Chapter 3 – The Diagnosis

Charles’s diagnosis, when it came in Theo’s eleventh year of teaching, arrived through Audrey rather than Charles himself — pancreatic cancer, aggressive and already advanced by the time it was discovered, the prognosis measured in months rather than years.

Theo visited more frequently in the time that followed, the old tension between them softening slightly under the weight of a diagnosis that made old arguments about career choices feel suddenly, obviously, insignificant.

“I’ve been thinking about that dinner,” Charles admitted, during one of Theo’s visits, his voice weaker now than Theo remembered from a decade of stilted phone calls. “The one where you told us about teaching. I said some things I’ve regretted for a long time, longer than I ever let on.”

“You don’t have to say that now,” Theo said, though something in his chest loosened slightly at hearing it regardless. “I made peace with the distance a while ago, Dad. I don’t need an apology to feel like my life turned out right.”

“I know you don’t need it,” Charles said. “I need to say it anyway. I spent ten years measuring your worth by a career I wanted for you instead of the one that actually made you who you are. I was wrong, Theo. I was wrong for a very long time, and I don’t have much time left to keep being wrong about it.”

Theo, unprepared for the directness of the apology, simply sat with his father in a silence that felt, for the first time in over a decade, entirely unstrained.