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musician, maybe even more, I’ll admit that, but it’s been three years now and you’re just scraping by. Your mother and I still pay your health insurance, your car insurance, and are covering your student loans. Well, it’s time to live up to the bargain. So no, you can’t go. You made us a promise, and you’re damned well going to keep it. We’re done supporting you, unless you do that.”
    Colin snorted derisively. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need it. Hell, you think you can solve everything by throwing enough money at it.”
    â€œSo you don’t want our money now?” His father gave a bitter, loud laugh. “Whose money was it that paid for at least half of your music equipment? Whose money paid your rent last year when you were four months behind? Whose money bailed you out when you ran into credit card problems your first year out of college? Who let you stay in your old room when you dropped out in your fourth year after changing majors for the third time? Who found you a decent-paying job afterward—a job you quit after three months, as I recall, because it interfered with your precious gigs?” His father nearly laughed. “Right. You can take care of yourself.”
    There it was, the endless litany of Colin the Failure, to be resurrected again and again until the end of eternity, it seemed.
    â€œDon’t worry, Dad. I promise I won’t call you or Mom for help. I wouldn’t want to give you the satisfaction.”
    â€œYou know what would satisfy me? You having some drive and responsibility. You keeping your word! You acting like you had an
ounce
of the goddamn sense you were born with!”
    The thunder was in his voice now, the volume rising, and Colin knew that this was going to be another shouting match, and that there would be no reconciliation here. They’d both walk away furious, having said things that they’d both regret later.
    It was the effect they had on each other. Maybe Jen was right claiming that they were both too much alike—in that way, at least.
    And it had ended as he’d expected, a screaming battle that closed with Colin stalking out of the office in full retreat and slamming the door behind him, flushed and with his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles ached for two days afterward.
    And two days later, realizing that he had exactly eleven dollars in his wallet, an over-limit credit card, and a two-figure savings account, he’d relented. He’d kept his promise and enrolled in graduate school—one as far away from Chicago as he could find.
    And now . . . now . . . he’d made the decision to renege on that promise once again.
    He remembered all that, staring at the wasted figure on the bed and holding his father’s cold, unresponsive hand.
    Colin wept then, as he hadn’t since he returned.
    â€œI don’t think we really have had much of a chance, Dad,” he said when he felt able to speak again. “There was so much you wanted to do yet, but there’s also so much
I
want to do. I’m sorry that I wasn’t like Tommy, but the time I’ve spent as a musician . . .” He patted the hand. “Dad, I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown, and how good it’s been for me.”
    He laughed then; an incongruous sound that was mixed with a sob. “Maybe I’m more like Grandpa Rory—I can still remember him telling us all these far-fetched tales about his boyhood in Ireland, how he saw leprechauns and the fair folk. He was never afraid to say what he believed. I have been, and I’m sick of it, Dad. Sick of lying to everyone around me and to myself.”
    He was staring at the monitor, at the eternal marching of the graphs on the blue screen. He thought he caught movement on the bed from the corner of his eye. When he looked, it seemed for a moment that it was a