All familiar characters are Janet's. Any mistakes are solely mine.
"I wasn't a good father to you and Valerie," Frank said, after a few uncomfortable beats of stunned silence.
Steph was already shaking her head, clearly impatient. "You're misunderstanding me, Dad. I didn't say that to state the obvious, make you feel guilty, or to hurt you. I'd really like to know what life was like for you inside our house back then. I only know what I endured there. Did you purposely cut yourself off to protect yourself from us or us from you? Did Mom convince you that you had no say or rights in your own home? When you were sitting with us at dinner ... not saying a word, when you'd turn up the TV volume whenever Mom and I butted heads, did you actually see and hear us in real time? Or were you stepping back into the past and immediately getting lost in it any time you didn't have a job or project to do to keep yourself in the moment?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted before he could. "Do everyone a favor, Frank, and answer truthfully. No one should be excused away from this. If you believe you fucked up, say so. If Helen preyed on your pain and used it against you just to control you, say that too. If you're like a lot of us who were willing to sacrifice our own happiness because someone we loved didn't get to live long enough to find theirs, admit it. Believe me when I say, you're not going to get anywhere with your children if you don't confront what you fear the most."
"If I learned one thing from Ranger and the guys," my wife added, "it's that you often punish yourselves for what was completely out of your control. I get now that you've been suffering from survivor's guilt for decades … Gioele didn't get to have a wife and kids, so why should you be so lucky to have a family? I'm not here to blame you for everything that was once wrong in my life. I'm done carrying that kind of crap around with me. I agreed to do this because I want to learn more about who you are as a person, and maybe gain some insight into how you see yourself as a dad ... and if you're fully committed to being one now. Call me selfish, but I don't want Olive, my nieces, or you, to miss out on the things you, Val, and I, could've had when she and I were little."
"I wanna get back what I gave up, but I know it's gone," he told his daughter. "From talking with everyone here, the Docs as well as Ranger and some of his men, I'm aware that I can only start from where I'm standing now. Your mother made it clear early-on in our courtship that my job would be outside of our home and hers would be everything in it. And I agreed to that. Looking back, I know I wasn't in a good place before or during our marriage, and I didn't have it in me to fight back or fight for you and your sister. It's something I'm ashamed of and will always regret. Seeing how you are with little Olive, going from a woman who swore off even the suggestion of a traditional relationship, to being clearly happy with your daughters and your husband, has driven home just how far I let my life and my family get away from me."
"Now that I've been away from it long enough to understand what 'inside' and 'outside' jobs meant in the Plum household, I'm going to tell you that Valerie and I are your daughters. Whether you and Mom work things out or not, I want you to know that you don't need anyone's permission - except ours - to talk to, visit, or interact with, Val and I. You're right ... we can't go back, even though there's a lot of things I'd love a do-over for, but we can go forward."
Dr. Paice looked at the three of us before settling his eyes back on me. "Why are you paying me again? The three of you seem to be running this session without needing any guidance from me."
"Excellent question," I answered. "I'll tell Tank to deduct today's meeting from your payroll."
He didn't laugh. I could be joking … or not.
"If I may interject …?" He said to the room.
"Please do. Help us out here," Steph said.
"Stephanie, you and I have discussed this and what you're saying today has me ready to ask, do you forgive your father for your past relationship or lack thereof? Or are there still issues that need to be addressed and resolved which is preventing that from happening?"
"I went a long way to forgiving him when he chose to come to Thanksgiving dinner with us in Newark. That showed me that I mattered enough to you to do something waaaay out of your comfort zone, Dad," she said, finishing the statement while looking directly at Frank. "I'm not the same person I was even three years ago, and some will say my change wasn't for the better, so I'm not about to hold the same thing against you. I just want to get to know who you are now, but it can't be at the expense of Olive or my own sanity. I want to have a relationship with you that's based solely on me and my family and separate from your marriage and what you still have to work through to accept that you did everything you could have for Gioele. If Mom shows up and you decide to leave with her, I don't want the time you've spent here to be packed up and shoved back in your closet like it - and we - never existed. Ranger will tell you, I'd prefer it if people just walk away and leave me completely alone, to being treated like an afterthought or just used as a weapon to hurt someone else. I don't do halfway or convenient very well."
I brought her hand up to my lips and kissed her knuckles. "That's the biggest understatement I've heard all week, Babe. You're definitely an all or nothing kind of woman."
She shrugged. "It got me you, then Julie and Olive, and us all here today. Not settling seems to be working out pretty good for me."
"You always had me, even during the 'nothing between us' days," I reminded her.
"I know. That's how I'm able to be here myself."
"Are you really hearing your daughter, Frank? She's not blaming you for what you didn't do, rather Stephanie appears to be embracing who you've become to her and her daughter, as well as encouraging you to continue on your path to taking care of yourself."
"I've really enjoyed hanging out with you these last couple of months, Dad, but even more … it's been great seeing you look lighter and happier each time you knock on our door. I was prepared to step out of your life if you preferred to continue it as is, but I'm more relieved than I can say that I didn't have to lose both of my parents. I want everything to be better for Olivia than what I had, and I felt the same way with you. Whether I was in it or not, I wanted you to have a better life than you've had since I've known you."
"That's very generous of you, Stephanie," Dr. Paice told her.
"It's really not. My goal was to live my own life the way I wanted to without being picked on or punished for it. And that's what I wish for everybody I care about."
"I'm still trying to figure out what kind of life I do want," Frank shared with us.
"I know," Steph said. "But you're taking the time to figure that out before you make any concrete decisions. That's the important part."
He went quiet and inward for a minute, and the three of us waited for him to rejoin the conversation.
"I did see and hear what was going on inside my home," he said after a few minutes. "I tried to keep my ears open for anything I needed to be concerned about, like that Diesel guy and when your sister's water broke and no one was prepared or had a plan, but I didn't want to get in anyone's way unless I was needed."
"You were always wanted and needed. I'm so sorry Mom, and maybe even Val and I after deciding that you didn't need or want us, made you believe you weren't. You and I could've both escaped Mom by going fishing or building something explosive in the garage, but maybe we wouldn't be who we are now if we didn't have a lot of crap to deal with then. I'd go through my entire life all over again if that was the only way I could have what I'm living now. I'm starting to think that not having you then, led to me having Ranger and Olive now. I should thank you for that. I learned everything I needed to from what I didn't have growing up ... in order to become and appreciate who I am, which allowed me to create the family I've always wanted for myself."
Frank processed that, but didn't seem thrilled with the conclusions he's drawn. "I'm not sure how I feel hearing that the only reason I have another granddaughter is because I was an absent father."
Steph gave him a smile that felt a bit bittersweet to me. "You weren't the sole reason. Truth is, being so in love with Ranger had way more to do with us having Olive than just about anything else."
The smile she sent me after saying that, was anything but bittersweet. It was a private, happy one filled with memories of the morning she and I spent together that changed our relationship and our lives in a way we couldn't have predicted and would never change.
"Excuse us," Dr. Paice said around a mock-cough. "Are Frank and I interrupting something?"
I've known Sarkis Paice for years. And as a result, he feels more comfortable than most walking a 'familia' line.
"Not really," I lied. "Steph and I were just touching base."
He smiled. "I guess I'm not going to be called in for some marriage counseling."
"Not yet," I replied. "And if you are, it won't be for Stephanie and I."
"Like my Mom would ever agree to listen to someone tell her that she's wrong about something," my wife said to us. "I pointed out just one of many things I think she handled horribly, and we haven't gotten farther than acting snarky or icily polite to each other since."
"That was a huge 'thing' you called her on, Babe. And she knows it. Not only did she choose to protect Morelli over her own daughter, she left the garage door wide open for whichever little Burg girl he wanted to 'train' next."
"While we're on this particular unpleasant subject," Dr. Paice said. "Frank, would you like to share with Stephanie a little of what we've been discussing over the last few weeks?"
His body stiffened, and he swallowed so hard … the three of us cringed inwardly at how painful it appeared for him.
"I don't know where to start," my father-in-law admitted. "It isn't something easy for a father to hear, never mind about thirty years too late to do anything about it." He locked eyes with my wife. "I may have been able to forgive your mother for all the years of her trying to control everything, my actions and reactions especially, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive her for not telling me that our daughter was in danger … as much from her mother's behavior as that of the little neighborhood pervert who continued to torture you until, thank God, something finally killed the bastard before I let my anger overtake me and I attempted it myself."
"What you and Mom do and discuss is between you two. Don't use me as a reason or an excuse to do something you'll have to live with afterwards. I've had to work my way through what I felt about it myself. I honestly thought it was just an innocent game between kids. I never got a 'Nobody - no matter how big or small they are - touches what your bathing suit does' talk. Only Mom's body language told me I'd done something bad. Much later, I felt Joe went where he shouldn't have on me because I wandered off where I shouldn't have gone. That shame morphed into full-blown fury after he wrote public poems about my anatomy, making me feel taken advantage of all over again … since, for the second time, I didn't understand the gravity of what I'd done until I read it in graphic detail and then heard it repeated by kids in school as his literal words spread throughout the Burg. And once again, I got shamed, bullied, and grounded, while Joe was given yet another round of applause for being a jerk. The unfairness of our repercussions was harder to get past than anything else. Having someone as amazing as Ranger genuinely caring about me, finally showed me that I really am just as important as anybody else. That I suffered while Joe thrived wasn't because of a fault in me, but in everyone who enabled him and felt good about it."
"I wish I could buy you a brand new Buick just so you could run Morelli completely over with this time around," Frank told her.
Hell, I'd dig Morelli's rotting corpse out of the ground myself just to watch that event take place. Being a smart man, I kept that offer and visual to myself.
"Morelli's dead, Dad. He can't hurt me anymore unless I let him. And I'm not about to. I dealt with what I needed to. I blamed myself for everything I hated about myself longer than I needed to, please don't do the same."
"I can't do anything about that bastard now ... your mother is another story. If she were to ever watch little Olivia, how would you know she was being safely looked after given your mother's track record?"
Stephanie smiled in a way that held zero humor. "Don't waste a second worrying about that, because Mom watching mine and Ranger's baby is never, ever going to happen. Morelli coming back to life just to die all over again, has a better chance of taking place than Mom being left alone with Olive while Ranger and I are still breathing."
"Don't you worry about that one, Babe," I said solely for her ears. "Us aside, Olivia has her GodTank, both sides of my family, and every man in three Rangeman buildings along the Eastern Seaboard, standing between her and anything that could potentially cause her harm."
