Chapter 480 Big Girls Don't Cry:>11

• Lena saw that as well, my expression must have showed what I was thinking, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks. I could feel my eyes brimming as loss and fear fought with guilt over what I'd said in the first heat of anger, something dad also saw. He wiped Lena's tears away, catching the end of her nose as he did, grinning his old grin, and Lena smiling back in spite of herself. Then dad did something he'd not done to me since I was a small boy; he pulled me down close to him, and kissed me once on the cheek, his way of saying it was alright, that we were okay again.
• I didn't want that, it felt like goodbye to me, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye to my dad, not yet, not for a long time to come. But it wasn't going to happen. My dad was going, long before his time, and there was nothing I could do about it; there's that old saw about 'Physician, heal thyself', what I wanted was to heal my dad; but I couldn't.
• Dad obviously picked up on the tenor of my thoughts, and grinned at me, his old self suddenly gleaming through.