His dad swallowed. He stepped forward and sat at the table, directly across from Andrew. “You look good, son. I’m sorry I haven’t come before now.”

“You came at Thanksgiving.”

“For a day. Didn’t count.”

Andrew hadn’t thought so, either.

His dad gripped his hands together on the table. “I know we haven’t seen eye-to-eye for several years now, and your mom keeps telling me I’m being a stubborn asshole. She’s right. It was selfish of me to expect you to put your dreams aside to follow a plan I’d set out for you. It’s not easy to get through college and law school, and I want you to know I’m proud of you and what you’re doing.”

A lump formed in Andrew’s throat. Hearing his dad, the strongest, hardest-working man he’d ever met, say he was proud of him was something he’d wanted for a long, long time. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I’ve thought about you every day since your mother told me about the lymphoma. I want you to know that. I’m not good with this kind of thing, and the thought of my only son with cancer was more than I could handle. I avoid things that upset me, and I don’t talk about them. Thank God for your mother. You deserved at least one strong parent by your side through this. I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”

Those words shocked Andrew to his core. His dad was the rock of their family. A big, sturdy man who wrangled cattle and branded steers and threw bales of hay around like they weighed nothing. He worked from before dawn to dusk nearly every day, and treated his family well. He’d taught Andrew how to shoot a rifle, drive cars and tractors alike.

“You should see your face,” his dad said with a humorless chuckle. “You think I’m the strong one? Your mother is. Every time we’ve almost lost the farm, she’s been the one by my side to get me through it. I’ve done the hard labor to keep things going, sure. I’m not saying I don’t work for what we’ve got. But it takes a hell of a lot more inner strength to do what she does for our family, and I’d say that makes her the strongest of all of us. And she makes it look easy, to boot.”

Andrew had never thought about it like that.