“I never thought you’d come.”

I was standing at the rail of the deck, a condensing glass of iced tea balanced in front of me, and the voice came from behind. I didn’t turn. He was just far enough away to not make me nervous, but too close for me to feel comfortable.

“He was my father. Once.” I didn’t turn when I said it, and I heard him take a step. I braced myself for the verbal onslaught, the one thing that had forever defined our relationship, but he said nothing. Intrigued, I finally faced him. He hadn’t changed much; still tall, still that thick head of hair and those slightly hooded eyes that never revealed much of what went on in his head. I stayed quiet and we stared. It was Dominic who finally broke the silence.

“He asked for you. At the end. I thought you should know that.”

“Okay. So now I know. Is that supposed to have some kind of meaning for me? The last words of an old man who never made the slightest effort to include me in the new life he made when he walked away. How ironic. And of course you, the pleaser, were left with the onerous job of flagellating me with his dying words. Nice.”

“Clarissa, I….I’m….I don’t know what I can say.”

I turned back to the view of the beach and picked up the warm glass of tea, dumping it onto the sand below. “You delivered his message, just as he knew you would. Problem is, and you must be aware, it is simply too little too late.”

“I’m sorry.”

He said the words so softly, I wasn’t sure he had even said them, but I looked at him again and was shocked to see he actually had tears in his eyes. The stoic son, the one who always did as the old man wanted, who never questioned a decision or walked away. Who knew he actually had some emotions? Speechless, I just hung my head and began to walk toward the house.

“Clarissa, I just want you to know that I tried with him. When he knew he was sick, I sat him down and tried to talk to him about what had happened with your mother and why he cut you off along with her. I didn’t understand how you, his own daughter, became as nothing to him while he doted on me. I didn’t have a drop of his blood in my veins. He married my mother and I came along, part of her baggage, but somehow I became the son while you…..”

“Just stop, Dominic,” I said, stopping the flow of words. “This was never, ever about you. It wasn’t even about your mother, although my own mother certainly had plenty to say to me about her and none of it was good. My father made his own choice to walk away from one family and start up with another, and we were just a bit of detritus in his life. He threw his money at us, just enough so we couldn’t simply ignore him and walk away, because we needed that money. It made life easier and I liked that feeling; that is all on me and at times I despise myself for settling for so little.”

I saw the corner of his mouth turn up. Was he laughing at me? What? I didn’t know how to react so I just stood there waiting for him to say something. Finally he actually smiled.

“We have more in common that you might think,” he said. “I know you despise me for kowtowing to the old guy, and rightfully so, but there has always been a lot at stake here. In the end it comes down to the money, eh?”

“Probably.” I smiled at him; the irony was not lost on me. It was hard not to like this guy. I paused, “I will be at the reading of the will. It’s basically the main reason I came at all. All this funeral and wake shit is just to be put up with until I can sit in that room in front of that lawyer and find out how badly he screwed me over even after he’s dead. If my mother was still alive we’d both be there dressed to kill.”

This time he laughed. “You know, you really are something. And just between you and me? I half expect to walk into that lawyer’s plush office tomorrow and find out that he left everything to homeless dolphins or something and then we’ll both be out in the cold. I wouldn’t put it past him. Come on. Let’s go drink his expensive champagne, eat the ridiculously priced food set up in there, and when everyone has gone home maybe we can sit in his luxurious movie room, eat popcorn and drink beer, and watch a stupid comedy.”

“Dominic, I could learn to like you,” I said, laughing. “And here I thought I would have to yank that stick out of your behind to get you to loosen up. Be a real person.”

“I’m not that inflexible,” he said. “How about let’s spend an evening talking around the stories about our mothers and the old man, and see if we can’t salvage some kind of relationship out of this mess. I know we aren’t related in any real sense, but we do have some weird crap in common. I’ll tell my stuff if you’ll tell yours.”

I couldn’t help but laugh; he certainly didn’t mince words. “You got a deal. Now where’s that champagne? God, but I hate iced tea. And I get to pick the movie since technically I’m a guest in this house. Understood?”

Dominic grinned. “Yes, ma’am. I concede.”

For the record? I really like this whatever-he-is-to-me. Go figure.