“His what? His cufflinks?” Thomas vibrated with rage, his hands shaking as he thought of the frayed white dress shirt hanging in the closet upstairs. His father’s old shirt that Thomas had taken the day he’d died. The only thing he’d wanted. The shirt off his back. That still smelled of him. Of rich cigars and spicy cologne.
But now the links were gone. Because of Peter.
“You have no idea, do you?” Thomas spat. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like to have to succeed all the time. Father expected it, Mother expected it. I couldn’t fail.”
“You failed all the time,” said Marianna, recovered. “But they refused to see it. You’re lazy and a liar and they thought you could do no wrong.”
“They knew I was their only hope,” said Thomas, his eyes never wavering from Peter. “You were such a disappointment.”
“Peter never disappointed his father.”
It was a voice the Morrows rarely heard. They turned to look at their mother, then beside her.
“He never expected you to excel, Thomas,” Bert Finney continued. “And he never wanted anything except for you to be happy, Marianna. And he never believed those things written on the bathroom wall about Julia.”
The old man struggled to his feet.
“He loved your art,” he said to Peter. “He loved your music, Thomas. He loved your spirit, Marianna, and always said how strong and kind you were. He loved you all.”
The words, more dangerous than any grenade, exploded in the middle of the Morrows.
“That’s what Julia figured out,” said Finney. “She realized that was what he’d meant when he withheld money and gifts. She who had it all knew how empty those things were, and that anything of value she’d already been given. By her father. Love, encouragement. That was what she wanted to tell you.”
“Bullshit,” said Thomas, returning to sit beside Sandra. “He kicked her out of the house. How loving was that?”
“He regretted that,” admitted Finney. “Always regretted not defending Julia. But he was a stubborn man, a proud man. He couldn’t admit he was wrong. He tried to apologize, in his way. He reached out to her in Vancouver, when he found out she was engaged. But he let his dislike of Martin ruin it. Charles needed to be right. He was a good man, plagued by a bad ego. He paid a high price for it. But it doesn’t mean he didn’t love you all. Including Julia. It just meant he couldn’t show it. Not in the way you wanted.”
Was that the thing to be deciphered, wondered Peter. Not the words of the strange message, but the fact of the message itself?
Never use the first stall in a public washroom.
Peter almost smiled. It was, he had to admit, very like a Morrow. They were nothing if not anal.
“He was cruel,” said Thomas, not wanting to let go.
“Your father never stopped searching for the person who wrote that graffiti. He thought that way he could show Julia how much he cared. And in the end he found him.”
There was silence then, until the small clearing of a throat broke it.
“That’s not possible,” said Peter, standing up and smoothing his hair. “Father never said anything to me about it.”
“And why would he?” demanded Thomas.
“Because I was the one who wrote the graffiti.” He didn’t dare look at his mother.
“Yes,” said Finney. “That’s what your father said.”
The Morrows stared, speechless.
“How’d he know?” asked Peter, feeling light-headed, slightly nauseous.
“It was written in the second stall. Only you and he knew about that. It was his private gift to you.”
Peter inhaled sharply.
“I wrote the graffiti because she’d hurt my feelings. And because I wanted Father to myself. I didn’t want to share him with anyone. I couldn’t stand that Father loved Julia. I wanted to destroy that. And I did.”
“Have you not heard a word I said?”
Bert Finney now commanded the room, Gamache willingly ceding his place.
“It wasn’t yours to destroy. You claim too much for yourself, Peter. Your father loved your sister all his life. You couldn’t destroy that. He knew what you’d done.”
Finney stared at Peter and Peter pleaded with him to stop there. Not to say that last thing.
“And he loved you anyway. He loved you always.”
Paradise lost.
It was the most devastating thing Finney could have said. Not that Peter was hated by his father. But that he’d been loved all along. He’d interpreted kindness as cruelty, generosity as meanness, support as tethers. How horrible to have been offered love, and to have chosen hate instead. He’d turned heaven into hell.