Epilogue
Winnie
Three Months Later
Archer shows up at nine-fifteen with a diaper bag the size of a carry-on, circles under his eyes that tell me he was up before six, and his twins, who are three years old.
“I owe you both,” he says, transferring Lily to my arms. She immediately grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls, completely unapologetic about it.
Luke is on his hip, still in his pajamas, clutching a stuffed elephant like it’s the only stable thing in his world right now.
“You don’t owe us anything,” I tell him, which I mean, mostly.
“Two hours, max.” He’s already glancing at his phone, then back at Luke, running through whatever internal checklist dads go through before leaving their kids somewhere. “He had breakfast. Lily will want a snack around ten; she’ll tell you what she wants, just give her a minute to—”
“Arch.” Banks puts a hand on his shoulder. “Go.”
Archer looks at Luke one more time. Luke looks back at him with his father’s dark eyes, the elephant pressed to his chest. “Love you, bud. Back soon, okay? Two hours.”
Luke nods like he understands, and it’s genuinely sweet. Then Archer walks out the door, and it clicks shut behind him. Luke watches it for one long second before his face just falls apart.
I set him down and crouch to his level. I use my calm voice, the one that works on anxious students five minutes before a hard class. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay; your daddy’s coming back. He just had to go to his—do you want a snack? We have Goldfish; do you like Goldfish?”
Luke does not care about Goldfish. He cries harder.
“We could watch something? Bluey? Do you like Bluey?” I look up at Banks, who is leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching this unfold. “Banks, do we have Bluey?”
“I don’t know what Bluey is.”
“It’s a cartoon; can you just—never mind.” I turn back to Luke. “We have other shows; we can find Bluey; I just need to—”
Luke sits down on the floor in the middle of the living room and cries with his entire body, elephant dangling from one fist, and I have officially run out of ideas.
Lily pats my cheek from her spot on my hip. One small hand, matter-of-fact about it, like she’s consoling me, which is fair.
Banks pushes off the doorframe and sits down on the floor next to Luke. Not across from him, notcrouching—just sits cross-legged right there on the hardwood like he’s got nowhere else to be.
“Hey, man,” he says.
Luke looks at him through his tears.
“Your dad’ll be back.” He says it plainly, no sing-song, no performance. Just a fact. “He always comes back.”
Luke pulls in a shaky breath. He’s still crying, but he’s listening.
“You know what I do when I miss someone?” Banks asks.
Luke wipes his nose on the elephant. “What?”
“I think about the last funny thing they did.” Banks leans back on his hands. “Your dad tripped over your shoe last week, right? At the rink. Totally wiped out.”
Luke’s mouth wobbles toward something. “He fell down.”
“All the way down. In front of everybody.” Banks shakes his head gravely. “It was rough.”
A hiccup. The beginning of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “He said a bad word.”
“I bet he did. What word?”
