“Hi,” I said, because it was the only word that didn’t burn on the way out.
His lips curled into the faintest broken smile.
“You look just like your mom when you’re mad.”
That nearly shattered me.
I laughed, a short shaky waterlogged sound. “I’m not mad,” I whispered, even though a small part of me still was. A part of me that remembered the screaming matches. The slurred voicemails. The quiet from the other end of the phone line that lasted months.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” he said, his voice rough like sandpaper. “But Gen… I’m clean.”
My breath caught mid-inhale.
“I went to rehab,” he went on. “Stayed the whole time, did everything they told me to, I’ve been clean for over two years now.”
Tears blurred the edges of my vision.
“I wanted to call you, every day I wanted to call you. But I, I didn’t want to say it until I knew I could mean it. You didn’t deserve to have a father who was just trying. You deserved a father who was doing.”
My throat tightened. My grip on his hand tightened too.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For everything, for leaving you with the weight of my mistakes, for disappearing. For letting you believe I didn’t care.”
He looked away, his jaw trembling before he smiled again—soft and sad. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I want to be in your life again. However you’ll let me. Even just a little.”
I couldn’t speak. My voice had vanished.
“And one day,” he added, looking down, “I want to try to win your mom back. Even if it takes the rest of my life.”
That’s when I finally exhaled the breath I’d been holding since I was sixteen.
The one I didn’t realize I’d been carrying in my lungs like guilt, like grief.
I didn’t say anything, I just held his hand tighter.
Maybe forgiveness didn’t have to come with a grand gesture or some cinematic speech. Maybe it started here, quietly. In a sterile hospital room where the past still lingered, but hope was finally flickering in the corner of the room like light through a crack in the wall.
Maybe this was healing.
Maybe it was me.
And if he could change, if the man who broke everything could find his way back to himself, maybe Aspen could, too.
Maybe love doesn’t mean you’re perfect, maybe it just means you keep choosing to come back.
***
I spend the night at Adam’s house, and the guest room is already set up for me. Fresh sheets, a candle flickering on the nightstand, even a glass of water beside the bed. It’s so perfectly put together that it almost feels like he knew I’d show up today.
Unless… this room always looks like this.
Knowing Adam, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Still, something about the care in every small detail, the fluffed pillows, the folded blanket at the foot of the bed, makes my throat tighten. Like he was waiting for me to come home before I even decided to.
With how close I am to my two brothers, I’m disappointed in myself. Disappointed that I’ve let this much time pass without showing up for them. They’ve built lives here in California, entire routines and friendships and inside jokes I’m not part of. I don’t know what their day-to-day looks like anymore. I don’t even know what their favorite foods are these days. And that realization? It stings.
A soft knock on the door pulls me out of my thoughts.
