Aaron could hear the girls downstairs now, a wisp of nervous laughter floating up to him. He stood, pausing a moment to make sure nothing in him was going to object, his gaze falling to a picture of a younger Bonnie hanging on the wall of the bedroom study. It might be too late for them, but it wasn’t too late for his girls.
Determined, Aaron grit his teeth and walked slowly out of the room to tell his daughters that he didn’t have long to live.
Telling his daughters he was dying was the hardest thing Aaron had ever had to do. Judging by Bonnie’s drawn expression, it hadn’t been any easier for her. The girls had each received the news in characteristic form—Rachel disbelieving, waiting for a punch line that would never come; Rebecca, unobtrusive, off to one side, softly crying; and Robin, defiant, angrily insisting that he seek another opinion, hire the best doctors—fight it, Dad!
If only they knew. If only he could impart to them how hard he fought the battle being waged within him, how he begged for his life from a God whom he had not addressed in years. And then one night, the enormity of his fate had descended upon him and he had, miraculously and calmly, accepted what he must. Not that he intended to go down without a fight, no sir, and in fact, he and Bonnie were looking into alternative treatments. But something was different now. His thoughts had turned from himself to those around him.
“I am worried about them,” he said to Bonnie. They were sitting in silence in the dining room, both of them lost in thought.
Bonnie smiled sadly. “Me, too. Especially Robbie. She’s so headstrong. I worry how she’ll do . . . you know, after.”
Aaron paled.
“It’s just that she is so angry, so full of frustration. And I don’t know how to help her, I have never really known how, because I’m just not . . . you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that—ever since she was a little girl, Robbie has wanted to be just like you. And then Rebecca and Rachel . . .” Bonnie sighed, looked away.
Aaron could almost hear what she was thinking—how would she manage after he was gone? Frankly, he had wondered the same thing. Not that Bonnie wasn’t a good mother, but there was so much those three women had to learn, so much from which they had been sheltered. Not one of them seemed to be in control of their own lives, but why should he expect them to be? After all, he had controlled it for them from the moment of their birth.
And over the course of the next two days, Aaron became increasingly convinced that he had to do something drastic, had to break the pattern of their dependence on him. They were spoiled, unrealistic about life in some ways, self-indulgent in their own ways, and at times, self-centered.
Robbie was definitely the ringleader of their little band, and Aaron couldn’t help but think of the old adage, the blind leading the blind. When she wasn’t glued to her cell phone, she was stomping about, insisting to Bonnie that she couldn’t leave the office unattended for a few days, because they wouldn’t know what to do. What she obviously did not realize was that her office, the little four-member team he had allowed her to set up in Houston, was, in the greater scheme of things, so inconsequential to LTI that it was almost laughable. Her operation was window dressing, nothing more. Evan Iverson ran the Texas operation in addition to the corporate company. Robbie hardly knew how the company operated, no thanks to Aaron. It was something Evan had pointed out to him on more than one occasion, and something he had patently ignored . . . until now. Wasn’t Robbie the logical one to carry on in his stead? Had he thought himself so invincible that he would never need a successor? Worse, what sort of disservice had he done his own daughter?
And there was Rebecca, so like her mother, who called home every hour, or so it seemed, to check on her son, Grayson, and to see if Bud the Bastard had left a message for her. Of course he hadn’t. Yet she continued to call, continued to hope for the affection of a man so far beneath her that it made Aaron cringe every time she picked up the phone.
And his baby, Rachel. She had gained a few pounds since he’d last seen her. He pictured her in some stuffy library room, a package of Oreos on her lap as she leafed through some ancient manuscript. Rachel had always been the dreamer, and while he loved that about her, the girl was her own worst enemy. Yet she was quick to point to her boyfriend when she felt challenged—another winner, Aaron thought disgustedly. Myron was a professor at Brown, who encouraged her study of ancient British literature with an absurd enthusiasm.
Aaron listened to his daughters over those two days, observed them, felt their attention returning to their own lives, away from his fleeting mortality. The more he glimpsed their lives, devoid of any meaningful relationships, the less he could bear it. As sick and tired as he was, his patience had worn very thin. By the time dinner was served on Wednesday night, Aaron was feeling a sort of panic that only a dying man can feel. Something had to be done. The chicks needed to be pushed from their feathered nests and taught to fly, or be eaten by stronger predators.
His idea was drastic and perhaps cold, but desperate times called for desperate measures.