When I finished, he said, “How do you feel?”
I thought about it.
“Like I did not betray myself.”
He smiled.
“That sounds like peace.”
It did.
Not happiness exactly.
Not yet.
But peace.
Part 8
It is June now, and I am writing this from the screened porch of the lake house that is still mine.
The locks are still new.
The alarm still blinks red at night.
The Wi-Fi password is something nobody in my family would ever guess.
My father and I remain estranged. That word used to scare me. Estranged. It sounded like failure. Now it sounds like distance with a lock on it. He has sent two birthday cards and one email about how “time is precious.” I have not answered. Maybe I will someday. Maybe I will not.
My mother and I have coffee once a month at a diner halfway between Charlotte and the lake. Thirty minutes. Public table. Separate checks.
She is different, but I do not build my life on that difference. I notice it. I respect the effort. I keep the boundary.
Keaton is still in his program. He calls every few weeks. Sometimes I answer. Sometimes I do not. When I do, he does not ask for money. That alone feels like a small miracle.
Elowen graduated in May, and I sat in the crowd with Uncle Penn and Bryony, cheering so loudly she laughed when she spotted us. Afterward, we took pictures under a white tent while the air smelled like sunscreen, cut grass, and cheap lemonade. My mother was there too, standing at a respectful distance. She did not try to force a family photo.
I noticed.
I did not reward it by pretending everything was healed.
Both can be true.
Sebastian keeps a toothbrush here now, but not a key. He has never asked for one. One evening, when I told him that mattered to me, he said, “A key should be offered, not hunted.”
That was when I knew I loved him.
Not because he wanted in.
Because he understood the door.
Sometimes, on quiet afternoons, I think about that Friday. My mother pounding on the door. My father asking what I had done to the house. The deputy standing on my porch. The black SUV leaving. The chocolate cake thawing too slowly under my fork.
