Page 211 of Disarm
He takes a breath like he’s about to argue a case. “The way I said it—‘you can’t do that in public’—” he grimaces. “That was… wrong. I made it about me. My reputation. My comfort. I’m not proud of that.”
I say nothing. Just raise my eyebrows a little.
“I was… afraid,” he admits, and the word seems to physically hurt him. “Afraid of my colleagues’ reactions. Of being whispered about in the office. ‘Did you know Burton’s sons…’” He gestures vaguely. “Old wiring. Old biases. I like to think I’m more evolved than that, and clearly I’m not as far along as I thought.”
I take a slow sip of coffee, buying myself a second to think.
“That’s honest,” I say. “And I appreciate honesty. But you know that doesn’t undo the hit, right?”
He nods. “I know. I’m not asking you to pretend it didn’t hurt,” he says. “I just… I don’t want my fear to make you hide. That’s the part that’s been… eating at me.”
I let that sit between us for a minute.
“Because it did,” I say eventually. “Make him want to hide. You saw that, right? The way he went straight back to being in the closet in his head? The way his body reacted?”
Dad’s jaw works. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I saw. I hated seeing it. I don’t always know how to… stop causing it.”
“That’s kind of the job now,” I say. “If you want to be in his life. Inourlife. It’s not enough to mean well. You have to actually stop doing the thing that sends him into the spin cycle.”
He winces, and I push, because if I don’t say this, who will?
“You asked us to be honest,” I remind him. “You said you wanted to see us. All of us. Then you saw something that made you uncomfortable and your first instinct was to make us smaller so you didn’t have to sit with that discomfort.”
“I know,” he says again. “You were right to call me on it. I just… It’s hard to override fifty years of… wiring.”
“Try living with twenty-plus years of it in your head,” I say, sharper than I intended. “At least you had the option of not noticing yours.”
He flinches like I slapped him.
“Look,” I say. “I get it. Really. I know what you grew up around and the climate back then. I know you didn’t have the language or the models. I know this is weird and complicated and not what you pictured when you thought about your family. But Caleb and I spent years contorting ourselves into whatever shape we thought you could handle. He almost didn’t tell you at all because he was so sure you’d pick your comfort over his reality. If we go back into the closet now, even a little, we’re telling that scared kid in his head that he was right.”
Dad stares at his coffee for a long second. “That’s not what I want,” he says, voice rough. “I don’t want him to think he has to hide so I can… what? Have an easier night at a restaurant?”
“Then that means something has to change on your end,” I say. “Not just in here—” I tap my forehead, but I point outside and around us. “Out here. Behavior. Words. Reactions.”
He nods slowly. “I don’t know how to do that perfectly,” he says.
“We’re not asking for perfection,” I say. “What we are asking for… consistency. If you say you’re proud of him, that has to be true when he’s holding my hand at a table full of lawyers, not just when he’s sinking free throws.”
He blows out a breath through his nose. “Fair,” he says. “I… meant what I texted him. I am proud of him. For how he’s playing. For how he’s talking to me. For staying… here. On the planet. There were times I wasn’t sure he would.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “Yeah,” I say. “Same.”
Looking up, he catches my gaze. “And you,” he adds, like it costs him something, but he forces it out anyway. “I’m proud of you. I don’t say it enough. You’ve been… holding a lot for a long time and I leaned on you more than I should have. Expected you to be the buffer. The translator. The protector. That wasn’t fair.”
I blink.
That’s… new.
“I put you in a parentified role without calling it that,” he says quietly. “Expecting you to manage his storms and my guilt at the same time. That’s… not a position a teenager should’ve been in. Or a young man now.”
I stare at him, not sure what to do with that. “Did my mom make you read a book or some shit?” I ask because if I don’t deflect, I might actually feel something.
He huffs a laugh. “Several,” he admits. “And she got very vocal about my behavior. You know how she can be when it comes to you boys.”
A flash of guilt hits. “I don’t want us to be a strain on your marriage?—”
“You’re not,” he cuts in. “You’re our children. And you love each other. She is advocating for both of you and I need to step up to the plate and do my part.”
