The Fight


    Thankfully Quincey was already sold on the property, based on the excellent photos our staff photographer took for the listing. Once we arrived at the building, it merely took a singr walk through before he decided.


    He’d already seen the inspections and run all the numbers—after discovering the property to be in the shape and condition that was promised, he signed.


    Mymission on properties like this is usually two percent, but because a person like Quincey Parker can rmend us to both clients and contemporaries, I dropped it to one percent, which means today I’m earning $150,000 inmission, and I sold another property in the FiDist week, clocking my two percentmission on a thirty-million dor medical building. All things considered, I should be happy.<fnadc0> This text is hosted at Find_Novel(.</fnadc0>


    But when I put my SUV into park in my son’s driveway not more than three hourster, I’m nearly shaking.


    Not every father and son has to be the type to go fishing together, restore an old car together, to call me up and ask me for advice or to go golfing. That’s some fathers with their sons, but that is not me and Sutton.


    Not because I don’t want to be close with my only son–my only child.


    I do. I always have.


    Though I told him I’d return and he’s got a security system with cameras, a Ring doorbell with video feed, still–I knock. A momentter, Sutton answers the back door, a ss of whiskey in his hand. Instead of a hoodie, he’s now in a white t-shirt and jeans, messy hair damp. Writing the vows have taken their toll on him, or— I nce at my watch. “Is this a bad time?”


    He doesn’t reply, only shrugs, and turns, heading back inside. On the kitchen ind, the books and notepad are no longer there, and in their ce, are steaks on a baking sheet, the makings of dinner scattered around.


    “Avery’s on her way home,” he tells me as he sets his drink down and moves to the sink, washing his hands. I loosen the tie around my neck, but leave my jacket on. Something tells me I’m not wee for more than a few minutes, and I surely won’t be invited to stay for dinner.


    When Sutton and Avery got serious, I wanted to talk to him about… fuck, I don’t know. His life? His mother? Our rtionship? I didn’t know exactly what to say or how to bring it up, all that I knew is that I wanted our next phase of life to be better, happier, and closer. I’d hoped that falling in love would soften Sutton’s hardness toward me, but with his wedding in just a few weeks, I’m afraid hoping isn’t enough.


    I have tomunicate.


    “She staging a home today?” I ask, knowing of course the answer is yes because Avery works just as hard as Sutton, and if she isn’t by my son’s side, she’s working.


    He nods, cracking pepper into a bowl, moving for the Himyan salt.


    Looking around, I notice a long sectional in the living space has a handful of colorful throw pillows, and on the open-air shelf adjacent to the range hood, a few colorful mugs are upturned, too. “Did she officially move in?” I ask, fully aware that these could be his touches, everything normal. I wouldn’t know— Sutton doesn’t invite me over. We don’t have family dinners or stop-ins unrted to real estate. And I suppose that is my fault.


    He nods again, slipping on a glove as he kneads his seasoning mixture into the cut of raw meat. “Yes, over thest week. I finished unpacking everything today, in fact.”


    I nod my head, officially out of small talk. Two questions and I have nothing left to say to my son, and if that’s not heartbreaking, I don’t know what is. “Sutton, I wanted to talk to you about thement you made earlier.” I don’t name the specific remark, because he’s aware.


    “Do you think Quincey Parker cares? He’s gonna buy the property regardless of who you are beyond some glossy photo on a bus stop bench,” he says, taking another snipe at my choice to market Mercer Properties around the city, using my face.


    “I don’t think my choice of marketing is what’s on your mind,” I say slowly, noticing the way his shoulders lift, tension flowing through them. I bring my son stress and tension, and that’s another heartbreaking strike.


    He abandons the meat, bracing his free hand against the counter, lifting his eyes to mine. “Say what you came here to say.”


    My chest goes concave. “Why don’t you say what you have to say,” I suggest, “since?—”


    “Next time you need property keys, text me and tell me. I don’t want to entertain some stranger and hear your ridiculously hypocritical views on marriage.”


    Blinking, I watch as his nostrils re and his chest gently rises, anger flowing through him with ease at just the mention of marriage, and thement I made earlier. My son has been aloof and high strung since he was a preteen. Thest time he was carefree was when his mother was alive. Neither of us were the same after losing Margot.


    “I’ve always thought that you were cold and aloof with me because that’s who yourgely are with everyone. Or that losing your mother turned you into this version of yourself and that you take out your anger on me, because I’m your father. But now I have to wonder — who exactly do you think I am?”


    The back door opens, the home security system announcing it, followed by the gentle sigh of Avery. A momentter she appears in the kitchen, her blonde hair twisted into a messy bun on top of her head. Wearing a fitted v-neck crop top and little leggings and sneakers, she drops her purse and keys on the counter, and ces her palm over her forehead, sighing.


    “No more mansions for at least a week. I’m absolutely exhausted,” she announces, and I watch like a voyeur as my son collects his fiancée in his arms, and smothers her in affection—kisses on her cheek, lips, along her jaw and down her throat. She giggles in his arms, writhing against him affectionately until I clear my throat, making my presence known before this goes any farther. He knows I’m here, but he’s doing his best to ignore me, per usual.


    “Oh, Geo,” she says, slipping out of his arms as he res at me, returning to his dinner prep. “How are you?”


    I smile at my future daughter-inw. “I’m okay, Avery. How are you?”


    Heat blooms around my heart when Avery smiles at me, because her smile is not just sweet and beautiful, of course, but genuine too. She may be the only woman I know who gives me a genuine smile.


    “I’m doing well. Stopped by earlier to grab some keys for a property in the Financial District.”


    Avery bobs her head to show me she’s listening as she fills a kettle at the sink and slides it over a burner, turning it on. “Tea?” she asks, but I shake my head, and before I can say no, Sutton interjects.


    “He was just leaving,” he deadpans, nudging a piece of dark hair out of his eye with the back of his wrist. Sutton’s dark hair reminds me of my youth, and the way I looked when I met Margot, his mother.


    Avery tips her head to the side as she collects a bright blue mug from the shelf, raising to her toes to reach it. “Did you get the keys you need? I can grab them since Sutt is busy.”


    I shake my head. “I came by earlier for that. Sold the property, actually.”


    She brings her hands together in a slow motion p, pressing her fingertips into her chin. “Congrattions, Geo! That’s wonderful.” I only smile in return, and after the moment fades, her brows pull together. “But you came back? Here?”


    Even my future daughter-inw is surprised to see me here, even though we are indeed father and son who also run a multi-million dorpany together. This energy between us has be normal, and I want to undo it before I be a grandfather. Looking at Avery, there’s no way my son is going to marry her and not have her pregnant within the damn minute. I have little time to rectify what feels like a lifetime of pissing him off, just by being me.


    “I did,” I confirm, waiting for my son to look at me. “I was hoping to speak with Sutton.”


    Avery’s face droops a little as she tugs a teabag from a jar she got from the walk-in pantry. “Oh. I’ll make myself scarce–just let me get my tea.”


    I reach out and take her hand, squeezing gently, which finally gets Sutton looking my way. Actually, he’s ring at the ce where my hand holds Avery’s hand.


    “You can stay, actually. We’re going to be family very soon, and I’m not adverse to you being in the room for any conversations with Sutton.” I pull out a barstool, despite the fact that I have not been invited to stay. He’ll never invite me, so I choose to sit down.


    “I don’t want to discuss anything with you,” Sutton says, tone high, straddling the fine line between impatient and full-on irritated.


    “That’s unfortunate, son, because I’d love to know what you meant by thement you made when Quincey Parker was here.” I think about the property on the line, and if Quincey was a different kind of man—I could have missed out on that sale today. “You’ve not said two words to me that had any sort of meaning behind them since you were a boy and today, while a multi-million dor property is on the line, you chose to make a passive aggressivement about my life choices, or, really, your limited perception of my life’s choices?”


    Avery looks at Sutton, letting the tea bag fall idly into the mug. “What did you say?”


    Sutton lets out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We were supposed to have a nice dinner in tonight,” he says, more to himself than either myself or Avery.


    I don’t want this smart, thoughtful woman, who I might add has be an invaluable addition to Mercer Properties, bing my daughter-inw with her head full of ideas that I’m… Jesus, I don’t even know what Sutton believes.


    I put him in therapy after Margot’s death. It was all I could do. Every time I pulled him into myp and held him, I wanted to ask him if he wanted to talk about what happened, if he wanted to talk about her or if he had questions or—I don’t know. Anything. I nned on letting him throw anything at me.


    But that first night after she died, I sat on the edge of his bed and pulled him into my arms with every intention of being there emotionally.


    I found it, however, impossible to say any of the things I’d nned to say. A knot formed in my throat each time I attempted, and the idea of speaking Margot’s name aloud—to our only child—I honestly thought it would kill me. As much as having her hurt me, losing her almost destroyed me.


    So Sutton went to therapy to talk, and after a few months, he seemed better. My eight-year-old got better, and I was getting worse, so I buried myself in women to ease the sting. And those talks I meant to have–when I was stronger, that’s what I always told myself–they simply never materialized. And when I was ready to have them, Sutton wanted nothing to do with me.


    I have major regrets now, but those regrets drove me here, to this barstool, having this evening, loaded with difort. Sutton shoves the pan of steaks aside, and braces his hands on the counter, eyes like his mother set on me, malice ring his nostrils. “Parker bought the property, he was always going to buy the property, so why you needed toe here andy down marriage advice like father of the year–”


    “Father of the year? A man mentions his only son’s impending wedding and onement about marriage and suddenly I’m asserting that I’m father of the year?” I ask, pressing my hand to my chest, struggling to keep my tone even keel.


    Avery steps between us, standing at the corner of the bar. She extends a hand toward each of us, her fingertips grazing my palm. “Let’s just calm down,” she offers softly, and as much as I don’t want to upset or fluster her, I know we aren’t calming. We’re just getting started.


    “The most rewarding feeling in the entire world is giving the person you love everything they want,” I repeat my words from earlier, my gaze moving between my son and the woman he is marrying. “I meant that.”


    Sutton snorts, letting me know he finds hypocrisy in my words. “Sure.”


    I lick my lips. “Sure, what?”


    “Sure that you really believe that the best feeling in the world is giving the woman you love everything she wants. Sure that you believe you did that. Sure that you’re believing that you are in a position to give rtionship advice. Sure to all of it, George.”


    George. I’m usually referred to as “my father” or “Geo” but to be George… It hurts.


    “Say what you so very clearly need to say,” I calmly tell him.


    He pushes off the counter and brings his palms together, the sound of his hands rubbing the only noise in the kitchen. Avery stands with her hands still reaching for us, fingertips dusting my palm, her face scrunched in anxious difort. Still gorgeous, but now visibly distraught. I don’t want to upset her, but I don’t want whatever is happening between my son and I to be a secret, either. Families never get stronger with secrets.


    “Do you really want to do this? Do you want to go here now after so carefully making sure to never go here for thest twenty-seven years?” he asks, a vein in his forehead pulsing.


    “Go where?” I ask, ncing at Avery, whose eyes are indelibly pinned on Sutton.


    Another sadisticugh before those knowing hazel eyes find mine. My chest tightens, seeing the pain in his expression, thinking that I put that pain there, that I made him this buttoned up man that he is. “Did you really think you were going to tell me that my mom passed away when I was eight and that I’d never once in my life look her up? That I wouldn’t research my mother and her death?”


    At some point, as the years drug on and Sutton got into junior high and started using theputer, I feared this. My brother Ford told me not to fear it, but to embrace it. Sit with Sutton and go through news articles together, point out what’s true and what’s not, and why the news printed what they did–because there is a big reason why. He even suggested that I attend therapy with Sutton, and choose a time of the day to openly discuss Margot, like over dinner or in the morning with coffee.


    But I didn’t take my brother’s advice. I wanted to. I did.


    I simply couldn’t.


    “I–” I don’t know what to say. I knew you would? I wondered if you did? I thought you’de to me? Give me the benefit? I lick my lips and speak through my rapid pulse despite its efforts to clog my senses. “I have no excuses. I should have talked to you about things all those years ago. But… it was hard,” I admit. Even with the way I carefully worded that, it feels like I’m shirking my responsibilities. And when I lift my eyes from the counter and find my son, I find he feels the same way.


    “Right. Because a confused, heartbroken kid is supposed to ask his father why he treated his mother so shitty?” he asks, his voice no longer raised, his tone devoid of rage and anger.


    Treated his mother so shitty? Truth be told, a lot has happened in thest twenty-seven years and I’ve suppressed, blocked and shoved down so many painful things in an effort to put one foot in front of the other, day after day. But the things they said about me when she died—the tabloids, the papers, the local news—I remember. I didn’t care then because it served a greater good, and the people who knew me—my brother Ford, his wife, my friends—they knew it wasn’t true either. The problem is, I never considered that my son didn’t know me, not the way other adults in my life did. I made passive assumptions, and now I see how misguided I was.


    “What—please, exin to me who I was to your mother, in your eyes,” I urge, trying my hardest not to show him the hurt he’s causing at the startling usation that I was a bad husband to Margot, that I treated my wife poorly. It’s bitter on the tongue, his reality, and I can’t stomach swallowing it, but I refuse to project my emotions–he’s entitled to his. After all, it’s my fault he has no reason to think differently.


    “The newspaper articles all say the same thing, George.”


    “Sutt,” Avery interjects, saying his name so softly I don’t think he even hears.


    Hees around therge kitchen ind, the one that I helped him select when renovating this house a few years ago. We’ve never been close, but we’ve had moments of feeling like things weren’t impossible. I will never lose hope.


    Sutton strokes a hand down his face, leaning over the bar to get as close to me as he can. He drops his voice, not in privacy but in exasperation, and I see now that my son hurts. “There’s grainy surveince footage out there, too, George. So it’s not what I think I know, it’s what the world knows about you, and the way you treated her.”


    My mind reels–surveince footage? Grainy images of Margot and myself flood my mind, images I haven’t revisited in so many years. Not enough years. I never want to see those old security camera images again. For the rest of my life. I swallow against the sudden rock of emotion holding my throat tight, making my lungs seize.


    “And how did I treat her?” I ask quietly, calmly. Averyes around the bar, behind me, and stands between myself and my son, again, mediating.


    “Baby,” she says softly, pressing her fingers into his stomach, encouraging space between us.


    “You had an affair. Probably many, if I know you. But you had an affair and my mother confronted the husband of the woman you were sleeping with. Heshed out, and he wanted to hurt you for sleeping with his wife, and he killed her.” He shrugs as if this is fact, with no possible room to negotiate. “I saw the footage. I read the articles. Don’t tell me it isn’t true.” The way thest wordes out of him rattled and broken sends a knife through my heart. I look at Avery, whose eyes are damp and wide, focused on me. She’s reframing me with everything she’s just heard, looking at me now through a different lens, a new lens where I am not quite the man she reckoned I was for thest year. Hell, maybe not. Maybe Sutt’s already filled her head with his truth. I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is because I’m a shitty fucking father. Clearly.


    I get to my feet and step back, giving Avery and Sutton space. If I know you, he said, and he doesn’t, but that’s my fault, my choice—that’s on me. “Sutton, I?—”


    He raises a palm, silently halting my efforts to exin myself, to exin to him everything that he doesn’t know. And there’s a lot. He actually knows nothing, nothing real at least. “We don’t need to suddenly sort things out. We are fine as is, okay? Just—stop trying to y the father card. You can sell property without that angle. We’ve done fine until now.”


    There’s so much I want to say, but when I look at Avery, I know that now isn’t the time. They’re exhausted. She’s worked all day, they’ve been nning a wedding on top of moving her in and Sutton’s already in a mood–nothing positive cane from me staying.


    “Sutton, I want you to know that I’m deeply regretful of how I handled things after your mother passed. I had every intention of exining things to you once you were old enough but… I kept waiting for it to hurt less. I kept thinking, as soon as it doesn’t feel like I’m dying to even speak her name, that’s when I’ll talk to him, that’s when I’ll tell him everything, exin the newspapers, everything. But that time didn’te, not as quickly as I thought it might. And years passed and… I just…”


    “You allowed a therapist to get me through the loss of my mother, gave me open inte ess to discover the truth, and then you showered me with everything I could possibly want to make sure the world viewed you as the best father ever?” The words rush out fast, stacked on top of one another, and before I know it, Avery yelps, and Sutton has my dress shirt in his fists, his whiskey breath hot against my face. “What do you fucking want from me, George?” he shouts, shaking me as his bottom lip trembles.


    “Stop!” Avery screams, her voice shaky with fear, tears gliding down hot pink cheeks. “Sutton, stop it!” She cries as I stare into my son’s eyes. I see the moment he really hears her, and he releases me, stepping back, swiping his palm over the lower half of his face.


    “Go. You need to go.”


    I look at Avery. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”


    She doesn’t say anything, but stands there, arms wrapped around herself, herrge diamond glittering beneath the bar lights.


    I leave, arriving at home with no memory of the drive. All I had on my mind was my son, and how to make things right after so many years of doing it wrong.