“I’m really amazed by the work you’ve done here,” Roy said. “It can’t have been easy getting all these en suites in.”

“It wasn’t,” Emily replied. “We only had about twenty-four hours to do it as well. Which is a long story.”

“I have time.” Roy smiled.

Emily didn’t even know how to respond to that. Time was not something she could take for granted with him. She couldn’t trust his sentiments.

“Let’s head to the living room,” she said, stiffly. “Have something to drink?” Then, realizing her slip-up in suggesting alcohol to an alcoholic, she added quickly, “Coffee.”

With each step down the staircase, Emily felt her anger growing stronger. She hated the feeling. She wanted this reunion to be a joyful one, but how could it be, really, when she had all this resentment inside? Her father had to hear about the pain he had caused her.

They reached the downstairs hallway. Daniel headed to the kitchen to make the coffee as Chantelle showed Roy into the living room. He gasped when he saw the renovations, the way Emily had blended new styles and old styles, the way she’d incorporated modern art and Kandinsky glassware.

“Is that my old piano?” he asked.

Emily nodded. “I had it restored. The guy who did it, Owen, he plays here sometimes. He’ll be playing at our wedding, actually.”

For the first time, Emily felt a sense of triumph. Having not lived in Sunset Harbor long, Owen wasn’t someone her father had known before her, for longer than her, or knew better than her. There were people here who were her own, who weren’t tainted by the unpleasantness of that shared past.

“Owen helps me with my singing,” Chantelle said.

“Oh, you sing?” Roy replied. “Can I hear a bit?”

“Maybe later,” Emily cut in. “Chantelle promised me she’d tidy up all of her toys today.”

“Can’t I do it later?” Chantelle wailed.

She clearly wanted to spend more time with Papa Roy and Emily couldn’t blame her. On the surface he was like a gentle giant, a Santa Claus of a man. But Emily couldn’t keep plastering a pretend smile on her face forever just for Chantelle’s sake. It was time for her and her father to talk like grown-ups.

Emily shook her head. “Why don’t you get it done right now, then you’ll have the whole day to play with Papa Roy, okay?”

Chantelle relented and left the room with a stomp in her step.

“You’ve opened up the speakeasy,” Roy noted, looking at the sparklingly renovated bar. He seemed impressed by the way Emily had kept the period of the place in the same way he had, an homage to a time gone by. “You know it’s original.”

She nodded. “I figured as much. Except the liquor bottles.”

Without Chantelle to buffer the situation, a tenseness rose between them. Emily gestured to the sofa.

“Will you sit?”

Roy nodded and settled himself in. His face had blanched of color as though sensing that the moment of reckoning was upon them.

But before Emily had a chance, Daniel appeared with a tray containing the coffee pot, cream, sugar, and mugs. He set it down on the coffee table. Silence swelled as he poured the drinks.

Roy cleared his throat. “Emily Jane, if you have questions to ask me, you can.”

Emily’s ability to remain polite and cordial broke. “Why did you leave me?” she blurted out.

Daniel’s head snapped up with surprise. His eyes were as wide as saucers. He probably hadn’t realized Emily’s joy at having Roy back had dragged up her anger as well, that she’d been carrying her emotion with her throughout the whole tour of the house. He stood then.

“I should give you both some time,” he said politely.

Emily turned her eyes up to him. He looked so awkward standing there, as though suddenly encroaching on a private matter, and Emily felt a little guilty to have turned the conversation sour so quickly in his presence, without giving him the chance to excuse himself in a more polite manner.

“Thank you,” she said as he hurried out of the room.

She turned her gaze back to her father. Roy seemed hurt by her evident pain but he breathed calmly and looked at her with gentle eyes.

“I was broken, Emily Jane,” he began. “After losing Charlotte I was a broken man. I drank. I had affairs. I alienated my friends in New York City until I couldn’t bear to be there anymore. Your mom and I split, though that was a long time coming. I came here to put my life back together.”

“Only you didn’t,” Emily replied, hotly. “You ran away. You left me.”

She could feel tears prickling in her eyes. Her father’s were growing red and misty too. He looked down into his lap, his expression one of shame.

“I was ignoring things,” he said sadly. “I thought I could pretend everything was okay. Even though it had been years since Charlotte had died, I hadn’t really let myself feel anything. I never went in the room you shared, moving you to a different one if you recall.”

Emily nodded. She remembered vividly her father blocking access to parts of the house, making certain areas out of bounds for her during her summer visits – the widow’s walk, the third floor, the garages, his study, the basement – until she’d all but forgotten they ever existed or what they contained. She remembered his increasingly erratic behavior, his obsession with collecting antiques that seemed to her like less of a hobby and more of a compulsion, his hoarding behavior. But moreover she remembered the diminishing contact, the way she’d spend less and less time with him in Maine until she reached fifteen and, one summer, he just never turned up to collect her. That had been the last time she’d seen him.

Emily wanted to be understanding toward her father’s actions. But though one part of her understood he was a broken man who had one day cracked, the torment his actions had caused her could not just be explained away.

“Why didn’t you say goodbye?” Emily said, the tears falling down her cheeks in torrents. “How could you just leave like that?”

Roy, too, seemed to be becoming overwhelmed with emotion. Emily noted that his hands were shaking. His lips trembled as he spoke. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been haunted by that decision.”

“You were haunted?” Emily cried. “I didn’t know if you were dead or alive! You left me wondering, not knowing. Do you have any idea what that does to a person? My whole life was on pause because of you! Because you were too much of a coward to say goodbye!”

Roy took her words like repeated punches to the face. His expression looked as pained as if they really had been physical blows she’d laid upon him.

“It was inexcusable,” he said, barely more than a whisper. “So I won’t try to excuse it.”

Emily felt her heart racing wildly in her chest. She was so furious she couldn’t even see straight. All those years of emotions were flooding out of her with the force of a tsunami.

“Did you even think about how it would hurt me?” she cried, her voice rising in pitch and volume even more.

Roy seemed gripped with anguish, his whole body tensing, his face contorted with regret. Emily was glad to see him that way. She wanted him to hurt just as much as she had.

“Not at first,” he confessed. “Because I wasn’t in my right mind. I couldn’t think of anything or anyone but myself, my own pain. I thought you’d be better off without me.”

He broke down then, sobs juddering through his body until he was shaking from the emotion. Watching him like that was like a stab to the heart. Emily didn’t want to see her father crack and crumble before her eyes, but he needed to know. There would be no moving on, no reparation without getting this all out in the open.

“So you thought leaving would be doing me a favor?” Emily snapped, folding her arms protectively against her chest. “Do you know how messed up that is?”

Roy wept bitterly into his hands. “Yes. I was messed up back then. I stayed messed up for a very long time. When I realized what damage I had done, too much time had passed. I didn’t know how to get back to where it had been, how to undo the hurt.”

“You didn’t even try,” Emily accused him.

“I tried,” Roy said, the pleading in his tone irking Emily even more. “So many times. I came back to the house on a number of occasions but every time the guilt of what I had done overwhelmed me. There were too many memories. Too many ghosts.”

“Don’t say that,” Emily snapped, her mind immediately going to images of Charlotte haunting the house. “Don’t you dare.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy repeated, gasping with anguish.

He looked down into his lap where his old hands were trembling.

On the table in front of them, the undrunk mugs of coffee were turning cold.

Emily took a long, deep breath. She knew her father had been depressed – she’d found the pill prescription amongst his belongings – and that he wasn’t himself, that the grief was making him behave in unforgivable ways. She shouldn’t blame him for that, and yet she couldn’t help it. He’d let her down so badly. Left her with her grief. With her mother. There was so much brewing anger inside of Emily’s heart even if she knew that blame had no place there.

“What can I do to make it up to you, Emily Jane?” Roy said, his hands in a prayer position. “How can I even begin to heal the damage I caused?”

“Why don’t you start by filling in the blanks,” Emily replied. “Tell me what happened. Where you went. What you’ve been doing all these years.”

Roy blinked, as though surprised by Emily’s line of questioning.

“It was the wondering that killed me,” Emily explained, sadly. “If I’d just known you were safe somewhere, I could have dealt with it. You have no idea how many scenarios I cooked up in my mind, how many different lives I imagined you were living. I spent years not being able to sleep because of it. It was like my mind wouldn’t stop conjuring up options until it found the correct one, even though there was no way for it to do so. It was an impossible, futile task, but I couldn’t stop. So that’s how you can help. Start by giving me the truth, by telling me what I didn’t know for all those years. Where were you?”

Roy’s tears finally slowed. He snuffled, dabbing his eyes with his sleeve. Then he cleared his throat.

“I split my time between Greece and England. I made a home for myself in Falmouth, Cornwall, on the coast of England. It’s a beautiful place. Cliffs and wonderful scenery. There’s a fantastic artists’ scene there.”

How fitting, Emily thought, remembering his obsession with Toni’s artwork, the way in which he’d hung one of her lighthouse paintings up in the New York City home he’d shared with Patricia, and how angry Emily herself had felt when she’d realized how brazen he’d been, how disrespectful.

“How did you afford it?” Emily challenged. “The police said there’d been no activity in your bank accounts. It was one of the reasons I thought you were dead.”

Roy winced at the word. Emily could tell how bad he felt to be confronted by the pain he’d put her through. But he needed to hear this. And she needed to say it. It was the only way they could move forward.

“I didn’t sell any of my antiques, if that’s what you mean,” he began. “I left all of that for you.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?” Emily asked bitterly. “It’s not like a diamond can make up for years of neglect.”

Roy nodded sadly, taking the brunt of her angry words. Emily began to accept that he was acknowledging her, that he was no longer trying to explain his actions but to listen instead to the hurt they had caused her.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply that it could.”

Emily tensed her jaw. “Well go on, then,” she said. “Tell me what happened after you left. How you supported yourself.”

“At first I lived from one day to the next,” Roy explained. “I made money doing whatever I could. Odd jobs. Car and bike repairs. Tinkering. I found my feet making and repairing clocks. I still do that now. I’m a horologist. I make ornate clocks with hidden keys and secret compartments.”

“Of course you do,” Emily said, bitterly.

The look of shame returned to Roy’s face.

“What about love?” Emily asked. “Did you ever settle down?”

“I live alone,” Roy replied sadly. “I have since I left. I didn’t want to cause anyone any more pain. I couldn’t bear to be around people.”

For the first time, Emily began to feel sympathy for her father, imagining him lonely, living like a hermit. She started to feel as though she had released as much pain as she needed to, that she had blamed him enough to finally be able to hear his story. A cathartic wave washed over her.

“It’s why I don’t really use any modern technology,” Roy continued. “There’s a phone booth in town that I use to make my calls, which are few and far between. The local post office lets me know if anyone’s responded to my horologist ad. When I’m feeling strong enough, I go to the local library and check my emails to see whether you’ve been in touch.”

Emily paused, frowned. This was surprising to her. “You do?”

Roy nodded. “I’ve been leaving clues for you, Emily Jane. Every time I came back to the house I left another crumb for you to find. The email address was the biggest step I took because I knew as soon as you found it, it would provide a direct line from you to me. But the anticipation, the waiting, it was unbearable. So I limited myself to only a few checks a year. When I got your email I flew right here.”

Emily realized then that this was the reason for those additional months of anguish he’d put her through after she’d learned he was still alive and then had contacted him. He hadn’t been ignoring her or avoiding her, he simply hadn’t seen her email.

“Is that true?” she asked, her voice straining as tears filled her eyes. “Did you really come here as soon as you saw I’d been in touch?”

“Yes,” Roy replied, his voice barely a whisper. His own tears had begun to fall again. “I’ve been hoping and wishing and dreaming for you to get in contact. I figured that one day you would come back to this place, when you were ready. But I also knew you’d be angry with me. I wanted the ball to be in your court. I wanted you to be the one to make contact with me because I didn’t want to intrude on your life. If you’d moved on without me I thought it would be best to keep it that way.”

“Oh, Dad,” Emily gasped.

Something, finally, was released from within Emily. Something about this last, final, heartbreaking admission from her father was what she’d been needing to know all along. That he was waiting on her to make the move. He hadn’t been avoiding her, keeping himself hidden, he’d been dropping crumbs for her, trusting that once she put all the pieces together she’d make her own decision about whether or not she could forgive him and allow him back into her life.

She stood and hurried to the opposite couch, throwing her arms around her neck. She sobbed against his shoulder, deep sobs racking through her body. Roy clung to her, shaking too from the outpouring of grief.

“I’m so sorry,” he choked, his voice muffled by her hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”

They stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, shedding every tear they needed to, squeezing out every last drop of pain. Finally the crying ceased. Everything became silent.

“Do you have any more questions?” Roy finally said quietly. “I’m not going to keep secrets from you anymore. I’m not going to hide anything.”

Emily felt exhausted, spent with emotion. Her father’s chest rose and fell with each deep breath he took. She was so tired she felt as if she could fall asleep right here in his arms. But at the same time, she still had a million questions burning in her mind, but one more than others.