“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
Thomas shook his head. “He didn’t leave you the way you think.”
Daniel had returned to his father shortly before that night, desperately ill. He had been diagnosed with cancer and was terrified. After years of refusing to speak to Thomas, he had finally turned to him because he did not know how to face the possibility of dying.
“He told me he couldn’t go home and look at you and Hunter,” Thomas explained. “He couldn’t bear to tell you he might die.”
“So he ran away?” I asked bitterly.
“For three days,” Thomas admitted. “Then I told him he was about to make his own son spend his life wondering why his father had abandoned him.”
Daniel became angry, Thomas said, because he knew his father was right. He had intended to return home, but his condition deteriorated rapidly. The night before he planned to come back, he collapsed and was taken to the hospital.
