel for Oliver.
I don’t have the time to mull it over. I can’t stay in bed all day caught up in my own emotions. I have a daughter that I need to take care of.
She takes priority.
I think Lucy knows that something is off. She’s not a hassle this morning like she normally is. I’m able to get her up and dressed with ease. She watches TV quietly and eats her breakfast. When I tell her that I’m taking her to her grandmother’s, she doesn’t object. She just grabs what toys she wants to bring with her and reaches out for me to pick her up.
I drop her off at my mom’s house, as she runs inside to go find my mother’s dog to play with. My mom looks at me with softened eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
It’s not my loss. I’m not really mourning it. I feel strange, more worry for Oliver despite wishing I didn’t give a damn about him.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “I was sorry to hear it, but I’m doing alright. We weren’t close.”
“Have you heard from –”
She doesn’t have to finish her sentence, I know what she’s going to ask. I shake my head.
“No. Haven’t heard from him in three years. Do you really think his father’s death is what’s going to make him reach out?”
I lean against the doorway, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I know he was a big proponent as to why you two broke up.”
Nobody except Oliver and I know the whole story about why we’re no longer together, why I left New York to come back home. Nobody truly knows how twisted Alan Windsor is – was. It’s a secret I can’t let out because it’ll affect Oliver.
I don’t know why I’m still protecting him, but I am.
“Yeah, but if he truly wanted us to be together, he would have said to hell with his father. We both know that. Oliver never tried to fight for us.”
It’s one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to accept. Oliver never cared as much as I thought that he did, because he never tried to fight. He let me walk away time and time again, once while I was pregnant with his daughter. He promised me the world and then tossed me to the side, thinking money would hush me so I wouldn’t tell the world what I know.
I see the sadness in my mother’s eyes. This isn’t what she wanted. She raised me as a single mother, she had to deal with it all by herself. She didn’t want me to know the struggle. Maybe I’m a little better off than she was, but not by much.
“It’s his loss, Cassidy. Lucy is a beautiful, bright little girl. He’s the one missing out.”
“I know, doesn’t mean it’s not hard. It’s hard to accept that he wants to miss out on her entire life.”
“I know, sweetheart,” she reaches out and pulls me into a hug, and I return it.
The best part of all of this is having my mom near to help me through all of this. I can’t imagine trying to make it through without any support at all. When we part, I look past her to see Lucy sitting on the hallway floor playing with my mom’s dog. A smile pulls over my face when I see her, an
d I realize I can’t dwell on any of the struggles.
I have to keep moving forward with her in mind.
“I gotta get to work,” I say. “I’ll see you when I come to pick her up, alright?”
Chapter Five
Oliver
I don’t know what I’m doing. I walk through the doors of Windsor and everybody looks at me. I feel like they’re expecting something out of me, and I don’t know what. Should I be crying? Should I look more distraught? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
I haven’t had time to process my emotions, but like my father used to always say, ‘The show must go on.’ I used to think about how cheesy and idiotic it sounded, but I understand where it comes from. Once a weakness is shown, everything will start to collapse.
So, without a word to anybody, I step into the elevator and press the button to go up to my office. That’s going to be hard to get used to. It was my office at one point before, but I knew that time it was going to be going back to him. Now, I’m going to have to figure out how to handle this on my own.
I step out of the elevator and see Noelle, fiddling with her phone at her desk. When she sees me, her eyes grow wide.
“I didn’t know you would be coming in today.”
“I have to. I told him I would.”
She nods, putting her phone down on the desk.
“What do you need from me then?” she asks.
I don’t know what I need from anybody. I need somebody to tell me what in the hell to do. I approach the door, my hand lingering on the knob. I don’t want to step inside; I don’t want to do this. A part of me keeps thinking that this is all a dream. I’m going to wake up in a cold sweat and be thankful that it’s not true.
“Tell me if he has any appointments. We’ll reschedule them for later this week. I’m going to need an up to date on all of his paperwork as well. Thank you, Noelle.”
I hope I seem like I know what I’m doing.
I turn the office door and step inside.
I spend the morning writing emails, letting people know about the power change after Alan’s death. I assure them that everything will stay the same with their contracts and the functions of Windsor Publishing.
I spend the afternoon sorting through his paperwork, finding what’s relevant and what isn’t. I skip lunch, continuing to try and find what I can to keep myself distracted. I don’t check the news or reply to any messages about interviews. The last thing I want to do right now is make a statement.
What would I even say?
‘My dad’s dead. It sucks. I’m taking over now. Thank you all for coming’.
I just need to keep focusing on moving Windsor forward. That’s what he would have wanted.
I feel utterly alone, a feeling I’m not entirely used to. I’m used to having somebody around to lead me in the right direction, or a direction at least. Usually Cassidy or my father. Both of them are gone now and honestly, I’ve never felt more hopeless.
My father’s funeral is everything he could have wanted. An expensive casket, a church full of people who all likely wanted him dead at some point, and press coverage. Allison flew in from the West Coast, an emotional mess. She’s been blaming herself for not being here, for putting him under so much stress throughout the years. I’ve done my best to assure her that I’ve put him under far more stress than she ever has. If anything, it would be my fault.
I’m not ridiculous enough to believe that this is my fault. My father was under a lot of stress, he had a family history of heart problems, he didn’t take as good of care of himself as he should have. It was only a matter of time.
I just wish that it wasn’t.
Allison and I both speak at his funeral. We say the typical things one says. ‘My father was a great person’, ‘we know everybody loved him’. We both tell stories about times that he was a great father...and a part of me wonders if these are the only stories that we have representing it.
Alan Windsor was a lot of things, but I don’t think either of us would call him a ‘great father’.
As the funeral comes to an end, the pews of the church begin to clear out. People file out, chattering among themselves, onto the rainy New York sidewalk. We’ll be having a private burial tomorrow morning, in the same cemetery his father and mother are buried in.
I know I need to stand and leave the church, but I can’t urge myself to move. Next to me, Allison reaches out for my hand.
“We should go,” she says.
“I know.”
But neither of us moves. We sit, staring blankly ahead at the coffin that houses what used to be our father. Now just a corpse, a memory.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Allison’s voice is soft, threatening to break at any moment.
I don’t know if I have it in me to comfort her.
“Neither can I.”
“I never imagined that he would actually die.”
“Neither did I.”
“He always seemed so invincible,” she falls silent and I’m thankful for that.
I want quiet. I want peace. But I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I’ve been alone with my thoughts since Edward told me my father was dead. All I can think of is how utterly alone I feel, how I don’t know what to do or where to go now. Forward, is all I can think about, but how? How does one move forward after this?
Never one to let the silence linger for long, Allison speaks again.
“I expected to see Cassidy here.”
“Why?”
“He’s the grandfather to her child. I thought she would be here to support you.”
“She’d be an idiot if she was.”
“Ollie!”
“It’s true, Allison. I let her walk away. I’ve let her raise a child by herself. I’ve let her do all of this alone because he’s consistently made me choose between family and her. Because I wanted to keep her safe from him.”
“He’s dead,” she says, and I feel annoyance wash over me.
It’s a white-hot feeling, one that makes my hands want to tremor. I want to reach over and grab her by the shoulders, shake her until she realizes that yes, he’s dead. There’s nothing we can do about it.
Instead, I quietly agree, “I know.”
“That means he’s not in the way anymore, Oliver. It means that you’re out from underneath his thumb. You can always fix things.”
Of course, I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about fixing things for years now. I’ve imagined numerous scenarios where Cassidy and I fall back together again, but I don’t see how that’s possible. I think the gap between us is too large, the wound too deep.
“I don’t think fixing things is possible, Allison. It’s nice in theory, but I think the time for that is over now.”
“You’ll never know until you try. And maybe things are rough between you and Cassidy, but what about your daughter? I’ve seen pictures, she’s adorable.”
That gets my attention. My head whips around to look at Allison, I’m sure my face is shocked.
“You’ve seen photos?”
“Yeah? Cassidy and I are friends on social media. She posts pictures of Lucy every now and then.”
I haven’t seen my daughter since she was born. Cassidy sent me one photo the day she was born. After that, I haven’t seen anything else. I never tried to look either, knowing it would only be another stab in the gut. Why should I be allowed to see her when I haven’t been in her life?
It’s another one of those things that I don’t have a good reason for. I can’t justify what I’ve done, the choices that I’ve made. I think they’ve all been made out of fear and necessity, not truly following my heart and how I feel.
I swallow, “I haven’t seen her in years.”
Allison blinks, slowly, as if she doesn’t completely process what I’m telling her.
“Are you serious?” she finally asks.
“Dead.”
She reaches into the purse on her side, pulling her phone out. I watch as she
presses a few buttons, types a thing or two, and then extends her phone towards me.
Right before my eyes, I see a beautiful little girl. She has golden blonde hair, so reminiscent of my own, and the brightest smile like Allison’s. She also has the most striking light grey eyes. In the photo, she looks towards the camera and is smiling widely. She’s wearing a red and black plaid dress with a little black bow in her hair. Next to her is a brown and white horse and Lucy is petting her nose.
I stare at Lucy for a minute, trying to process how I helped to create this beautiful thing. I can’t believe how she’s grown. She looks happy and healthy, which is all I could ask for.
When I finally pull my eyes off of Lucy, I look to her other side. I see Cassidy standing there, her arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly so she can pet the horse. It looks like the last three years, and motherhood hasn’t changed Cassidy in the least. Her hair is cut to her shoulders now, curling at the ends. She’s smiling widely as she holds Lucy, clearly proud.
When I see her, my heart skips a beat before falling in my chest. I realize how much I miss her, how much I’m missing out on. I should be in this photo, standing next to the two of them, but I made the choice to forget that. I chose to let all of this go.
“She’s beautiful,” I finally say, forcing myself to look away from the photo. I know that if I don’t, I’ll continue to just stare at it.
“Evidently she’s super smart too. It’s not a surprise when you think of who her parents are,” she smiles, putting her phone back into her purse.
“I’m not surprised. I’m sure Cassidy is doing a great job raising her.”
“Especially since she’s doing it alone.”
“Allison...I didn’t have a choice.”
“Maybe not when our father was alive, but he’s dead now,” she says it and starts to sniffle. I watch as she wipes at her eyes, trying to straighten herself out. “Nobody’s standing in your way now though. Except yourself. Maybe it would be the best time to make amends.”
“I don’t think ‘amends’ is something Cassidy and I can make. I doubt she’ll ever forgive me.”
“You don’t know that. Isn’t it worth trying? Maybe you can’t repair your relationship with Cassidy, but what if you can develop a relationship with Lucy? What if you get the opportunity to be in your daughter’s life? Isn’t that worth trying?”
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