He stood when he saw me. For an instant his face was the face from my childhood, the one that had once lit up when I ran into the garage to show him a school project. Then his expression tightened with caution.
"Bruce," he said.
"Hi, Dad."
He put the cup down. "Thank you for coming."
We didn't embrace immediately. I wasn't ready, and he seemed to sense it. Leah took a chair near the door, giving us room without leaving me entirely alone. Dad gestured toward the sofa. I sat, noticing a wooden shelf full of small carved birds and a photograph of Leah's children beside a picture of me graduating from high school.
"You've got more gray hair than the last time I saw you," he said.
"You too."
He smiled briefly. Then the smile went away.
"I thought you didn't want to speak to me," he said.
"I didn't know about the letter. Someone answered for me."
He looked toward Leah, and she nodded. "We've talked about it. Bruce only received my letter this week."
Dad looked down at his hands. "I'm glad you came anyway."
I had imagined a speech for this moment, one in which I could explain exactly how his failures had shaped my life. Instead I asked how he was feeling. He told me the truth, or at least a version with more truth than I would have believed from him years earlier. Some mornings were good. On others he struggled to get dressed without stopping to rest. He was doing what the doctors told him to do and trying not to make Leah carry more than she could manage.
We talked for twenty minutes about medication and ordinary things. His neighbor had rescued a stray dog. Leah's younger boy loved astronauts. A road I'd known as a child had been widened. Then Dad put the coffee cup down and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on him before: not pride, not self-pity, but embarrassment stripped of excuses.
"I know I wasn't there when you needed me," he said. "I can explain the drinking and the job and everything else, but explanations won't give you those years back. I used to tell myself I'd make up for it when I got better. That was a way of postponing responsibility."
I stared at a small scratch in the wood of the coffee table. "I waited a long time for you to get better."
"I know."
"You missed my graduation."
"I know."
"You promised you'd come to Mom's birthday dinner and didn't show up. She acted like it was fine. I could see how badly she was hurt."
His eyes filled. "I know, Bruce."
I looked up. "I don't need you to say you know everything. I need to know you understand you don't get to ask me to forget it now."
"I'm not asking," he said. "I wanted to see you because I love you, and because I was wrong. You don't owe me a new relationship just because I'm ill."