I didn’t know how to finish.
I didn’t want to correct her, not when I understoodexactlywhat she meant. Not when I’d spent the last few days trying not to think about what he meant to me too.
I didn’t want to make it a lesson in biology or legality or complicated relationships that I thought were just supposed to be sex but turned my whole world upside down. I also didn’t want to dim the light in her face by drawing boundaries she didn’t understand.
So instead I offered the only truth I could manage. “He might not be able to come trick-or-treating with us, but we can ask.”
Winnie didn’t flinch. She just shrugged, casual and certain. “He will.”
The faith in her voice—so pure, so unshaken—was a sucker punch to the chest.
Winnie set her shoulders. “I know you’re sad about him for being late to my concert,” she said, climbing onto the stool beside mine. “But you don’t need to be. I already forgave him.”
My breath caught.
“You two just need to talk,” she added, swinging her feet. “It’ll be fine.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
In her small, unbothered voice, she’d spoken the one thing I was too afraid to believe in—that maybe it really was that simple. That maybe forgiveness didn’t have to be tangled and conditional and hard-earned.
Maybe it could just be offered. Freely. Lovingly. Like a handful of crooked carrots pulled from the earth.
She leaned against me, her little head warm against my shoulder.
I looked down at her, this wise little person in a tiny body, and felt the crack deepen.
Because I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe in a world where all it took was a conversation and a costume.
So I smiled, small and tired, but real.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll see.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
AUSTIN
I officially hatedmy half of the duplex.
It was quiet in that way that made my ears ring a little—like the silence was trying too hard. I was busy pretending not to miss the sound of bare feet thumping across hardwood or a little girl humming the theme from her cartoons for the thousandth time.
I sat at the small kitchen table, surrounded by the wreckage of a late dinner I barely remembered eating. There was a half-finished container of lo mein, sweet-and-sour sauce smeared across a napkin, and a sweating beer I had taken three sips of and then forgotten.
Across from me, my laptop glowed with an open tab for air-filtration systems. Beside it sat a manila folder filled with bank statements and loan applications for a house I didn’t own yet.
I leaned back in the chair, dragged a hand over my face, and let the silence stretch.
It wasn’t that I regretted giving Selene space.
I had promised I wouldn’t crowd her. I had an insatiable need to show her I could listen—that I could learn. And I meant it.
Butfuck, I missed them.
I missed the way Winnie would barrel into me with a fierce hug, all wild ponytails and snack requests. I missed seeing Selene’s face when she’d laugh at something on TV that was genuinely stupid. I missed the feel of them in my life—messy, noisy, beautiful.
Now?
The air felt thin, like something vital had been sucked out of it.
