The longing I had seen on Mr. Cooper’s face when he looked at Rip suddenly made so much sense.
“By the time you came around the shop, everyone who had known Ripley as a boy had quit or moved on, so I stopped talking about him at the shop when there was no one around to ask for an update. The years… rolled by, one after the other, and before I knew it, I hadn’t mentioned him to any of you until he came back,” he explained.
I swallowed for him. For the way his voice wobbled as he told me this story.
“He showed up out of the blue one day, Luna, and said he wanted to buy into the shop… I didn’t mean to lie. Not talking about him… snowballed out of control until if I did tell you all the truth, it wouldn’t seem so innocent anymore.”
“I get it,” I told him, quietly. Because I did get it. I really did.
His sigh was sorrowful. “I don’t know how to get myself out of this mess.”
“I haven’t told anyone anything,” I let him know. “And I wouldn’t. Not ever. It’s your story and his, not anyone else’s. There isn’t a reason why anyone else should know either.”
The older man choked, rubbing his hand over his face as a couple tears escaped through his fingers. “He doesn’t want anyone to know I’m his father. He hasn’t in decades; that isn’t going to change any time soon. I could die tomorrow, and he would be perfectly fine with it,” he choked out, his chest hiccupping with emotion and maybe even a dozen other emotions I would never understand.
“I would care,” I told him. “I know I’m not a replacement for him, and I would never try to be, but you’re just about the only father figure I’ve ever had. And I would care a lot if you were gone. I would miss you for the rest of my life.”
The hand he had over his face shifted, and he peeked a glassy, red-rimmed eye at me.
So I kept going. “And I think Rip would care too. I was there while we waited for the ambulance, and I was there most of the time while we waited to hear what happened to you. He was worried, Mr. C. I don’t know if that will ever mean anything, but if he really hated you, he wouldn’t have sat there for hours to hear from your doctor.”
“He was probably making sure I really died.”
“Or you have a relationship with him that no one will ever understand.” I sighed. “Mr. C, I can tell you that if my dad had a heart attack, I would not have waited around at the hospital to hear how he was doing. I wouldn’t go visit period. And when the day comes and he passes away, I won’t be at his funeral. They could offer me a million dollars to go, and it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe Rip isn’t your biggest fan, and he doesn’t know how to forgive you for whatever it was that he blames you for, but it could be worse between the two of you. If things were that bad, he wouldn’t have come back, and he wouldn’t be able to look at you every day.”
My boss’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded. His chest went up and back down. He sniffled and followed it up with another choke that made my heart hurt.
I didn’t know what happened with his wife. I didn’t know what happened with Rip. I didn’t know what happened to them.
But I cared about Mr. Cooper, and even though I told myself that I wasn’t going to care about Rip the same way I had, a part of me still did and would.
I wanted the best for both of them.
I was just the wrong person to say anything about family relationships, and that was the truth.
He sniffed, and his sniff hit me right smack in the chest. “You know how to make an old man feel a little less like the scum of the earth, little moon.”
“You could never be the scum of the earth. And I know how to tell you the truth most of the time, and in this case, I didn’t have to lie. I saw Rip’s face.” Then I lowered my voice and added, “And if it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t like me much either.”
That had him wiping his face with his forearm. “I highly doubt that, honey.”
I smirked to myself, but he must have seen it because he kept talking.
“He doesn’t, Luna. I don’t know Rip—” He sucked in a breath. “—my son as well as I should, but I know you’re the last person he would dislike.”
Well. “We can agree to disagree, huh?” I asked and stood up. “I’m getting a glass of water. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”
His expression was wobbly as he dropped his other arm and showed me his pink, puffy face that was pulled into a partial smile. “How about a bag of chips?”
“How about some fruit?”
Mr. Cooper groaned as I made my way around the couch and headed toward the kitchen, directly beside the living room.
And it was right then, as I turned, that I almost bit my tongue.
Because standing in the hallway that led from the front door to the living room and kitchen was a person.
Just. Standing there. Quietly. Not moving.
And that someone was Rip who took up most of the width of that hallway.
Rip who was standing there watching me with heavy eyes and a jaw that was tighter than ever.
“Lu, what—” Mr. Cooper started to say before he cut himself off, head turned toward the doorway. “Rip.”
Ripley’s eyes slid to his… dad… for a moment. His voice was gruff, and his question was the last thing I would have expected. “You all right?”
Mr. Cooper didn’t hesitate nodding. “Yeah.”
Yeah? That was it? I mean, I guess I shouldn’t expect him to tell him that no, he wasn’t okay because he’d just been talking about how his own son hated him.
“Any news from the doctor?” Rip asked.
I bit the inside of my cheek and headed into the kitchen. I listened to Rip’s low voice and Mr. Cooper’s slightly louder one as I pulled a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water from the fridge.
“I don’t want you to die,” Rip said, so quietly I could barely hear him.
The answering pause said everything, I thought, and it made me flinch.
“Shit’s not ever gonna be the same, but I don’t hate you either, old man,” he kept going, gruffly. “Can’t stand you but I don’t hate you. Got it?”
There was a sniff and a “got it” right back.
Well. Okay. All right.
It was just as I pulled a bag of grapes from the fridge that the two men’s voices cut off.
By the time I finished rinsing and setting the grapes into a coffee cup, they still hadn’t continued speaking, but I figured that was okay. Peeking over the counter that led into the living room, I found Mr. Cooper in the same spot, and Rip was nowhere to be found.
“Here are your grapes.” I handed the cup of fruit over to Mr. Cooper.
He wrinkled his nose as he took it. “Thank you?”
I couldn’t help but grin at him. “Do you have medication or anything you need to take, Mr. C?”
“No, ma’am,” he responded dryly.
Just as I opened my mouth, another voice cut across the air. “Talk to me outside for a minute, baby girl.”
I froze there and only moved my eyes over to the man who had reappeared in the same place I had last seen him. I kept my face nice and even. “I’m supposed to stay with Mr. Cooper until Lydia gets back.” That was the truth, and it was believable, wasn’t it?
“I can be alone for a minute,” Mr. Cooper threw in the second I finished my argument.
I closed my mouth.
By the time I had moved my gaze back over to Rip, he had his hand out.
Toward me.
And he’d taken steps closer so that he was within reaching distance.
So that I could take his hand.
He was just trying to make up for being so ugly to me weeks ago. Maybe he’d gotten tired of having to get his own coffee. Maybe he’d overheard what I had told Mr. Cooper. Hadn’t I already learned that he was capable of feeling guilt?
“Come with me,” he said in that slow, soft voice, fingers still reaching for me.
Hurt tightened my chest, but I stood up anyway. And I took his hand. Maybe I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t just learned that Rip had issues with Mr. Cooper over his beloved mom who had died, over how he had remarried so soon after her death, but I would never know.