Declan
Ronan calls Billie four weeks after he told me to get out.
She takes it into the other room and closes the door. I sit at the table and wait.
She comes out twenty minutes later. Her face careful. Not devastation. Not relief. Something in between.
"He wants me to come for dinner Sunday," she says. "He said to bring you."
I go still.
"Are you okay with that?" she says.
"He's your dad."
"That's not what I asked."
I look at my coffee. "I'm okay with it."
She crosses the kitchen. Puts her hand flat on my chest.
"I'll be here," I say.
"I know." She kisses me once. "I'll be right next to you."
***
The front door. I have knocked on this door a thousand times. It has never felt like this.
Billie opens it without knocking. "Dad. We're here."
Ronan appears from the kitchen. He looks at Billie first, and his eyes drop to her stomach and stay there for a moment. Something moves through his face — not the disappointment from a month ago. Something to do with time passing whether or not you've caught up with it.
"Come here," he says to her. She goes and he holds her, careful of the stomach.
Then he looks at me over her shoulder.
"Dec," he says.
"Ronan."
"Come in."
The table is the same table it has always been. Ronan at the head. Billie beside him. The chair I've sat in for thirty years. I sit in it. Same wood, same angle, same window light. Last time I sat here I was hiding. Tonight there's nothing hidden.
Ronan serves Billie first, then me. He puts food on my plate and the ordinariness of the gesture does something to my chest I wasn't prepared for.
Ten minutes in, he sets his fork down.
"I need to say some things," he says.
The table goes quiet. Billie's hand finds my knee underneath it.
"I'm angry," Ronan says. "I'm still angry. I'm angry you didn't tell me. I'm angry about the months you sat at this table knowing. I'm angry that my daughter had a whole life I didn't know about and you knew about it before I did." He pauses. "I'm also angry at myself. Because she didn't come to me. And I've been asking myself why for a month and the answer I keep arriving at is that I made it too easy for her to perform fine." Helooks at Billie. "You've been performing fine for me since your mother died."
Billie's hand tightens on my knee.
"That's on me," he says. "I was so grateful you were holding it together that I didn't ask what it cost you." He looks at me again. "There is no version of this that I find easy. But she's happy. I've seen it. And I can't take that from her." A pause. "I don't forgive you yet. I want to be clear about that. But I invited you to my table because you've been at my table for thirty years and because my daughter loves you and because there's a baby coming and I'd like to be in the room for that."
