Somehow, between general chit chat we finish the porch, the steps are smooth and the render is perfect.
Dom stands back, hands on his hips, surveying our work.
“I think we did alright,” he says.
He puts a hand on my shoulder—tentative at first, then firmer when I don't pull away.
"You know, hope's not a bad place to start," he says. "It's what kept me going all those years. The hope that maybe it wasn't too late. That maybe you'd give me a chance. That maybe we could build something from the wreckage of what we lost."
"And now?"
"Now I'm standing on a porch after a hard days work with my son."
Something in my chest breaks open when he says the wordson.
"Thanks for helping today," I say.
"Anytime." He squeezes my shoulder once more, then lets go. "And Nate? Don't wait as long as I did. Don't let fear steal more time than it already has."
After Dom leaves,I head inside the house.
There are still empty rooms I haven't figured out what to do with yet. I tried furnishing the place a few months back, spent a weekend moving things around, stepping back to look at how it felt. Only to realize I had no idea what I was going for. Or maybe it just needed a woman's touch more than a man's—someone who could make it feel less like a house and more like a home.
I walk past the living room and stop.
There's something on the coffee table. A book.
I didn't put it there.
My stomach tightens as I move closer, trying to make sense of it. The only other person who has a key to this place is Nick, and he wouldn't just leave something here without telling me. Would he?
It's a copy ofPeter Pan.
The cover is worn and soft in a way that only comes from being loved and read over and over. There's a small photograph tucked inside the front cover—Alfie and Gracie, young and smiling, standing in front of what I recognize as the original bookstore location before they expanded.
And beneath the photograph is a note in handwriting I'd recognize anywhere, even after all these years.
Alfie's.
My hands tremble as I pick it up, careful not to disturb the photograph.
Nathaniel,
Some boys never grow up because they don't want to.
Some grow up too fast because they have to.
And some... learn how to stay a little bit lost so they never forget how to fly.
Alfie
My eyes blurwith tears I don't try to stop.
Alfie always saw things before the rest of us did. Always knew which words would land exactly when they were needed, like he'd been saving them up just for that moment. And somehow, even after he's gone, he's still doing it.
I sink onto the couch—the one piece of furniture in this entire house that I actually managed to choose and commit to—and hold the book like it might dissolve if I'm not careful enough.
The message underneath his words settles over me slowly.
