Chapter 27 - THE EMPTY CHAIR
Nora became ill the following winter.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing caused by enemies or hidden conspiracies.
Just age and a heart that had worked hard for too many years.
Liam spent every evening beside her hospital bed.
One night Nora asked:
“Do you regret finding them?”
Liam knew she meant Robert.
Olivia.
Sarah.
The Hales.
“No.”
“Even after everything?”
“Even then.”
Nora smiled.
“Good.”
She reached for his hand.
“I was always afraid that if Robert came back, I would lose you.”
Liam leaned closer.
“You never could.”
“I wasn’t your real mother.”
He frowned.
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean biologically.”
“You were the woman who stayed.”
Nora began crying.
“So were you,” she whispered.
She died peacefully two weeks later.
At the funeral, Liam sat between Robert and Olivia.
The chair beside him felt unbearably empty.
Afterward Robert found Liam alone.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t.”
Robert sat beside him.
For nearly an hour, neither spoke.
Years earlier Robert might have tried to solve his son’s grief.
Now he understood.
Some grief required company, not solutions.
Eventually Liam leaned against his father’s shoulder.
Robert remained perfectly still.
He would not disappear.
May you like
Not from this moment.
Not from any moment his son still wanted him there.
