Chapter 23 - ETHAN AND GRANT
Ethan visited Grant during incarceration twice.
The first meeting went badly.
Grant:
“You chose her.”
Ethan:
“I told the truth.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Grant blamed me.
Vivian.
Lawyers.
Trustees.
Bankers.
Charles Mercer from beyond the grave.
Everyone.
Ethan left.
Three years later, he tried again.
Grant had changed enough to be specific.
“I hit Claire.”
“Yes.”
“I should not have.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid Harlow would fail.”
“Yes.”
“I thought if she walked out, everything I built would leave with her.”
Ethan said:
“It was never hers to carry.”
That sentence made me cry when he told me.
Grant asked:
“Do you hate me?”
Ethan answered:
“Sometimes.”
Honest.
They did not reconcile fully.
Father-son relationships do not owe audiences closure.
Grant eventually admitted another thing.
“I made you weak.”
Ethan said:
“No.”
Grant looked surprised.
“You taught me to avoid you. I chose what I did with that.”
Good.
No parent gets full ownership of an adult child’s failures either.
When Grant was released years later into supervised conditions and health limitations, Ethan helped find him an apartment.
Not our homes.
Not Sophie’s.
Care without surrender.
I respected that.
I did not participate.
Grant once sent me a letter:
I know asking forgiveness would put another obligation on you.
Good first line.
He continued:
I am sorry I struck you. I am sorry I treated Sophie’s birth as a governance event before I treated it as the arrival of my granddaughter.
Specific.
Then:
I am sorry I taught Ethan that family survival required obedience.
I kept the letter.
No reply for two years.
Then:
May you like
I received it.
That was all.
