John looked at his son. Thought of all the years they’d spent working in the same office and never really knowing each other. Thought of Jack as the little boy, the willful teenager, he’d been, always so bent on tormenting his father. Pitiful to think that that brave boy had grown into this gray-haired, tired-looking man standing in front of him.

“It was your fault,” John blurted. “All the pain you caused your mother. All the pain you caused me!”

Jack’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“You heard me, Jack Mickelson,” John said. “Why didn’t you look after your brother? He never would have gone, if it weren’t for you! Why didn’t you look after your brother, for God’s sake?”

A moment passed, father’s and son’s blue eyes locked in a dueling gaze, before Jack finally spoke. “He is your son, isn’t he?” he said. “You fucked your secretary and used Chase as an excuse. Jesus Christ, Dad.”

“Not an excuse!” John objected. “A reason!” Then a great hiccup burst from his lungs, and he felt his face turn scarlet. I’m losing, he realized suddenly. “You don’t know what it was like!” he cried, though he knew he was dissolving into a pathetic creature, before his eldest son.

Jack shot him a withering look, turned from him, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

John looked at the closed door, and his vision blurred. He knew he had come to the end of something. So, Jack, you’ve done it.

I always knew this day would come.

He took another bitter drink.

So they knew. And they would take everything from him. Elissa, and the sweetness in her that he treasured. And Nick, the only one of John’s sons truly innocent in John’s fall. The reason for it, yes, but—not his fault! And though John had done his utmost to keep Nick away, now that the truth was out, he wanted his son. He wanted to claim him, and bring him close. But it was a foolish thought: He knew the boy would never forgive him.

Besides, Wilma would hate him for it.

He felt a flare of hope: If he just let Nick go, and suffered the pain of that (as in truth he had suffered the pain of it once already, putting Nick on the train after midnight that February night in 1943, telling himself, I am saving my family, I must sacrifice him to save the rest), maybe Jack and Harry wouldn’t tell her. They’d realize that everyone had suffered enough.

But who could tell what they might do, now that they held sway over him. His utter destruction might be the only thing that would satisfy them. And they would need only to tell Wilma.