“She thought she was sending me a DM,” Tre chuckled and the table came apart. Even Julian, who was trying hard to be the mature one at the table, gave up and laughed.
“See, that's my problem with this family,” Tre said over the laughter. “Y'all wouldn't know art if it slapped you in the face. This is why I don't share things.”
“You shareeverything,” Simone said. “That's the problem.”
“You good, Unc?” Julian asked. Reggie had been turning a fork through food he hadn't eaten, a smile pushed onto his face a half-second late every time the rest of us broke.
Reggie set his fork down and looked at it like it had gotten heavy. “Need to talk to y’all about something.”
The lightness in the room shifted and the conversations died mid-sentence.
“About your daddy.”
I have never heard a table go that quiet that fast. Simone’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth and stayed there. Zion and Tre looked stunned. Beside me, Julian did not move at all, not a muscle, not a breath I could see. He just got very still, the way a thing gets still when it’s holding itself together by holding itself still.
“I saw him not too long ago,” Reggie continued, his voice heavy with something that sounded like exhaustion. “He asks about y’all every time. Y’all know that. Asks how you’re doing. What the grandkids are up to. Whether you’re happy.”
His eyes found Julian across the table. “He loves y’all. Misses y’all. But he’s got it in his head that if he came back now, after all this time, he’d just tear up the good things you got going. So he stays gone.”
“Then he’s correct.” Julian said it flat like a ruling he’d handed down.
Simone gasped slightly and her eyes went bright. Tre opened his mouth. “Julian, maybe we—” Then he shut it and looked at his plate. Zion swallowed hard. Taryn put a hand on his back, rubbing it like she was trying to keep him grounded. Raschad pulled Simone in against his side without a word.
I felt Julian beside me like a held breath. He didn’t look at me. I understood, watching the side of his face, that he couldn’t.
“Jules,” Reggie said, quietly. “I just think it’s gonna take y’all going to get him yourselves… to bring him home. He'll die out there alone before he ever walks back through a door he broke.”
He turned the fork over again. “But he's getting old. Slower every time I see him. And I'm telling you, if y’all don’t go out there and put a hand on him and saycome home...”
“We tried, Unc.” Julian's voice was controlled. “For years. Begged him to come home.Beggedhim. He made his choice.”
“That was different then. He was —”
“If he wants to be in our lives, he knows where we are. He’s gonna have to come to us. Or he stays gone.”
It came out harsh, and I watched it reach Simone, watched her flinch like she’d been the one it hit.
Despite the looks on their faces that said they might’ve felt differently, nobody argued. There wasn’t a discussion between the four of them. They just sat there, accepting the finality of Julian’s decision settling over the table like a shroud.
Under the table I put my hand on Julian’s thigh. “Julian,” I said, low. “Maybe you?—”
“Alyssa,” he snapped, cutting me off with my own name, then heard himself do it. His hand found mine on his leg and pressed it. “I’m sorry,” he said, quieter.
I nodded and squeezed his thigh. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I can’t talk about this right now.” He stood up and his chair scraped loud against the floor. “I’ll be at Belmead,” he said to me, not quite looking in my eyes. “Take your time.”
“Thank you for dinner, Simi.” He walked around the table and kissed the top of her head and she leaned into it half a second. He squeezed Zion’s shoulder, dapped Tre and Raschad and nodded to the rest of the room. Then he was gone, the front door closing behind him with a sound that had a period on the end of it.
I sat frozen in my chair, my heart aching because he’d just shut down any possibility of healing, for himself, for his siblings, for his relationship with a father who was getting older every day. And he'd done it with the kind of quiet authority that made it hard to argue.
Nobody talked for a minute. Then Reggie let out a breath. “Welp. That about went like I figured.”
“He’s just protecting us,” Simone said to her plate.
“From having our father back?” Tre’s voice came out choked.
“From hoping for something that probably won’t come through,” Zion said. “He doesn’t want us to be let down, is all.”
