Chapter 9 - THE YEARS HE COULDN’T GET BACK
Griffin learned fatherhood through humiliation.
The first lesson came at 6:40 on a Tuesday morning when Hazel informed him he had packed the wrong lunch.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You put yogurt beside crackers.”
“So?”
“The crackers get warm.”
“That’s a problem?”
Hazel stared at him.
“Dad.”
Griffin looked at Sloan.
“Help.”
“No.”
“You know the rules.”
“I spent eight years learning the rules. Your turn.”
Iris quietly exchanged the yogurt for an ice pack.
“Thank you,” Griffin said.
“You owe me two dollars.”
“For what?”
“Consulting.”
Sloan nearly choked on coffee.
Six months had passed since Richard’s arrest.
Life had not returned to normal.
It had invented a new version.
Richard remained in federal custody awaiting trial.
Wesley Pike pleaded guilty.
Several Drake Applied executives resigned.
More than three billion dollars in improperly transferred assets were frozen or recovered.
The twins’ shares went into an independent trust administered by people neither Griffin nor Richard controlled.
Griffin insisted on that.
“They should inherit choices, not obligations.”
Sloan loved him a little more for saying it.
Which was inconvenient.
Griffin rented a house four blocks away.
Not his penthouse.
Not Sloan’s duplex.
A normal house.
Normal by billionaire standards meant it still had a ridiculous kitchen, but there were no elevators.
He spent three nights a week with the girls.
Sometimes more.
They attended family therapy.
Griffin never complained.
He cried during the third session when the counselor asked Hazel what she had imagined her father was like.
“A firefighter.”
Griffin blinked.
“Why?”
“Mom said you were brave.”
Sloan had forgotten saying that.
Iris answered differently.
“I thought he was dead.”
The room went quiet.
Griffin looked at Sloan.
She shook her head.
“I never told them that.”
“I know.”
Iris shrugged.
“If someone never comes, sometimes you think maybe they can’t.”
Griffin cried in the parking lot afterward.
Sloan sat beside him.
“I missed them needing me.”
“Yes.”
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
“I do know.”
“No, you know what you did. I know what I lost.”
She flinched.
Griffin immediately regretted it.
But Sloan lifted a hand.
“No.”
She breathed.
“You’re allowed to say that.”
So he did.
Not cruelly.
Not every day.
But honestly.
He was angry.
Sloan had stolen something impossible to replace.
Acknowledging that did not erase why she had done it.
It simply made forgiveness real instead of decorative.
Sloan had anger too.
At Eleanor Drake.
At Richard.
At her mother.
At her late father for believing secrecy protected people.
At Griffin for becoming so consumed by work after Portland that she could imagine his world swallowing children whole.
They fought.
Then learned to finish fights without leaving.
One night Griffin walked toward the door after an argument.
Sloan went rigid.
He saw it.
Stopped.
“I’m cooling down.”
“Okay.”
“I’m coming back.”
“Okay.”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Fine.”
He returned in twenty-three.
That mattered more than flowers would have.
Richard’s trial began in spring.
The evidence was overwhelming.
Financial crimes.
Witness intimidation.
Conspiracy.
Kidnapping-related charges.
Malcolm’s death remained the hardest case.
Then a former marina mechanic came forward.
He had repaired Malcolm’s boat the day before the fatal accident.
Richard paid him ten thousand dollars afterward to say nothing about a damaged fuel line.
The mechanic had kept the deposit slip.
Richard was indicted for Malcolm’s murder.
Griffin sat in Sloan’s kitchen after hearing.
“He killed my father.”
Sloan put down her work.
“Yes.”
“I spent sixteen years thinking Dad made a mistake.”
“I’m sorry.”
Griffin looked toward the family photographs.
“Richard made everyone doubt themselves.”
“That was his real talent.”
When the guilty verdict came months later, Griffin did not celebrate.
He went to Malcolm’s grave.
Sloan and the girls went with him.
Hazel placed a small stone beside the headstone.
Iris left a folded drawing.
Griffin stood there silently.
Then Hazel asked:
“Would Grandpa have liked us?”
Griffin laughed softly.
“He would have been impossible.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes.”
His voice broke.
“He would have loved you more than oxygen.”
On the drive home, Iris asked whether Griffin would marry Sloan.
Sloan almost drove off the road.
“Why would you ask that?”
“You kiss sometimes.”
Griffin looked out the window.
Traitor.
Hazel added, “And Dad looks at you weird.”
“How?”
“Like you’re the last cookie.”
Sloan groaned.
Griffin laughed for five straight minutes.
That evening, after the girls went upstairs, he stood in Sloan’s kitchen.
“For the record, I am not proposing.”
“Good.”
“You said that fast.”
“We’ve been dating for four months.”
“We dated for six years before.”
“Then I disappeared for ten.”
“Nine technically between Portland and the phone call.”
“Do not improve the math.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“I don’t want the old relationship back.”
Sloan looked at him.
That hurt unexpectedly.
Griffin continued.
“The old us loved each other and still didn’t trust each other enough to tell the truth.”
She understood.
“I want something different.”
“Different how?”
“Slower.”
“A billionaire asking for slower?”
“I contain multitudes.”
She laughed.
He stepped closer.
“No secrets.”
“No disappearing.”
“No deciding what the other person can handle.”
Sloan nodded.
“No weaponizing the past every time we fight.”
He winced.
“That one is for me.”
“Mostly.”
“And one more.”
“What?”
“Someday, when I ask you to marry me, don’t say yes because we have daughters.”
Her breath caught.
“Griffin.”
“I said someday.”
He kissed her forehead.
“I want you to choose me when leaving is still an option.”
That sentence followed Sloan for months.
Because once, she had loved Griffin enough to run.
May you like
Now she was learning that staying required more courage.
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