He nods before I can add more. "They still haven’t gotten your dad’s headstone in yet."
"That’s okay." My voice catches. "I just want to say hi."
The drive is short, but it feels long. I roll my window down, let the late summer air spill in. It smells like rain-soaked soil and dying leaves. Like endings. Or maybe beginnings.
When we pull up, Brooks doesn’t wait. He steps out first and leads the way across the brittle grass, his gait slower than usual, reverent. I clutch the wildflowers against my chest like they might keep me from falling apart.
"Hi, Daddy," I whisper, kneeling in front of the tiny plastic marker with his name etched in flimsy letters. The earth is still raw here, the grass patchy and sparse. No stone yet. No permanence. Just absence.
I set the flowers down and run my fingers across the jagged blades of grass. It shouldn’t feel like this—temporary, forgotten. But death never waits for the details.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Brooks wiping a tear from his cheek. He turns away, giving me privacy.
"I came home," I say quietly. "I don’t know why I ever left. I just… couldn’t breathe here. And now I can’t breathe anywhere else."
My throat tightens and the rest of the words get stuck. There’s so much I want to tell him. About LA. About Brooks. About all the ways I failed and all the ways I tried. But none of it matters now.
Instead, I let the silence stretch between us, me and this man who raised me. Me and the grief that won’t let go.
And for once, I stop trying to fix it.
I just sit with it.
With him.
And let myselffeel.
After a few minutes, I rise and wrap my arms around myself. I still can’t believe he’s gone.
Sometimes it feels like he’s just back at the house sitting in his recliner, half-watching a game, yelling at commercials.
But he’s not.
He’s not coming back.
And somehow, we have to learn to live around that absence. We have to build lives in the shape of what’s missing.
I came back because I thought I could rebuild this place. But maybe it’s not the house that needs fixing. Maybe it’s me.
Brooks places a hand gently on my shoulder, grounding me. I suck in a breath—shaky and raw—like I haven’t been breathing at all. But it comes. I breathe.Finally.
The drive home is quiet. My gaze stays locked out the windshield, but my thoughts scatter. I feel everything and nothing at the same time.
Maybe that’s normal.
Maybe thathasto be normal now.
At the house, we put away groceries. Our elbows brush once at the counter.
"Sorry," Brooks mumbles.
I nod, even as my heart pinches at the contact.
God, I wish this didn’t have to be so hard. So awkward.
But it is. This is what normal looks like now. My new, fractured normal.
The screen door bangs open and Jasper stumbles in like a chaotic storm. Wren is right behind him, trying and failing to corral the mess.
