Read Online The Space Between by Kate Canterbary - Free Book Online

grandkids?” Sam sneered. “We’re talking about the person who referred to you as ‘cunt,’ Shannon, and routinely suggested that Mom was a whore and Erin wasn’t his, so yeah, I’d say this is more than demented.” He filled his glass again. “He knew what he was doing the entire time, and this is just another manipulation. I don’t want a fucking dime of it.”
    “When was it written?” I asked.
    “Two years ago,” Shannon said.
    “Two years ago?” Sam yelled. “Two years ago! Two. Fucking. Years. Two years ago, he creates trust funds for our nonexistent kids because he’s such a caring guy, and two months ago he rips me a new asshole because he’s decided I’m a disgusting queer. Unbelievable. No, actually quite believable, and we’re the fools for expecting something different.”
    “We agreed,” Shannon said. “It’s the past. We’re letting him go. We’re not letting this screw us up anymore. We can’t do that to ourselves. And we have to look at this as a window into his fucked up mind. Think about it—this tells us with great clarity that something mattered to him. He tried to explain it with this because all he had when he was alive was anger.”
    “Shannon, it is one big ‘fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’ I’m not going along with any revisionist history tonight. He was a demented son of a bitch, and I’m not remembering him fondly because he wants to pay off our debt and send his fictitious grandchildren to college.”
    “Refusing the money would let him win,” I said.
    “I don’t think so, Patrick,” Sam scoffed. He pushed to his feet and circled the table. “Taking the money would mean we think of him every time we look at our office space, or the children that we’re all too fucked up to have.” He stopped pacing and gestured to Lauren and Matt. “I don’t mean you two. You’ll have awesome, well-adjusted kids, largely due to Lauren, and we’ll be the fucked up aunts and uncles who take your kids to Red Sox games. The rest of us are a little too damaged for anything normal or healthy.”
    “He loved Cornell, Sam. He loved the work, even though he had unusual ways of showing it in recent years. He loved that house. And he loved Mom—”
    “Then he should have killed himself a long time ago, Shannon! It woulda been better,” Sam roared. “And how can you even say that? If he loved her so much, how could he talk about her the way he did? How could he disown you, and me, and Erin? At least these guys look like him.” Sam waved his hand at Riley and Matt. “It wasn’t like he could pretend they weren’t his.”
    “He loved her more than anything, and he couldn’t live without her. I wish you could remember what it was like before she died, and the way they were together. But after Mom?” Shannon held out her hands and let them fall to her lap. “He existed. Just barely. He did everything in his power to drown it all out, and it made him a monster. In the end, he tried to make a few things right in the only way he could.”
    “He called you a cunt!” Sam ran his hands through his hair and bent at the waist, as if winded from the exertion. “How can you overlook that? How can you ever forgive that? How can you forgive everything he did, everything he said?”
    “I’m not,” she replied. “I’m letting it go. There’s plenty to be angry about, Sammy. But it’s his shit, not yours, and you have to let it go.”
    “I like how you think you’re letting it go. I like that you think you won’t wake up some day and realize he gutted you. He completely fucking gutted you. You don’t even have a clue how much he ruined you but someday you’ll figure it out.”
    Sam shook his head and shuffled down the hallway. The table descended into quiet again, the only sounds coming from the slosh of whiskey into glasses.
    I thought about Sam’s tirade, wondering if he was right—were we too damaged? Taking over the business meant my time was devoted there,