“Paige,” he said quietly.
⸻
Sienna’s face went through several stages at once — surprise, then fear, then something close to relief, like some part of her had been waiting to be caught for days now.
“Mom,” she said. “I can explain.”
⸻
“I’d genuinely like you to,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Starting with why you’ve been skipping an entire week of school to visit your father in a hospital I didn’t even know he was in.”
⸻
Gordon shifted slightly against his pillows. “This isn’t Sienna’s fault, Paige. I asked Roy to bring her. I should have called you myself, honestly. I kept putting it off.”
⸻
“Putting off telling me you’re in the hospital,” I said, “or putting off telling me our daughter’s been secretly visiting you all week instead of going to class?”
Both,” Gordon admitted. “I have liver failure, Paige. It’s been building for a long time, longer than I ever told either of you. The damage from the years I was drinking finally caught up completely. The doctors gave me a few months, maybe less.”
⸻
I sat down slowly in the chair near the door, working through the shape of that sentence, three years of careful distance between us suddenly collapsing into something considerably heavier than I’d been prepared for that morning.
⸻
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“Two months ago,” Gordon said. “I told Roy right away. I couldn’t figure out how to tell Sienna, given everything with the custody arrangement, given how carefully we’ve both kept things structured since the divorce.”
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“So instead of telling me,” I said, “you told Sienna directly, and let her figure out how to sneak around an entire week of school to see you before it’s too late.”
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“I didn’t tell her to skip school,” Gordon said. “I called her myself, three weeks ago, and told her about the diagnosis. I asked her not to come, actually, until we figured out a proper way to arrange it with you.”
⸻
I turned to Sienna, who was still holding her father’s hand, tears now sliding freely down her face.
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” I said. “You know I would never have kept you from seeing him, not for something like this.”
⸻
“I didn’t know that for sure,” Sienna said. “You two barely talk. Every time his name comes up, you get this look on your face. I didn’t want to ask and have you say no, or make it into this whole complicated conversation with lawyers and custody schedules while he’s actually dying.”
