I read it again.
Then once more.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Your father wrote that.”
“He didn’t raise me like that?”
His face changed.
“He loved you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Rosa glanced at me, but she didn’t interrupt.
Gabriel folded his hands on the table.
“Your father loved you very much. But loving someone and protecting them well are not always the same thing. He made choices he believed were necessary. Some of those choices hurt you. I won’t pretend otherwise.”
I thought of the way Dad had worked late into the evenings, the way he sometimes stopped talking when Veronica entered a room, the way he had promised me that things would be different after his illness improved.
He had known he was dying.
Maybe he had known more than he told me.
“What did he think Veronica would do?” I asked.
Gabriel was silent for several seconds.
