His eyes filled with tears.
“I spent years trying to protect you from the very thing that once made my own life worth living.”
I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to ask why he’d made me feel so small, why he’d dismissed my dreams, and why he couldn’t have said any of this while he was alive.
But the man on the screen couldn’t hear me.
“By then, we’d barely spoken in years,” he continued. “I wanted to tell you everything, but I knew how it would look. Like I was trying to buy your forgiveness with some expensive gift.”
He gestured toward the studio.
“So I asked Frank to give you that box only after I was gone. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything. Not forgiveness. Not gratitude. Not even a phone call.”
He drew a shaky breath.
