I eat. The pot roast is good. Twenty years of the same recipe and it's always good.
Ten minutes in, Ronan 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 keep my hands on the table where Ronan can see them because he deserves that.
"I've had a month," Ronan says. He's looking at his plate. Not at me. "I've had a month to sit with this and I want to say what I've been sitting with."
"Okay," I say.
"I'm angry." He looks up. His eyes on mine. "I'm still angry, Dec. I'm angry that 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 angry that you were the one she went to instead of me."
The kitchen is quiet. The clock. The candle.
"I know," I say.
"I'm not finished." His voice is steady. This is a man who has rehearsed this, or at least thought about it enough that the words come in order. "I'm also angry at myself. Because my daughter built an entire career and an entire relationship and was going through things I should have been there for, and she didn't come to me. And I've been asking myself for a month why she didn't come to me and the answer I keep arriving at is that I made it too easy for her to perform fine." He looks at Billie. "You've been performing fine for me since your mother died."
Billie's hand tightens on my knee. She doesn't say anything.
"That's on me," Ronan says. "Some of that is on me. I was so grateful you were holding it together that I didn't ask what it cost you to hold it together. And then Declan shows up and apparently you could be yourself with him in a way you couldn't be with me and that—" His voice does something. Not a crack. A roughness. "That's hard to sit with."
"Dad—"
"Let me finish." He looks at me again. "You're forty-eight years old and she's twenty-one and she's my daughter and you've been my closest friend for thirty years. There is no version of this that I find easy." A pause. "But she's happy. I've seen it. She's been happy in a way I haven't seen since before her mother died and I can't — I'm not going to take that from her. I'm not going to make her choose."
The clock. The candle. Billie's hand on my knee and her father's eyes on my face.
"I don't forgive you yet," he says. "I want to be clear about that. I'm not there yet. Maybe I will be. I don't know. 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—" He stops. Starts again. "I'd like to be in the room for that. For the baby. For whatever this becomes."
"You will be," I say. "You'll always be in the room."
He looks at me. Long. Measuring something.
"I need to know one thing," he says.
"Ask."
"Are you staying."
"Yes."
"Not because she's pregnant. Not because it's the right thing."
"Because I love her." The words come out steady. Not unfamiliar anymore. Not in this room, at this table, to this man. "Because I love her and I'm staying and I'll be whatever you need me to be, Ronan. Less than before. Different. Whatever you can live with. But I'm not leaving."
He's quiet for a long time. Billie's hand on my knee. Cian's eyes on his beer. The pot roast cooling on the table.
"Okay," Ronan says.
Not a resolution. Not warmth. Just the word, carrying everything he can carry right now. And it's enough. It's exactly enough.
Billie exhales beside me. The sound of a woman who's been holding her breath for a month.
The dinner continues. Ronan pours wine — mine without comment — and asks Billie about the baby. Due date, doctor, whether she's taking vitamins. Practical questions, the questions of a man who is going to be a grandfather and who has decided to start there because starting there is something he knows how to do.
Cian tells a story about a coworker that is designed to make the table laugh and it works. Billie laughs. Ronan laughs. I don't laugh but my mouth does something and Cian catches it and nods once, very slightly.
