I was helping adjust his pillows.
I was checking whether he needed water.
I was doing small things for him without thinking.
And Caroline noticed.
She made sure she was always nearby.
Always watching.
Always measuring the distance between me and the father she’d known all her life.
On the sixth afternoon, she caught me alone in the hallway.
“You’ve been here six days.”
I looked at her.
“Congratulations. You can count.”
She drummed her fingers against her hip.
“Dad asks for you every time he wakes up.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“Really? You show up out of nowhere and suddenly you’re the only one who matters.”
I stared at her.
She stepped closer.
“What exactly are you expecting when he dies?”
“The same thing I’ve gotten from him my entire life.”
Her gaze turned cold.
“Which is?”
“Nothing.”
I walked past her.
That evening, Thomas was worse.
Rain tapped softly against the windows while I sat beside his bed.
He reached for me.
This time, when he pulled me closer, I let him.
“I know you hate me,” he whispered.
“Sometimes.”
A weak smile touched his mouth.
“Fair.”
Then his face crumpled.
“Susan…”
He struggled to breathe.
“Susan, soon you’ll understand everything.”
I pulled back.
“What does that mean?”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Thomas?”
He tried to speak.
Nothing came.
I called for the nurse.
Those were the last words my father ever said to me.
A few hours later, he died.
The funeral passed in pieces.
People came up to me and told me how often Thomas had spoken about me.
That somehow made me angrier than silence would have.
Because if he had spoken about me all those years, then he had remembered me.
He had known I existed.
He had simply stayed away.
After the funeral, I packed immediately.
I wanted to leave the estate behind.
I wanted to return to my own life.
I was closing the zipper on my suitcase when David appeared in the doorway.
The same lawyer who had brought me to Thomas in the first place.
“Susan.”
“I’m leaving.”
