He flinched.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you are sorry after losing access.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
I looked at him, and the father inside me nearly broke.
Then I looked past him into the dining room, where the rug was stained, the chairs scratched, and Helen’s seat still sat slightly crooked from Melissa leaning back in it as if she belonged there.
“You had a home,” I said. “You turned it into a hunting ground.”
He began to cry.
Not loudly.
Just enough that I remembered holding him as a baby, his tiny fingers curled around mine.
“Dad, please.”
I stepped closer.
“I will pay for one week at a motel. I will give you the number of a debt counselor and a gambling recovery program. I will speak to you when you are sober, employed, and in treatment. But you will not sleep under my roof tonight.”
