They apologized when money disappeared, reputations cracked, and witnesses saw what happened.
I needed to know whether he regretted my pain or simply regretted losing the house.
“Are you here because of me or because of the gift?”
He flinched.
Then he sat back and inhaled slowly.
“I deserve that question.”
I said nothing.
His gaze moved toward a photograph on the mantel.
In it, Daniel was nine years old, holding a fish beside the lake and grinning through a missing front tooth.
“I won’t lie,” he said. “When you told me it was the lake house, it hit me. Not because of the money. Because I remembered what that place meant. Then I realized you had come to give me something sacred, and I hadn’t even made sure you had a seat.”
His face crumpled.
“That’s why I’m here.”
I believed him.
Not completely.
Not with the unquestioning faith I once had when he was a little boy with scraped knees and chocolate stains on his shirt.
