Chapter 17 - Grant’s Plea on Bended Knee
The autumn leaves had turned a brilliant amber and crimson by the time Grant made his final,
humiliating attempt at reconciliation,
it was a Saturday afternoon,
and Eli was sitting at the dining room table sketching a detailed drawing of a spaceship with colored pencils,
when the doorbell chimed,
I walked to the front foyer and opened the heavy oak door,
standing on the porch was Grant,
his shoulders slumped,
wearing an old tweed jacket with frayed cuffs,
looking like a ghost of the arrogant billionaire he once had been,
“Mara,” he whispered,
his voice cracking,
“can I please just see my son for five minutes?
I don't want anything from you,
no money,
no property,
just...
let me look at him.”
I didn't invite him in,
I didn't step aside,
I simply stood in the doorway,
blocking the threshold of the home he had abandoned,
“Grant, do you remember what you were doing at eleven o'clock on the night Eli was lying on a trauma table?” I asked,
my voice steady and cold as winter steel,
Grant flinched,
his eyes filling with hot,
futile tears,
“I was a fool,
Mara,
I was blind,
I thought...
I thought I could have everything.”
“You wanted a second chance at a first love while your own blood was drowning in internal bleeding,” I said,
“and now you want us to comfort you for losing the prize you traded us for.”
From the dining room table,
Eli didn't even look up from his drawing,
he continued shading the wing of his spacecraft with a blue pencil,
his voice carrying clearly through the open foyer,
“Mom, tell him the train isn't coming anymore.”
Grant heard it,
the words hit him harder than any court injunction or professional suspension,
he staggered backward off the porch,
his hands trembling as he clutched at his chest,
realizing that the greatest tragedy of his life wasn't losing his wealth or his title,
it was knowing that his son didn't even care enough to hate him anymore,
he turned and walked down the pathway without another word,
May you like
his head bowed,
swallowed by the falling autumn leaves.
