Just Let Me Love You (Judge Me Not #3)(38)

But I don’t have time to lose myself in trying to figure out my mom. I promptly take my brother to where he wants to go—our father’s grave.

“When was the last time you were here?” Will asks once we’re standing side-by-side at Jack Gartner’s final resting place.

The stone angel is casting us in her long shadow, as if she’s watching over all three Gartner men—two for just a little while, and one for infinity.

“I was out here a couple of weeks ago,” I reply to Will, my eyes flicking from the angel to my brother.

“Seriously?” he says, sounding surprised. “Did you come out here all by yourself?”

“No. I was with Kay.”

Will opens his mouth, but then pauses, until at last, he says, “You really love Kay, don’t you?”

“More than anything, bro.”

“Wow,” he says with no irony. “I sure hope I find something like that someday.”

I put my arm around him, and he leans into me. “You will,” I assure him, “you will.”

I’m hopeful my brother will someday find a love like the one I have with my wife. He deserves that much in life.

We spend the next hour—or maybe it’s two—at our father’s gravesite. My brother and I don’t say a hell of a lot when we first sit down next to the stone marker, the sandy earth cool in the shadow of the angel.

But eventually Will starts opening up.

“My therapist thought it’d be a good idea for me to come out here.”

“Oh, yeah?” I reply, pulling my knees up to my chest. “Is that so?”

“Yeah.” Will mirrors my posture, and with his chin resting on one knee, he says, “She wanted Mom to bring me out, but”—his eyes slide meaningfully over to me—“I’m glad you’re the one with me here instead.”

I want Will to keep talking; it’s not just his therapist who thinks this is good for him.

So I carefully reply, “I’m glad I’m here with you, too.”

“I don’t know how I feel about Dad,” Will continues after a beat. “I mean, I still love him, Chase. Like, a lot. Is that crazy or what?”

“It’s not crazy at all, Will.”

“Do you still love him?”

I rub the palm of my hand across my forehead, where sweat is beading. “Yeah, bro, of course I still love him.”

“You were mad at him, though,” Will says in a tone that is far from accusing, just matter-of-fact. “For a long time, you were really pissed at Dad.”

“I was,” is my simple response.

I haven’t completely made peace with my dead father, but I’m closer to it than ever before. Still, how do you put feelings like that into words?

I don’t have to, I soon discover. It is Will who needs to talk.

And talk he does.

“I was angry like you, Chase,” he says, “For a long time, too.”

“What about now?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I feel bad that Dad gave up on us so easily. And I sure as hell don’t want to end up like him. That desperate, you know?”

I nod. “I hear what you’re saying.”

After a long pause, he says, “I guess, mostly, nowadays, I just feel kind of sad about it all. Sad and disappointed that it went down the way it did.”

He’s not kidding.

Sighing, I agree. “I know, Will. I feel pretty much the same way as you.”

We sit and soak on that for a while, and then, out of the blue, and rather fervently, Will proclaims, “I won’t let you down, Chase, I won’t. I’m not Dad. No more bullshit from me, I promise. I am always going to be here for you, always.”

Shit, my kid brother is making the promises I should be making to him.

“Hey, don’t worry about me.” I drape an arm around him. “I love you, Will, no matter what. It’s not your responsibility to make up for what we’re missing thanks to Dad taking his own life.”

“It’s not yours, either,” Will says. “Still, isn’t that exactly what you’ve been trying to do?”—Will knows me far too well—“You’ve been trying to fill the void Dad left for years.”

I laugh. Not a happy laugh, just one of acceptance and resignation.

“Yeah,” I concede, “I guess you’re right. Maybe I was always trying to fill the void left by Dad. I guess I still am.”

“No maybes or guesses about it, dude.” Will nudges me, smiling.

“I don’t know if that will ever change,” I admit.

“Not with me, either,” Will states.

“Guess it’s not such a bad thing, eh?” I nudge Will. “This watching out for each other thing.”

Smiling, he replies, “Not a bad thing at all, big brother.”

In the hot Nevada desert, shaded by a stone angel that impacted me so much I had her likeness inked on my back, I come to the realization that Jack Gartner may be dead, yes, but he lives on in Will and me. And while we will always feel the loss of our dad, we have each other to pick up the slack.

Maybe what I’ve been searching for all this time has been here right in front of me all along.

In that moment, because of my brother, because of where we are today and how far we’ve come, I find true peace with my dad.