“I’ve been treating them like they are.”
“What if they’re not?”
I sat with that. “Danny’s death happened to him, to me, to his mother. Reyes sold the route. Danny stepped forward. I survived it.” I stopped. “But what I did after. The drinking. Bea. Those were choices. Even if I was falling apart, I still chose.”
“Can you hold them separately?”
“I’ve been using one to explain the other. Like if Danny’s death caused everything that came after, then none of it was a choice. It’s all one disaster.”
“But?”
“But I didn’t fail Danny. I did fail Bea. Those are different.” I looked at Pete. “Not absolved because I had a reason.”
“No. You’re understood, and you’re responsible. Both at once.” He sat back. “That’s what this looks like when you’re doing it right.”
I sat with that.
“And the thing with Bea,” I said. “I want her back. That hasn’t changed. But I’ve stopped measuring everything against whether it’s moving me closer to her. Last week I got called in on a route adjustment at eleven at night. I handled it and went back to bed without lying awake analyzing whether being responsible and calm was the kind of man she’d notice.”
“Good.”
“But then I felt guilty about that too.”
“Of course you did. You’re worried that not suffering means you’ve stopped caring.”
“Yes.”
“Does that feel true?”
I thought about the birthday—four seconds of eye contact over the boys’ heads. About the way I still noticed her car at club events. About the way I’d turned down a run last month partly because the route went past her office building and I didn’t trust myself to ride by without slowing down.
“No. I haven’t stopped caring.”
“Then what you’re describing isn’t detachment. It’s stability. The work has given you a floor.” He paused. “You still want her back. But you’re no longer falling without one.”
“What if she never comes back?” I asked. “What if this is just who I am now, and she decides it’s not enough?”
“You’ll have a floor to stand on when you find out.” Pete was direct about it, no softening. “It will hurt. You won’t fall as far. And you’ll still have everything you’ve built.”
“It doesn’t feel like enough.”
“No. It wouldn’t. But it wasn’t that long ago that ‘enough’ wasn’t on the table at all.”
I walked out into the rain, hands in my pockets. Halfway to the truck I pulled out my phone and looked at Colt’s picture of Danny again. The kid still looked skeptical. Could have been wind.
Chapter 34
?
— Bea —
The breaking point came unexpectedly on Thursday evening, late—nearly 7:00 PM. My last client of the day had just left, and I was sitting at my desk, staring at the empty chair across from me.
Sarah had been coming to me for eight months. Betrayal trauma—she’d found her husband of fifteen years’ second phone and discovered he’d been sleeping with her best friend. The pain had been devastating, the trust shattered beyond recognition.
For eight months, I’d watched her struggle. Watched her build walls, maintain control, function with clinical precision while the grief festered beneath the surface. Watched her do exactly what I’d been doing.
Today, she’d finally broken through.
