"It's not what I imagined," she says finally.
"What did you imagine?"
She takes a breath. "Something darker. Something that matched what I felt about it for all those years." She looks at the vegetable garden. "Someone grows tomatoes."
"Jules. Pops' old lady. She'll have you weeding it before the end of the month if you give her half a chance."
Savannah almost smiles. She's still taking it in, the ordinariness of it, the way families live inside these gates. She'd always known what I chose instead of her. But knowing it and seeing the reality of it are two different things. She's seeing it now. She's seeing the life that's been here all along.
"Come on," I say, and take her hand. "EJ's been up since seven. He'll want feeding."
SAVANNAH
EJ is at the door before Austin's even finished knocking.
He looks at me, then at Austin, and then back at me. His whole face changes, the way a child's face changes when they get something they wanted and weren't quite sure they were going to get. "Savvy," he says, like it's already been settled.
"Savvy?" I repeat.
"It's shorter." He grabs my hand and pulls me inside.
Austin comes in behind us and a woman I dimly recognize from years ago is gathering her bag from the kitchen, smiling at us. Lily Rose. She looks at me and says it's good to have me back. She squeezes Austin's shoulder on the way out.
“I hope she’ll stop you being miserable all the time,” Lily Rose says to his face with complete cheerfulness while he shakes his head.
After she leaves Austin goes to the kitchen and starts making pancakes and EJ pulls me by the hand to the other end of the house.
"Do you want to see my room?"
"Yeah," I say. "Show me."
His room is small and full. Books in a stack by the bed with the spines bent back the way books get when you've read them too many times. A model bike on the windowsill that he's been building, half the pieces still in the box. A football jersey pinned to the back of the door.
And on the wall above his bed, taking up most of the space, is a drawing.
It's done in marker on a big sheet of paper that's been taped at the corners, slightly crooked, clearly done with a lot of care and a lot of time. A row of figures on bikes, each one different. He's given them different cuts, different body shapes, different road names written in wobbly capitals underneath. Uncle Brick is the biggest after the one in the middle. Uncle Cash and Uncle Ramsey are drawn side by side, their bikes touching. Uncle Shadow is off to one side, slightly apart from the others. Uncle Pops has a wide face and a grin.
In the middle, biggest of all, is Austin. EJ has drawn him with his cut and his bike and something that might be his tattoos, little blue lines on the arms. Underneath, in the biggest letters: DAD.
I stand in front of it for a long time.
"I did it last year," EJ says, standing at my elbow with his arms crossed, looking at it critically. "I've been meaning to add Uncle Seb but I haven't done it yet."
"It's really good, EJ."
"Uncle Brick's arms are too long."
"They look right to me."
He squints at it. "They're too long. I noticed after I'd already done it in marker so I couldn't fix it." He points to Cash andRamsey. "I didn't know how to draw two people on one bike so I put them on separate bikes, but I put them right next to each other because they're always next to each other."
"That makes sense."
"Uncle Shadow kept moving when I was trying to draw him, so I put him over there." He points to the figure in the corner. "He stands like that anyway."
He's right. Shadow does stand like that. There's something in the drawing, in the way EJ has positioned all of them, that's more accurate than a nine-year-old should be able to manage. He's been watching these men his whole life. He knows exactly how each of them takes up space.
He looks at me. "Do you want to be in it?"
