Jonah went through them slowly, one at a time, and I watched something settle into his face that hadn't quite been there since the funeral — not closure exactly, but something close enough to sit beside it comfortably.
"He was here the whole time," Jonah said quietly. "I mean, obviously he was. I just didn't know he was paying that much attention."
"Neither did we," Diane said. "That's sort of the point we came here to make, honestly. We're not angry about the trust anymore. Preston explained it to me the same way he explained it to you — Dad wasn't wrong about how little we showed up. But we'd like it if that stopped being true from here forward. Not to fix the past. Just so it isn't true anymore, going forward, about the parts of him we still have access to."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means we'd like to know Jonah," Preston said. "Genuinely. Not out of guilt, though I'll admit some of that's still mixed in there somewhere. Our father spent the last four years of his life being looked after by a fourteen-year-old who didn't have to do it and never once asked for anything back. That's not nothing. We'd like to be part of whatever happens to that kid next, if he'll let us."
