“Good. That coffee is going to be way too strong, by the way.” She pats my arm, takes the tray of mugs next to me, and walks back to the living room like this conversation never happened.
Dad finds me later.
Everyone has migrated to the back deck. Neve and Mom are deep in a conversation about white paint shades that shows no signs of ending. But they both look happy, so I don’t butt in. Leo and Beth are at the railing. She’s pointing across the water,explaining something about the marina—the pilings, the tide line, the buildings she wants to save. Leo is nodding along with the focused attention of a craftsman who understands what it means to care about the bones of a thing. They’re good together, these two. Not in a threatening way—in a way that makes me feel like the people I love most are building something between themselves that is independent of me, and that’s its own kind of gift.
Dad leans against the railing next to me, mug in hand, and we watch the water for a while. This is how we’ve always communicated—in parallel, looking at the same thing, letting the silence do the work.
“Nice spot you’ve got here,” he says eventually.
“It is.”
“Good people, too.”
“The best.”
More silence. A sip of coffee. The sound of Beth laughing at something Leo says.
“So, when are you going back to Toronto?”
There it is. Not an ambush. Dad doesn’t do ambushes. It’s a question, delivered with the same neutral curiosity he’d use to ask about the weather. But it lands like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples go wide.
“I don’t know,” I reply. And it’s the most honest answer I’ve got.
Dad nods. Takes another sip. “Martin called.”
“He what?”
“Called the house. Last week. Your mother answered.” A ghost of a smile. “She told him you were busy building a life, that he should try back in September.”
“She didn’t.”
“She absolutely did. In those exact words.” He’s smiling for real now. The quiet, warm smile I’ve spent my whole life tryingto earn, one he’s always given freely. “He took it well. Martin’s a smart man. He knows what he’s offering, and he knows it’s not the only option anymore.”
I stare at the water. At the marina in the distance, half-hidden by the fading light. At Beth, who is now demonstrating something to Leo with her hands—big, sweeping gestures that make her whole body move. Leo is laughing, and my mother has abandoned the paint conversation to watch them with an expression I recognize because I’ve witnessed it my whole life. Neve has the same look, her head resting on her hand as she practically swoons at the scene.
These are my people. This is where I belong.
“Your mother and I have spent over three decades in the same city,” Dad says. “Raised you there. Built a life there. And it was a good life. But you know what I’ve learned from all this traveling we’ve been doing?” He turns to look at me, and his eyes—the same brown as mine, the same brown I see every morning in my bathroom mirror—are steady and kind. “Home isn’t a city. It’s not a house or a job or a street you grew up on. Home is the people who make you feel like yourself.” He tilts his mug toward the deck, where Beth has given up on whatever she was explaining and is now arm-wrestling Leo, while Neve referees and my mother cheers. “Seems like you’ve got a lot of that right here.”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod. Dad pats my shoulder once—firm, solid, the Rob Darcy equivalent of a ten-minute speech—and goes to join the others.
I stay at the railing for another minute. Beth looks up, catches my eye, and grins—flushed, happy, and totally unaware she’s arm-wrestling in front of the parents of the man who is so in love with her it borders on clinical. She mouths,I’m winning, and Leo mouths,she’s cheating, and Mom is filming the wholething on her phone, and this—allof this—is not what I thought my life would look like.
It’s better.
But the question hangs.When are you coming back to Toronto?Not because Dad needs an answer, but because I do. Twenty-eight days isn’t a long time. Martin isn’t a patient man. And somewhere between this deck and that corner office, there’s a choice I’m not ready to make.
Not yet. But soon.
CHAPTER 43
THAT SECOND PART IS JUST AS IMPORTANT.
BILLIE
Dana hugs me before she gets in the car—both arms, full pressure, hand on the back of my head like I’m something precious—and the embrace rewires my nervous system. She smells like the lavender perfume she reapplied twice during supper last night. When she pulls back, she holds my face in both hands and looks at me with an expression that makes my eyes sting.
“You take care of my boy,” she says. “And let him take care of you. That second part is just as important.”
