You assumed I'd rather protect myself than do the right thing. And every single person who's ever assumed that about me has been wrong. Cross's smile flickered. You're not thinking clearly, he said. This is your daughter.
Don't. Daniel's voice came down like a hammer. Don't you say her name. Don't you put her name in your mouth in the same breath as this filth. He leaned forward.
You want to know about my daughter, Mr. Cross? Let me tell you about my daughter. When she was 5 years old, she asked me why we didn't have as much as the other kids at her school. And I told her the truth. I said, "Baby, we don't have a lot of money, but we've got something a lot of rich people never get.
We've got the kind of name you can say out loud in any room and never once feel ashamed of. " I told my little girl that a good name is worth more than a good bank account. His eyes burned. And you're sitting here asking me to sell that. To betray a woman who trusted me to hand her broken body over to the wolves so you can steal what her father built. And to teach my daughter by doing it that when things get hard, Daddy sells people out to save his own skin.
He shook his head slowly. You've got the wrong man. You dug up my worst mistake and you don't even understand what it was. I broke the law once to try to save the woman I loved from dying. That's the worst thing I ever did and I'd do it again because it came from love.
But this what you're asking this comes from cowardice. And I would rather lose my freedom than let my daughter grow up watching me become a coward. The hotel bar was very quiet. "You'd lose her," Cross said, and his voice had gone cold and flat, the pleasantness stripped away. "You understand that you'd go to prison.
Prine would get custody. That little girl would grow up without a father because you decided your principles mattered more than she does. " And that was the blow that landed. Daniel felt it go in, felt the terror of it, the real and specific horror of Lily growing up in Walter Prine's cold house of Lily being told her father was a criminal of Lily's face the day they took him away. His hands were shaking. He wasn't going to pretend otherwise, but he'd made his choice the second he understood what he was being asked to do.
"You'd better make your phone call then," Daniel said. His voice broke on it, but he said it. "Because I'm not doing it. I'm not selling Victoria Hale to you for anything. Not for money, not for my freedom, not even His throat closed.
"Not even for the thing you think will make me fold. If I have to lose my daughter to keep from becoming the kind of man who'd do what you're asking, then I'll lose my daughter knowing she'll grow up and understand someday why her father did the hard thing instead of the easy one. That's the last gift I've got to give her. And you can't take it because it's the one thing you never had to begin with. " He stood up. "Make your call, Mr. Cross," Daniel said.
"I'll be waiting. " And he walked out of the hotel bar on legs that barely held him, and he made it to his car, and he sat behind the wheel in the parking garage and shook, and then he did the only thing left to do. He drove to Walter Prine's house in New Jersey because Daniel Carter had learned one thing in 36 years of being poor and being poor again, the only way to take away someone's power over you is to stop being afraid of the the they're holding. Cross's whole play depended on Daniel being terrified of that confession getting out. So, Daniel was going to get out ahead of it. He was going to look Walter Pine in the eye and tell him everything before Cross could.
And he was going to take his chances with the truth. It was 6:30 when he pulled into the driveway of the big cold house where Sarah had grown up. Walter Pine answered the door himself, an old man now thinner than Daniel remembered, and his face when he saw who it was went hard and closed. "You've got some nerve," Pine said. "Yeah," Daniel said.
"I do. Can I come in? I need to tell you something, and I need to tell you before somebody else tells you a twisted version of it. " "10 minutes, Walter. Then if you want to call the police, I'll sit right here and wait for them. " Something in Daniel's face must have gotten through because Pine stepped back and let him in. Daniel told him everything.
Not the sanitized version. All of it. The forged loan Yes, that Pine already knew. But the part he didn't know, the man named Roland Cross, the woman named Victoria Hale, the offer, the whole rotten deal. Daniel laid it all out on Walter Pine's kitchen table, the same table where he'd once eaten Thanksgiving dinner as a young man in love with the old man's daughter.
"He wants me to betray a woman who trusted me," Daniel finished. "And he's using your confession to make me do it. So, I came to tell you first because you deserve to hear it from me. I forged your name, Walter. I stole from you.
It was the worst thing I ever did, and I've been ashamed of it every day for 3 years. And I understand if you want to press charges. I do. I broke the law, and there should be a consequence for that, and I've made my peace with it. " He put his hands flat on the table. "But I couldn't do the thing Cross asked.
I couldn't sell out a good person to save myself, not even to keep from losing Lily. And I needed you to know why before it all comes down. That's all. That's why I'm here. Walter Prine was silent for a long, long time.
And then the old man did something Daniel never in a thousand years expected. He got up. He walked to a drawer in the kitchen. He took out a piece of paper and he came back and he set it on the table in front of Daniel and Daniel looked down and saw that it was the confession. The original.
The one that was supposed to be in a safe deposit box. "It was never in a bank," Prine said gruffly. "I told you that so you'd take it seriously. It's been in that drawer for 3 years. " He sat back down heavily. "You want to know something, Daniel?
I've hated you for a long time. I hated that Sarah married you. I hated that she chose a man with nothing over everything I wanted for her. And when I found that forged loan, I thought, 'There it is. There's the proof he's exactly the low kind of man I always knew he was.'" His voice grew rough.
"But I've watched you these 3 years. Watched you raise that little girl alone. Watched you work yourself half to death and never once come asking me for a dime, even though I'd have made you crawl for it. And I've wondered more than once if maybe I had it backward. If maybe my Sarah saw something in you that I was too proud and too stupid to see. " He picked up the confession and he tore it in half and then in half again.
"You committed a crime to try to save my daughter's life. " Walter Prine said, his eyes wet. "My daughter. You'd have done anything to save her, just like I would have. And I've spent 3 years punishing you for loving her the same way I did. " He let the pieces fall to the table. "There's no confession, Daniel.
There never was as far as anybody's ever going to know. You go tell your Roland Cross that the only copy just became confetti and the man whose name got forged doesn't wish to press any charges and never did. He stood, and he put out his hand, an old man's hand, trembling slightly. "You're a better man than I ever gave you credit for. Sarah knew it.