"Haven't seen much of Rome lately," Will says, bringing me back to the present.
Will and Rome don't spend much time together, but I can hear the genuine question underneath. He likes Rome. Likes the way Rome builds things, the care he takes with materials, the respect he shows craftsmanship. They've developed their own quiet friendship over the last few months.
"Honeymoon phase," I say, grinning. "Him and Erin are in full nesting mode. It's disgusting, honestly. But they're so happy that I can't even be mad about it. I just miss him."
Callahan watches me from across the table.
"Don't listen to her. She sees her brother every day. She's just spoiled."
It's a throwaway line. The kind of gentle ribbing that's normal at this table, normal between people who know each other well enough. It shouldn't land the way it does.
Spoiled. The word lands somewhere I keep locked and doesn't leave.
My smile holds. I'm good at holding smiles after watching my parents' backs as they walked toward another gate, another country, and not turn back for me.
"I'm not spoiled." I know immediately the tone is wrong. The lightness I've been carrying all evening has slipped, and what's underneath is showing.
Callahan's face drops. "Lily, I didn't mean..."
"I know." But it hurts. "I know you didn't."
Will is watching me with those brown eyes that miss nothing and say even less.
"Since I was ten Rome has been my mother, my father, my brother, my friend, my everything. I love him more than I love anyone on this earth, and I know how lucky I am to have him." I hate the tears that threaten to come. "So wantingyour only family to always be around and eat dinner with you isn't the same thing as being spoiled."
I can't look at them for a minute longer, so I just say, "It's the opposite. It's knowing what it feels like to eat dinner alone."
Will's hand moves across the table and covers mine. I stare at our hands and ache in my heart. This man has been more of a father to me in the last few months than my own has ever been. I squeeze his hand before I let go and stand up.
"I'm going to get some air."
I can feel Callahan's eyes on me, sad and heavy, but I can't look at him right now.
"Take a jacket," Will says. "It's cooled off."
I grab Cal's hoodie from the hook by the back door. It's the closest thing, and it smells like him. Right now I need both warmth and him, and the hoodie is the version of that I can have in front of other people.
The back of the Holt property is private in a way the front isn't. The yard slopes gently toward the tree line, no street, no sidewalk, no windows from neighboring houses. Just the smell of sawdust carrying faintly on the evening air.
I sit on the back step and pull the hoodie sleeves over my hands. I shouldn't have said that. No one needs to know how small I feel, how bad I am at being a grown-up. It's a given that people leave their homes, cross countries, build lives from nothing, all for education or a career. Meanwhile, I follow my brother around like a lost puppy and can't even hack that.
I try not to dwell on the fact that my parents didn't evencome or call for my high school graduation. How long I waited. How not a single word came.
Rome had been there. Rome, who hates people, had sat in the front row. He took photos. Bought me flowers. Told me he was proud of me. And when he saw the sadness in my eyes, he pulled me close and muttered, "Fuck the Paleolithic."
I didn't even care to attend my undergrad graduation a few months back because I had burned so hard to get there that there was nothing left of me by the time I did.
I hope I'm not ungrateful. I am not spoiled. I'm a girl who wants a big family to love, and to be close to them. Why is that so wrong?
But I only have Rome, so maybe that is wrong to keep asking for more from him still. He, just like me, needed parents, plural. The absence of that has shaped me in ways I'm still discovering, like finding bruises that only show up when someone presses on them.
Callahan hadn't meant to press, he didn't know the bruise was there. Nobody does, really. I keep it well hidden, even from myself, as I try to focus on the better parts of life.
And I do love life as it is now. I know I sometimes stir shit up just for the fun of it, but I only do it when I feel safe. Rome makes me feel safe. That's why I love tormenting him. He loves it too, if he's being honest.
I pull my knees to my chest and rest my chin on them, and think about Anna Holt.
Anna, who kept flowers in every room. Who went to lumber mills with her husband and touched every piece of wood until she found the warm one. Anna, who was twenty-one with a baby, a happy marriage, and a kitchen thatsmelled like her favorite candle. Anna, who had been a mother in every way my mother hadn't been.
