Chapter 3 - Confrontation at the Diner
A week later, despite my efforts to keep my new address private, Logan tracked me down.
I was sitting at a quiet corner booth in a small, traditional diner near my new apartment, enjoying a bowl of oatmeal and reading the morning paper, when the bell above the door chimed aggressively.
Logan walked in. He looked exhausted. His shirt was unironed, his eyes were bloodshot, and the confident air he usually wore had completely vanished. He spotted me and practically sprinted to my booth, sliding into the seat across from me.
"Dad!" he gasped, his voice trembling. "I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Why aren't you answering my calls?"
"Hello, Logan," I said calmly, placing my newspaper flat on the table. "I haven't answered because everything that needs to be said is being handled by my attorney."
"Attorney?!" Logan repeated, raising his voice so loudly that the waitress looked over. He lowered his tone, leaning in across the table. "Dad, this is insane! Chelsea hasn't stopped crying for a week! She had to borrow her sister's old sedan just to go to work! The bank is threatening to put the house into default! How could you do this to your own son?"
I looked at Logan carefully. I looked at the line of his jaw—so much like his late mother’s—and felt a pang of deep sorrow, not for what I was doing, but for what he had become.
"Logan," I said softly, "when you asked me to move in six years ago after your mother died, do you remember what you told me?"
He blinked, thrown off balance. "I... I said I wanted to take care of you."
"Yes," I nodded. "And for six years, I allowed you to pretend that was what you were doing. But while you were telling your friends that you were taking care of your poor old father, who was paying the insurance on the property? Who paid off your credit card debt when you overextended yourselves in Cabo? Who guaranteed your mortgage so you could buy a four-bedroom house on Thunderbird Road?"
May you like
Logan swallowed hard, unable to meet my eyes.
"You let your wife relegate me to the back door, Logan," I continued, my voice steady and cold as steel. "You sat at a dinner table while she told me to stay in my room like an embarrassing secret. And when she told you to kick me out, you looked into your glass and told me to give you space. I gave you space, Logan. I gave you all of it."
