My father died three years earlier in his penthouse bedroom overlooking Central Park.
Stage four pancreatic cancer. Eleven months between diagnosis and burial. I watched him fade from a man who could silence an entire room with one raised eyebrow into someone whose hands shook holding a glass of water.
But I was not there at the end.
That fact haunted me quietly for years.
I was in Shanghai finalizing the Lumina deal Richard insisted I could not postpone. Diana, my father’s second wife and Emily’s mother, called me in the middle of negotiations.
“Clara,” she cried, “you need to come home. The nurse says it could be hours.”
I chartered a plane. I prayed inside a cabin above the Pacific. I landed too late.
Diana met me at the door wrapped in pearls and grief.
“He went peacefully,” she said. “He just fell asleep.”
Later, Richard called, his voice heavy with sympathy. “I’m so sorry. I was at the office keeping everything together.”
