Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Melody

I stared at Peter, my whole body shaking. “What do you really want?”

Peter prided himself on not losing his cool. He always told people it was the quality that made him a good litigator. He moved over to sit in a chair next to the Christmas display. “I want to talk. Can we just talk?”

I didn’t want to talk to him, but I would do anything for my son. “You said you were going to tell me something about Will.”

The fa?ade that he’d had on since Charles and I walked in melted away from his face. He reached for my hand and scooted his chair over to me.

I scooted back. “What do you want to say?”

Anguish creased his face. “I messed up. I talked to Will this morning. Did you know he’s in Park City with some friends? I thought he was with you.”

“I know. He mentioned it to me.”

He scoffed. “And that’s okay with you? That he’s not celebrating Christmas with you ? You always made such a big deal about Christmas.”

I wanted to fly off the handle, but I didn’t. “Will is almost twenty years old. That’s his choice. I guess when his father asked for a divorce last year, he decided it was too painful to have Christmas with us.”

“It wasn’t all my fault. You knew we had grown apart.” Peter flung his hand toward the dolls. “Your mother kept having you come back here. Time and time again, you were away from me. What was I supposed to do?” He pointed at me. “And our son won’t even tell me when he’s coming to be with me for the holidays. You need to fix that.”

Calm settled over me. I’d been processing my feelings about this situation for the past year, but it seemed Peter was just now realizing he’d lost a family. “My mother had cancer. She’s gone. Our lives are separate now, Peter. I’m not mad at you anymore.” I stood. “But you can’t come here and disrupt my life. Will is going to spend New Year’s with me. You need to be the one to talk to him about spending time with you. That is not my job.”

Peter looked at me with accusation in his eyes. “You always took my son away from me. I could never connect with him because of you.”

I gestured toward the door. “If that’s the story you need to tell yourself to feel better, that’s fine. It’s time for you to leave.”

Peter stomped over to me. “It’s your fault I never connected with him. It’s your fault he doesn’t want to see me now.”

Everything suddenly became clear. This past year, I’d struggled with losing my family. With bills. With my mother’s passing. But, as I listened to Peter go on and on about all the things that were my fault, I realized he’d been just a prop in this family. He hadn’t put in any effort, and then he’d stopped participating entirely. Will and I had grown closer, but Peter had been doing his own thing for a long time. It felt liberating to see that I no longer had to explain anything to Peter or feel bad about the past. I could move on to the next stage of grief: acceptance. “Peter, I’m sorry you’re struggling. I am. But we are done. You need to go.”

Peter paused, then cocked an eyebrow. “Do you want to know why you had all of those break-ins?”

I froze. “What are you talking about?”

He gave me a triumphant smile. “I wanted to scare you. I wanted you to realize that you can’t do all of this on your own. I thought if I showed up today, you would remember how great it was and want to be together again. Not just for me, but for our son. What have you got to say to that?”

Slight panic washed over me; this idiot had crossed a line. I walked backward, keeping my eyes on him. “Let me grab something from the back before I answer that.”

Once I’d safely put a door between him and me, I called Bill and asked him to escort Peter away from the store.

Twenty minutes later, Peter was handcuffed and taken to jail.