It wasn't dramatic. It was slow and careful and supervised and sometimes I took a step back before I took a step forward and my therapist said that was normal and I mostly believed her. There are still bad days. There are still mornings where the weight of everything sits on my chest and I have to remind myself it's just weather, not climate. Not permanent.
But they're fewer now.
And on the days they come, Cassian is there.
He doesn't say much. He never has. He just shows up — sits down next to me on the floor, or brings me coffee I didn't ask for, or puts one hand on the back of my neck the way he does, steady and certain, like he is telling me something without words.
I'm here.
I'm not leaving.
You're okay.
• • •
I'm also, for the record, now technically the primary breadwinner of this household, which is information I bring up constantly and with great enthusiasm.
"I'm your sugar daddy," I told Cassian last Tuesday.
"Please stop saying that."
"I provide for this family —"
"You work from home in sweatpants."
"From HOME. In COMFORT. Because I can AFFORD to."
He looked at me for a long, patient moment.
"I'm going to therapy," he said. "This is my real trauma."
• • •
I work in product design now. Remote. I took the job two years ago and I still sometimes have to stop and realize that I get to do something I love in a house I love with people I love and that this is real and it is mine and I don't have to be careful with it.
I'm allowed to have this.
I'm allowed.
It was a Thursday when Cassian came home from his father's house.
Not a normal Thursday. A bad one.
This was eight months ago, just after the sentencing. His father had been in custody for six months by then — arrested after the teenage son of a long-term client came forward. The family had trusted him for years. The boy had been around him since he was small.
Cassian found out the same way everyone finds out things like that — a phone call, a name in a report, a terrible and unsurprising click of everything you have ever feared about the person who raised you finally snapping into focus.
He didn't cry.
He sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
Then he said, quietly, "I need to get my stuff out of there."
"I'll come with you," I said.
"No. I need to do this one alone."
• • •
