Staring at a pot of something like it’s personally wronged him.
• • •
“Dad.”
He turns.
And I just —
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been — I know I’ve been somewhere else. I know I left you with everything and I just disappeared into my own —”
“Ro.”
“I’m sorry. You deserved better than that. She would’ve wanted me to be here with you and I just —”
“Rowan.”
He crosses the kitchen.
Pulls me in the way he has my entire life.
Both arms.
All the way.
• • •
“I wanted you to be happy,” he says into my hair. “That’s all I’ve wanted. I hated watching the light go out of your eyes.
I would have done anything to give it back.”
I hold on.
“How you got through it is not for anyone to judge,” he says. “Not even you.”
I don’t say anything.
“She would’ve pushed Cassian through that window herself,” he adds.
I laugh into his shoulder.
He laughs too.
The kitchen fills with it.
We abandon whatever was happening on the stove.
Cassian quietly turns off the burner.
Nobody acknowledges this.
We end up in the movie room.
• • •
All three of us.
My dad picks something —
