The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

paused at the doorway, and when he turned around, his face was unreadable.
    “Or take him with you,” she urged.
    He draped his jacket over his arm. “Do you want to go?”
    “Sure.” Steve drummed his fingers on the table. “Why not? That sounds like fun.”
    After a moment, his father’s mouth twitched, exhibiting the tiniest and briefest of smiles. Had they been at the poker table,
     Steve doubted he would have shown even that much.
    “You’re lying,” he said.
    His mom passed away suddenly a few years after that encounter when an artery burst in her brain, and in the hospital, Steve
     was thinking of her sturdy kindness when his father woke with a low wheeze. He rolled his head and spotted Steve in the corner.
     At that angle, with shadows playing across the sharp angles of his face, he gave the impression of being a skeleton.
    “You’re still here.”
    Steve set aside the score and scooted the chair closer. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
    “Why?”
    “What do you mean, why? Because you’re in the hospital.”
    “I’m in the hospital because I’m dying. And I’d be dying whether you were here or not. You should go home. You have a wife
     and kids. There’s nothing you can do for me here.”
    “I want to be here,” Steve said. “You’re my father. Why? Don’t you want me here?”
    “Maybe I don’t want you to see me die.”
    “I’ll leave if you want.”
    His father made a noise akin to a snort. “See, that’s your problem. You want me to make the decision for you. That’s always
     been your problem.”
    “Maybe I just want to spend time with you.”
    “You want to? Or did your wife want you to?”
    “Does it matter?”
    His dad tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. “I don’t know. Does it?”
    From his spot at the piano, Steve heard an approaching car. The headlights flashed through the window and raced across the
     walls, and for an instant he thought that Ronnie might have gotten a ride home. But just as quickly the light shrank to nothing,
     and Ronnie still wasn’t here.
    It was after midnight. He wondered whether he should try to find her.
    Some years ago, before Ronnie had stopped talking to him, he and Kim had gone to see a marriage counselor whose office was
     located near Gramercy Park, in a renovated building. Steve remembered sitting beside Kim on a couch and facing a thin, angular
     woman in her thirties who wore gray slacks and liked to press her fingertips together. When she did, Steve noticed she didn’t
     wear a wedding band.
    Steve was uncomfortable; the counseling had been Kim’s idea, and she’d already gone alone. This was their first joint session,
     and by way of introduction, she told the counselor that Steve kept his feelings bottled up inside but that it wasn’t his fault.
     Neither of his parents had been expressive people, she said. Nor had he grown up in a family that discussed their problems.
     He sought out music as an escape, she went on to say, and it was only through the piano that he learned to feel anything at
     all.
    “Is that true?” the counselor asked.
    “My parents were good people,” he answered.
    “That doesn’t answer the question.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
    The counselor sighed. “Okay, how about this? We all know what happened and why you’re here. I think what Kim wants is for
     you to tell her how it made you feel.”
    Steve considered the question. He wanted to say that all this talk of feelings was irrelevant. That emotions come and go and
     can’t be controlled, so there’s no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions,
     since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.
    But he didn’t say this. Instead, he threaded his fingers together. “You want to know how it made me feel.”
    “Yes. But don’t tell me.” She gestured to his wife. “Tell Kim.”
    He faced his wife, sensing her anticipation.
    “I felt…”
    He was in an office