“I held him over the tank,” Cassian adds.
My dad turns around.
Looks at me.
“Were you scared?”
“No,” I say.
“He cried,” Cassian says.
My dad laughs.
It’s a real laugh.
The kind I haven’t heard enough of lately.
The kind that sounds like him — big and easy and filling the whole kitchen.
Something loosens in my chest.
Cassian takes over the chicken without being asked.
This is becoming a pattern.
My dad leans against the counter and talks to him while he cooks, the way he used to when Cassian would come over after school, the way he’s always talked to him — easy and genuine, like a person he chose.
Like a son.
I sit at the kitchen table and watch them.
Her chair is empty.
It’s always empty now.
But tonight the kitchen is warm and something smells good and my dad is laughing and Cassian is here and it feels —
• • •
Not okay.
Not yet.
But closer.
Something like the shape of okay.
We eat together.
The three of us.
It’s the most normal thing that’s happened in months.
My dad tells the story about the time my mom tried to teach him to cook when they first moved in together and set off three separate smoke alarms.
I’ve heard it a hundred times.
I let him tell it again.
