Main Bonus #77: Farrow & The Keenes (Patreon)

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RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

MUSIC: We listened to "All These Things I've Done" by The Killers while writing this bonus.  

 I CALLED MY OLD MAN. I asked him if he had time to talk. I wasn’t shocked he penned me into his schedule like I’m a patient asking for a routine physical. It is what it is, and I thought that meant it’s nothing. Me and him.

We’re nothing.

He made that clear when he chose to attend a medical conference over my wedding.

But that’s not what I want out of a father. I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I want more.

That it’s okay for me to want more from him. Even if I know I probably won’t get it, he needs to hear it from me.

While Maximoff spends the day at his childhood home, I go visit mine. I lock the Audi in the driveway and look up at a multi-million-dollar property in Chestnut Hill.

Good memories. I have plenty here. But it was so easy for me to walk away. See, I’ve never really been attached to a place as much as I have a person.

I almost glance backward, but I know he’s not with me. Of course Maximoff offered, and even when I teased him about it, he still kept it on the table.

“I can go with you, Farrow. Seriously,” he said.

“Seriously, I’ll be okay talking to him myself.” My smile widened. “But it’s still cute you think I need my hand held.”

“Maybe I just want to hold your hand,” he countered firmly. Unwaveringly. It was hot as fuck, and the fact that he admitted to it struck me a thousand times more. For a split-second, I almost gave in.

Now, standing here alone, I wish I had.

You’re not the only stubborn one, wolf scout. I comb a hand through my hair and release a strained breath. When I’m face-to-face with my old man, I’m sure I’ll feel grateful he isn’t here. I don’t love the idea of Maximoff even being a foot from him.

Which means I’ve been harboring more animosity towards my dad than I’ve been admitting to myself. I wonder how long it’s been building.

At the front door, I don’t knock. I have a key, and I let myself in. He said to meet him in his home office.

I call out in the grand foyer, “Anyone home?” Just so I don’t startle Rachel. No signs of my stepmom. The house is eerily quiet, and once I enter his office, I shoot him a text.

I’m here.

He’s fast to reply and tells me to wait—that he’ll be here as soon as he can.

I flip my phone in my hand a couple times and scan his office. Being a part of the “med team” means I come here a lot more than I would otherwise. For meetings with my uncle and my father, mostly.

A filing cabinet stores paper-records of our patients. But all can be accessed via an online portal too.

I’ve stared at the framed certificates and awards on the cream walls too many times. His medical achievements are everywhere. Inescapable. Bookshelves house glass trophies and medical books, and I shouldn’t snoop around. I’ve never cared to.

Not as a teenager.

Not as a child.

But at twenty-nine, I go around his oak desk. The surface is always clean. He typically doesn’t leave shit out. No pens. No papers. No picture frames. Just a computer, which is off. He did leave something out today though. A magazine.

It’s an issue of Out Loud. The issue with me on the cover. Where my inked hand shields the left side of my face, and I have a slight smirk on the right side. I almost laugh remembering Maximoff’s reaction when he saw the cover for the first time.

He tried so hard to hide a grin. “Shut up,” he growled.

I didn’t shut up. “Sad you couldn’t keep it by your bed at sixteen?”

“And throw it in the trash, yeah.”

My smile stretches in the office, thinking about him, but it softens when I read the words on the cover.

BEING A BODYGUARD, DOCTOR, AND HUSBAND TO AN AMERICAN PRINCE…THE CAPTIVATING LIFE OF FARROW REDFORD KEENE HALE.

I didn’t gift the magazine to my father.

He either bought it himself or Rachel got it for him.

I rub a thumb across my lip piercing. Emotions tumble through me that I’m not trying to make sense of. I’m avoiding them, being honest here.

I roll out the chair, but I don’t sit down. “Walk the fuck away,” I mutter to myself, then shoot a look at the door. I’m hoping that someone comes in to save me from myself. Because I can’t even say what I’m searching for.

Still, I do it anyway—I open a side drawer.

Pens. I shift them aside and see a photo of him and Rachel at an art gallery. I pry it out, only to find a couple more photos under it. Returning the picture of Rachel, I take the other two out of the drawer.

My graduation photo. From Yale. Medical school. His arm is slung affectionately around me. Pride all over his face. Pride in his massive smile. My grandfather is on the other side of me, and my uncle beside him. A legacy of physicians in one picture.

I remember Rachel snapping it.  

I remember feeling accomplished. Proud of myself, of how much work it took to get there—of how much work it’d take to keep going. I’d start my residency at Philly General. My life was rerouting to the city I left.

I was going to be everything he wanted me to be. A doctor falling dutifully in line behind all the Keenes before me.

That scared me.

It doesn’t anymore. I’m certain I chose this. I chose everything I am, and my fears now are so different.

I slip the graduation pic under the last photo in my hand. The image catches my breath. I dazedly sink down into the chair and breathe through my nose to keep more emotions at bay.

Mom.

I’m staring at a young photo of my mom. She’s pregnant with me. Her warm brown hair is messy like she just woke up. She has on fuzzy slippers, a sleepy smile, and pink PJs. She’s in the kitchen and holding a carton of eggs.

It hits me like a ton of bricks. In ways it never has. She won’t be around to see my son. She’ll never know him, just like she never knew me, and I’m angry for a moment. Angry at my father. Because he’s alive. He’s here to be a grandparent to my son, but I wouldn’t ask him for a favor. I wouldn’t call him up to drop Ripley off with him for an hour.

It’s not that I don’t trust him. It’s that his love comes with stipulations, and I don’t want to dole out an IOU. I don’t want to feel indebted to him because he did a solid for me.

It was easier not caring.

Now I’m just pissed.

The door opens abruptly, and I stand and shove the photos back. I’m caught shutting the drawer—but not by my father.

Trip, my uncle, lets out a long, long whistle. “Going through Edward’s shit?” He motions to me with his stainless-steel thermos. “If you’re searching for his porn stash, you’re a few decades off and I can tell you it’s nothing that’d interest you. Unless you suddenly like great big knockers.”

I’m too on edge for this banter. “Still very gay.” I comb a rougher hand through my hair, rounding the desk while Trip surveys me up and down on his way to the leather couch.

He collapses on the cushions and kicks his feet on the coffee table, crossing his ankles. He even stretches out an arm. Getting comfortable. “What were you looking for?”

I raise my brows. “Not porn.”

“Hmmm,” he says, eyeing me again.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re in a mood. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

“Something like that.” It’s pissing me off. Everything. I smear a hand across my mouth, wanting to release the tension in my muscles. Normally, I’d just leave. I’d forget this. Forget Trip. Forget my old man. I’d walk so far away, but the whole point of being here is to wade in discomfort. Though I’m reminded of why I don’t do it.

This isn’t my favorite feeling. Life is too short to live inside it.

“Well, Uncle Trip is here.” He motions me to come forward. “Lay it on me.”

I stare blankly at him. “Thanks, but no thanks.” I rest my ass on the front of the desk and shove my hands in my pockets. Trying to relax. “How’s Sylvie?”

“Radiant, beautiful, the woman of my waking dreams.” His voice is pure levity, even when he goes on to talk about her struggles with morning sickness this time around. Then he asks, “How’s Maximoff?”

It’s a painful reminder he’s not here. “Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“He’s the same as always.”

Trip smiles into a sip from his thermos. What I assume is coffee. He’d be the first to admit he’s addicted to caffeine. His thermos is basically a third arm.

He’s staring at me now.

Just looking.

I roll my eyes and end up gripping the edge of the wooden desk on either side of me.  

Trip is much younger than my father. By ten years.

He’s nearly a spitting image of him from a decade ago. Longish ash-brown hair. Strong jaw and nose. Unshaven, like he could be a doctor in snow-capped mountains of Vail or Aspen. But instead of brown eyes, he has icy blue irises that contain more mirth than sorrow, more joy than pain.

Maximoff asked me what I thought of Trip. I told him on paper, he’d be considered the quintessential “cool” uncle.

“But he’s not that to you?” he wondered, probably thinking about his relationship with Garrison Abbey. Maximoff grew up with his uncle. Garrison lived with him when he was a kid. He had an impact on him.

Trip wasn’t around much. He was stuck in undergrad, med school, then residency. The times I did see him during holidays (which were infrequent the older I got), he’d go on and on about the women he was sleeping with.

Though, he talked often about Sylvie.

Sylvie is so smart. Sylvie is dedicated. Sylvie is too good for me.

She was his best friend he’d never cross a line with. She was an aspiring doctor, like him. He didn’t want to fuck with her dreams. But one day, he got with Sylvie.

They got married.

They had two boys.

Now she’s pregnant with their final kid.

Trip never stepped in the way of her goals. She’s a doctor, too. Once their last kid is a year old, she plans to officially join the med team.

“What are you doing here?” I ask since he’s just chilling.

“Your dad said you wanted to talk.”

I run my tongue over my molars, a grimace forming. “Yeah, to him.”

“He made it sound like a team meeting. I’m part of the team. Therefore, I’m here.” He raises his thermos in cheers, then takes a hefty sip.

“It’s not one. Sorry he wasted your time.” I tip my head towards the door. “You can go.”

Trip drops his feet to the floor, but he doesn’t stand. Bowing forward, he rests his elbows on his thighs. “What’s bothering you, Farrow?”

I let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, I’m not doing this.” I push away from the desk, and in a flash, he straightens up and stretches out an arm.

“Just wait a sec. Hold on. Backtrack.”

I stay put. My jaw tics as I clench down. “Okay.” I lift my brows. “What do you want me to say?”

“God, you are so much like him.” Trip sinks back against the cushion. “Not in every way, but that, that is Edward to a tee.”

“Yeah, right.” I wipe at my mouth again, trying to cool off.

“It is,” Trip says plainly. “You both love talking about the weather. Is it sunny? Yeah. Great. How’s Maximoff? Fine. I dig even slightly deeper, and it’s a brush off, a C U Next Tuesday, if you will.”

I sigh out into a graveled noise. “I did not come here for this shit.”

“Then why’d you come here? What are you doing here?” He gestures back to the desk. “You want to explain or you want to keep telling me to fuck off in so many ways?”

Do I want to explain everything to him? No. It’s taken months upon months and likely years to even decide to do this with my father. Having Trip in the middle is making this more complicated than it needs to be.

“I came here to have a conversation with him that isn’t about the weather or work. But even this, with you, is making me feel petulant.”

“Why?”

I tip my head back and forth. “Maybe because I’ve never been some angsty fucker and I’m not a teenager anymore. Even when I was, I didn’t ask much from him.”

“You think you’re asking a lot from him now?” Trip wonders.

I stare unblinking at the wall. Unsure of how I want to answer that.

“You’re right,” Trip says. “You’ve never been some angsty fucker. You’re my brilliant…brilliant twenty-nine-year-old nephew. You walk circles around us, you know. Really, you should be in surgery or the ED. Not doing family medicine.”

“I like the flexibility,” I remind him.  

“Same.” He raises his thermos again to that. “But I also don’t have your talent.” He says it matter-of-factly, not enviously.

I rest back against the desk. The compliments, I’m used to. Sometimes, I believe it’s their way of reminding me that this is where I’m supposed to be. That being a doctor is my calling. Because they’re so afraid I’ll bail again. Other times, I feel like it’s genuine praise. Like they’re proud I exist in this legacy. I’m a bright spot.

Not a stain.

“I barely want to talk with him about this shit,” I admit. “Because I’m fairly fucking certain it’s going to do more damage than good, and I’m not looking to add strain to our…whatever our relationship is.”

“Fair.” Trip nods a few times. “You’ve had your ups and downs with him. He’s done his best with you, under the circumstances of what happened. He was a single father raising a four-year-old. I mean, I can’t even imagine raising my sons without Sylvie.”

“Man, I’m not talking about my childhood. I am talking about two months ago.”  

It dawns on him. “Your wedding.” His face sobers.

I look away from him. Hurt crushes against me, and I want it gone. I want to feel nothing in this moment. I want to be so unaffected.

“He said you didn’t mind…you were okay that he was missing it,” Trip says just as the door swings open.

In walks Edward Nathaniel Keene IV.

Maximoff told me he thought my dad looked like Viggo Mortensen from Lord of the Rings, and I literally can’t unsee it now. The hair isn’t helping combat the comparison.

“Good, we’re all here…” He trails off at the serious look Trip is slipping him.

“You’re going to want to sit down for this. Or maybe stand,” Trip says. “Your son has something important to share.”

I rake my fingers through my hair again. “This really doesn’t need a moderator, Trip.”

“Trust me,” he says, “I think it does.”

My father has on khakis and an unbuttoned Columbia shirt, a plain tee underneath. He’s in great shape for his age, and since his hair is wet, I’m betting he came back from the gym. Confusion crinkles his brows. “What’s going on, Farrow?”

I drag my gaze across the floorboards. The words on the tip of my tongue, but releasing them means cutting him—and again, I struggle to do it. Because we work together. We have a working relationship, and I don’t want there to be tension every time I take a med call.

But it’s not like what exists now is that much better.   

“You need to tell him,” Trip urges me.

My father spins toward his younger brother for the answer.

“Farrow needs to tell you,” Trip expresses to him.

I’m standing five feet from my father, but I could be inches from him and it’d still feel like several football fields separate us. The distance has grown and grown over the years, to the point where I can’t even see how to reach him. I can hardly believe I’m trying now.

“Farrow.” He shifts his weight, smacking an arm at his side. “Jesus, are you quitting again? You’ve done good by being here for these families. Security can’t be better than what you provide them with—”

“I’m not quitting medicine,” I tell him, and the day I quit—on a Labor Day vacation comes slamming back into me. “I can’t forget anything. I mentally, physically cannot forget.”

Concern tightens his eyes now. “I know.” He nods. “I know. Is this about something you saw recently? Or the car crash? What you saw when you treated Maximoff? Do you need to talk to someone about it?”

I shake my head slowly.

“The things we experience can be hard,” he says in his medical voice. Like I’m his mentee now.

“This isn’t about that.” I am seconds from bailing. I peer at the door.

Trip must see. “Farrow needs to talk to you, Edward.”

I look my dad in the eyes. I’m glaring, to be honest.

He takes a seat beside his brother on the couch. “Then talk.” His tone is casual, easy-going, but tentative. Like he knows I’m going to unclip a grenade.

“I can’t forget,” I repeat. “I can let go of its effect on me, but I can viscerally still hear you. I’m not trying to be petty. I’m not vindictive. I’ve never wanted to bring things up as ammunition or to point fingers. I’ve been perfectly fine burying hatchets that you’ve swung at me—”

“That I’ve swung at you?” His brows catapult.

“I can’t forget,” I grit out. “Like Labor Day. The day I told you I quit my residency. I hear you calling me a disappointment. I hear you saying my mom wouldn’t want this for me.” Anger sears. “You’re throwing everything away, and I’m fucking glad she’s not here to see it.”

His face falls. Then he looks to his brother.

Trip seems horrified. He shields his eyes. “Eddie. You did not tell him that.”

“I was caught off guard…never in a million years did I think he’d quit for anything. Let alone security.” He swallows hard. Then squints at me like he’s staring into the sun. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought up Cassidy.” He stares faraway for a moment. “I loved your mom more than…more than comprehensible. She was…she was everything to me.”

He has her photo in his desk drawer. I know he loved her. I know Rachel respects his love for her.

“I wish you could’ve known her,” he mutters, and it’s not the first time he’s said it.

I choose to honor her in ways that doesn’t accompany grief. Because when he says shit like that, all I feel is a heaviness I want to expel.

“And how would she have felt,” I start to ask, “knowing you didn’t attend my wedding?”

He cups his hands but leans farther back beside Trip. “I think she would’ve understood, given the timing.”

“The timing?”

 Trip’s icy blue eyes dart between us like we’re volleying the grenade over a net.

“I had a medical symposium. I was speaking.”

This is pointless. “I get married once,” I say roughly. “You can cancel a speech.”

“There were multiple panels. But when I told you I wasn’t making it, I apologized to you, to Maximoff, and you never said there was a problem. You understood.” He whips his head to Trip. “Did he not?”

“I wasn’t on the phone call, Eddie.”

They both look to me.

“I understood you weren’t going to make it,” I explain, “because you prioritizing your job over me—it’s not a shock.”  

My dad scrapes a hand against his scruffy jaw. “I thought you understood the importance of me needing to be at the symposium. I was leading panels alongside Dr. Kilpatrick.”

His mentor.

“I didn’t want to care,” I admit. “I wanted to be fine with it. But knowing you chose to go to a medical whatever-the-fuck over going to Italy to…” I shake my head a few times, the words knotting in my throat. “I only have one parent—”

“Rachel—”

“I met her when I was practically out of high school, Dad. Come on.”

He sighs out.

“I only have you,” I emphasize. “And you weren’t there. I’m not getting married again, and when I look at you and see that you don’t even care that you missed it—”

“I didn’t know it meant that much to you.”

Trip is holding his breath.

I shift a glare to him, then back to my dad. “Why—why does it mean nothing to you?” I say coldly.

“It means more knowing you wanted me there this badly—I didn’t know, Farrow. I didn’t.”

I shouldn’t have had to beg him. He should’ve wanted to be there himself, but I can’t make someone care about me to that degree. “Would you have gone?” I ask him. “If I pleaded? If I told you I needed you to be there, would you really have?”

He rubs at his hands. “I would’ve tried to make it work. I could’ve flown in and made some of it, but it would’ve been tight.”

Trip flips the lid open and closed to his thermos. His downtrodden expression says the truth. My old man wouldn’t have made the wedding. When Trip sees I’m watching him, he gives me a sympathetic, slanted smile. “I was there.”

“Thanks for coming,” I say, not meaning it to be a dig at my father.

He takes it as one. “I wish you would’ve told me how you felt sooner.” My dad doesn’t yell but his voice is hot.

So is mine. “I wish you would’ve dropped everything to be there, regardless of how I felt.”

“I wish you understood why I couldn’t.”

“I wish you wanted to see me get married more than you wanted to talk to colleagues or med students or whoever the fuck. I wish you understood that I am more important than that.”

“I wish you knew how much I support you.” He’s close to yelling, but it’s compressed, subdued, controlled. “I wish you knew how much I talked about you at that conference. I wish you understood how much I love you.”

I glare. “I wish you loved me enough that I could quit medicine and it wouldn’t be a nuclear fallout.”

He glares back. “I wish you would’ve never changed your last name. You want to talk about the hatchets you threw at me? The ones that I buried?” Heat flares in his eyes, but mostly, it’s hurt.

Trip takes a larger swig of coffee.

I scrape two hands through my hair now. “You never said a thing about it.”

“Well, we both have that in common, don’t we?”

I grind my teeth. “I still have Keene in my name.”

“It’s not your last name. You didn’t even tell me you were dropping it. I heard from Loren Hale. And I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I always thought you at least understood what being a Keene meant to me, to your grandfather.”

The truth is, I didn’t think about him when I made that decision. “The family name lives on without me. Trip has sons.”

“You were supposed to have Five.” He’s not saying I was supposed to have five sons.  

“I was never going to name a son of mine Edward Nathaniel Keene the Fifth.” I nod towards my uncle. “Sylvie might have another boy. They’re free to use the name.”

“That’s true,” Trip says to my dad. Maybe partly to placate him. He’s upset.

“I wish your name meant more to you,” my father says. “I wish being a Keene meant more than being a Hale.”

“I wish you’d understand that it doesn’t mean anything less. Getting married to Maximoff wasn’t the death of me being a Keene.” I go to his desk, grab the Out Loud magazine, then toss it at him.

He catches it in two hands.

“It doesn’t say Farrow Redford Hale,” I tell him. “I could’ve dropped Keene completely, but I didn’t.”

My father skims the cover, his eyes watery.

Trip is smiling at it. “We’re all a bunch of handsome bastards.” Then he sees his brother overcome with emotion. “Eddie, Eddie.” He wraps an arm around his shoulders, but my father shoots to his feet. Trip slings backward with his hands (and thermos) up like he’s moving away from a hot stove.

He’s about to walk out. “Are we done here?” he asks me.

“Edward,” Trip nearly shouts. “Stay.”

“We can leave it here,” I say, my chest on fire.

“No, no.” Trip sprints over to the door. He barricades the exit. Leaning against the door and outstretching his arms. “You two. Talk.”

“Henry, move.” My father uses Trip’s actual name.

Henry Vicktor Keene.

Most everyone calls him Trip for “Triple” because he’s the third-born. Their sister Alice died when Trip was a teenager. Her friend was driving drunk. No one survived in the car. I’ve heard the story about twice in my entire life. Mostly in relation to Trip. Because he chose to never drink alcohol after her death.

 “I don’t know what you want from me, Farrow,” my father expresses. “I couldn’t be prouder of the man you are.” He raises the magazine. “But some things are bigger than us.” He points at the word doctor on the magazine.

“We took vows to help others. There are sacrifices we make. It’s a dedication. A commitment, I know,” I say with a strong nod. “It’s not always going to be easy. Being a doctor.”

His nose flares a little, his eyes reddening. “You don’t think it hurt me? Being a single father and not being able to say goodnight to you? I couldn’t tuck you into bed. The most time I had with you were breakfasts.”

“Why do you I think I love breakfast?” I retort.

He blinks back a swell of tears. “Cassidy would’ve wanted me there. She would’ve wanted me to see you get married. If she were here, I would’ve been there with her, but I couldn’t go without her. I couldn’t watch Lily walk you down the aisle…I’m sorry.”

Trip releases a long breath. He’s staring at me like he knew. Like he knew this was the depth of the reasoning the whole time, and now he’s on pins and needles waiting for my reaction.

I exhale, too. “Dwelling on the past is not my thing,” I tell my father. “I just want to move forward, and you know my son, Ripley Keene Hale—when I invite his grandparents to his birthday or some pre-k recital or whatever is going on in his life, I need you to know something.”

“Okay,” he nods, sniffing away his runny nose.

“He will see who shows up. He will see Loren and Lily because they will be there. I know for a fact that they will not miss a thing.”

I don’t say, Because I know who has shown up for me without me even asking. And it hasn’t always been you. I don’t slice him at the throat.

Because I’m not a cruel bastard. And some things are better unsaid.

I add, “And I’ve never asked anything of you. Not even to be at my wedding, but I’m asking you now to show up for him. To try to be present as a grandparent. Not as his doctor.”

My father lets out a long, long breath. “I want to be there for him. I can try.”

A weight lifts off me. My breathing steadies. I don’t want to expect too much, especially since these are just words. He hasn’t done anything to prove it yet, but I hold on to some hope. There’s no way to go forward without it.

Trip smiles a little at me, motioning to me with his thermos. “You were always so independent as a kid. I remember when you refused to be helped into the bathroom at Citizens Bank. You were four and you were adamant you could piss in a urinal yourself.” He laughs. “And you managed. All on your own.”

That’d been after my mom died. I remember Trip taking me to a Phillies game without my father.

Trip gestures to me again. “I think you want to ask for more from him, but you don’t know how to.”

“I don’t need more.”

“We learn how to live without things we need, Farrow. Keenes are like that. It doesn’t mean you don’t need them.”

That strikes me like a fist to my ribs. I did come here wanting more out of my father, but facing him now, my gut reaction is that I don’t need him. I can live without him. I can endure. That I just want more for my son.

More for myself?  

I watch my father run a knuckle under his watering eyes. His chest collapses. And when he catches my gaze, I tell him, “For right now, this is enough.”

He nods several times, then extends his hand. I grab him at the forearm—he’s already pulling me into his chest. His other arm is against my shoulders in a tight embrace, and he whispers, “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry. I love you.” His voice fractures, and we’re both holding it together like we’re trained to do. 

 We've been so excited to finally show more of the Keenes! We hope you enjoy seeing more into Farrow's life during this time. It's all coming together 🥰 Thank you so much for reading!!!

xoxo Krista & Becca

  “Farrow & The Keenes," Copyright © 2024 by K.B. Ritchie