“No, I can do this. I don’t want you facing this alone.”
“Moll…”
“I’m fine, really. I want to see him.” I felt shocked to realize that I’d just spoken the truth.
We entered to find the interior much brighter than the exterior. The walls had been painted a cheerful yellow, and there was a cabinet with curios and knick-knacks inside the front door. Flowered sofas with throw pillows welcomed us as we walked in, and the white-haired lady at the main desk greeted us with a smile.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Milton Greene,” I told her, and she asked us to sign in before giving us a room number.
“Go left, then right at the nurse’s station, then left again. Let us know if you need anything,” she told us.
Tara had been awfully quiet since we’d come in. For all her insistence that we visit him, she now seemed intimidated by being here. “You okay?” I asked her. She said nothing, staring straight ahead. I took her by both elbows, looking into her face. She seemed pale, apprehensive. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I can go on without you and report everything back to you afterwards.”
She shook her head, offering me an ironic smile. “I’m the one who convinced you to come in the first place.”
“True.”
Tara blew out a breath. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
“I read up on his condition,” I informed her once we’d started forward again. “He won’t be in any shape to harm us. He’s too weak.”
She threw me a sideways look. “Moll, I know he scares you, but you never told me the full story. What did he do to you?”
“It’s not going to help our current situation for you to know that.”
“That bad?” she said, her eyes like saucers. “I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since he killed a guy, but…”
I absorbed what she was saying. Murderers were dangerous people who should be feared outright. That’s what I’d always believed. That’s what society taught everyone. The only thing was I’d fallen in love with a man I knew must’ve killed people before. Granted, they were dangerous people probably setting out to kill him, but still.
If I could look past such a thing for Luca Varasso, why couldn’t I do it for my own father? Especially since he was about to pass away?
The person I remembered as Milton Greene had been this lumbering giant of a man in my memory, but as we plodded in, the person I saw in the bed seemed quite harmless.
Gone was the bushy brown hair and the grizzled goatee I remembered. Gone was the barrel chest and beer belly. Instead, I found a clean-shaven older man with a bald head and a much smaller frame than I’d recalled laying prone in a hospital bed. He glanced up as we came in, looking through a pair of old-fashioned wire-framed glasses.
“Social workers or nurses?” he asked with a pinched expression suggesting he might be in pain, his voice ravaged by age and infirmity.
“It’s us,” I said, unable to bring myself to say the word Dad. “Molly and Tara.”
His eyes opened in astonishment. “You’re my girls?”
We both nodded. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I felt like a little girl again. Like a child being introduced to an adult stranger. Which wasn’t all that far from the truth.
His voice shook and his chin trembled. I didn’t know what I’d do if he broke down. I wasn’t sure how to feel about something like that. “I just… I can’t believe you’re here. The last time I saw you…”
The last time he’d seen us we’d been very young. I’d been six and injured because of him. Because of his drinking and horrifying temper. And Tara had been a year old. Even younger than Anna was now.
“Thank you for coming. Thank you. You want to sit down?”
He was behaving like a host with a couple of unknown guests he hadn’t known were coming.
“We’re fine,” I said. There were two chairs in the corner, the folding metal kind, but I had no inclination to sit. I felt like a cat who’d just been thrown into water. Uncomfortable and on edge.
Tara still hadn’t said a word. Her eyes remained large in her face as she watched him.
“So you sent us a letter. Telling us about your illness. Asking to come see you.” And asking for our forgiveness.