Then she sets the letter down carefully and crawls across the bedroom floor and wraps her arms around me, face pressed into my chest.
I hold her. One hand in her hair, one at her back.
"Thank you," she says. Muffled, small. "I don't know if I'll go. But thank you."
"You're welcome."
A moment passes. She pulls back slightly, still in the circle of my arms, looking up at me.
"If I go," she says, "you can't drive me. I'm not being dropped off at art school in a town car."
"I'll take a different car."
"Logan."
"A subtle car."
She stares at me. "You don't own a subtle car."
"I can buy one." A pause. "I'll buy a subtle car."
She laughs — that surprised, unplanned sound. The one I'm collecting, adding to the inventory of her I intend to keep building for as long as she lets me. It fills the bedroom and fades and she shakes her head, and I take her into my arms.
She mentions, half into my collar, that she called her father yesterday. He said he's trying. Sober, or working toward it. A sponsor. A photo of Wren and her mother on his phone that he still looks at sometimes.
"Are you going to call him again?" I ask.
She considers. "I don’t think he’ll be popping by for family Thanksgiving any time soon. But yeah, I’ll probably call him again."
"Good," I say, and I mean it.
We end up on the bed.
“Speaking of family dinners,” I say. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“So?”
“So we have family dinner at La Sirena. With everyone."
She shifts beside me. "Isa?"
"Even Isa."
Something in my voice gives me away. She turns her head and looks at me with those gray eyes that catch more than I intend.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing."
"Logan."
"Just be there," I say. "Let them welcome you properly."
She studies my face for another second. Decides she'll get nothing more out of me. Returns her gaze to the ceiling.
"Fine," she says. "But if Isa is cold to me again in front of everyone, I'm blaming you."
"That's fair."
