One Last Thing Before I Go

with his fiancée.”
    That silences Silver for a moment. It silences them all, even those of them who were already silent.
    “Shit, Oliver,” Jack says. “Silver had a perfectly good pep talk going there, and you had to go and fuck it up.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “My point still stands,” Silver says. “You can’t let your mistakes define you. You’ve paid for it long enough. No kid should be without his father. And if your son continues to make that choice, then that’s his tragedy. But it’s your job, as his father, to let him make that choice. You can’t make it for him.”
    Oliver looks at Silver for a long moment, then back at the house.
    “He’ll probably just tell me to get the hell off his property.”
    “And if he does, you can go home knowing you tried.”
    Oliver nods slowly, then opens his car door again.
    “Good luck,” Casey says.
    They all watch as Oliver heads up the long, curved walk to the house.
    “He’s had cancer for six weeks and he didn’t tell us. Can you believe that?” Jack says, shaking his head. “What the hell is wrong with him?”
    “The same thing that’s wrong with all of you,” Casey says, watching Oliver ring the doorbell.
    “And what’s that?” Jack says, turning to look at her, but Casey remains quiet, unwilling to explain what it is she meant.
    * * *
    The front door is opened by a tall, thin woman in exercise clothing. A small boy stands beside her. Oliver is momentarily thrown by the sight of the boy. The woman says something to him, but Oliver can’t take his eyes off his grandson. He says something to the boy. The boy responds, and Oliver nods somberly.
    The woman looks briefly past him to where Jack, Silver, and Casey are sitting in the car. The three of them smile and wave self-consciously. She waves back—a positive sign?—then disappears back into the house, leaving Oliver to stand there with his grandson. A moment later they are joined by a stocky man in khaki shorts and a T-shirt. This is Tobey. There is no way to miss the family resemblance, down to the same pattern of baldness. Father and son stand there for a moment, each taking the full measure of the other. Like his wife, Tobey looks past Oliver to the car, and the three of them wave again. Tobey doesn’t wave back. Then Jack throws the car into gear and pulls away from the curb, tires squealing. Silver and Casey are thrown back against their seats.
    “Jack!” Silver shouts. “What the hell?!”
    Jack shouts over the roar of his accelerating engine as he steers them out of the neighborhood. “His son would have to be a real prick to kick him out if he doesn’t have a ride.”
    Silver has to concede that maybe he has a point.
    * * *
    Jack finds the beach, and manages to scare up some blankets from his trunk. Silver buys some sandwiches and sodas from the concession, and they eat lunch while they watch the pounding surf. The beach is crowded for a weekday. People are starting to sense the end of summer, still a few weeks away. He looks at Casey pulling her hair into a loose ponytail as she turns her face into the wind, and feels all the usual deep pangs of love and regret. It would have been so easy, he thinks, to do things like this; take her on drives, to the beach, to a movie. Anything. It’s not like he was busy traveling the world. He was right here, and nowhere to be found.
    He lies down on his back and closes his eyes, trying to shake off the self-loathing that has suddenly descended upon him.
    “Don’t die,” Jack says.
    “I’ll do my best.”
    * * *
    Later, Silver and Casey walk barefoot along the waterline with the sun at their backs. Casey throws bits of bread up to the low-flying gulls, who snatch it out of the air as they bank and swerve.
    “I slept with Jeremy again,” she says.
    He looks at her, at the way she’s looking straight ahead, focused intently on his reaction without ever looking at him. It’s a strange thing to tell him, but these are strange times between them, and something about the crashing surf seems to blunt the edges of their conversation, making everything feel a bit safer than usual.
    “It was that night at his party, before you and Mom showed up. I went there to tell him about the baby, and I ended up sleeping with him.”
    “I figured,” he says, remembering what she looked like coming down the stairs with Jeremy that night. “Why do you think you did?”
    He worries that he sounds too much like a shrink, but the way she considers