Page 70 of The Truth of Us

“You have been thinking about this?” he asked.

I shrugged in response.

“My angel.” There was pride in his voice.

“I need time.” I said.

“You have it.”

“And I want control over how I’m introduced.”

“Of course.” He hid his grin behind his glass, but I saw it.

“Then yes,” I said quietly.

His expression stilled. “Yes?”

“Yes. Maybe you are right, and it’s time I stand beside you.”

For a second, my father did not speak. Then he reached across the table and took my hand, and I noticed his eyes were glassy.

“Your mother would be very proud.”

I looked down quickly. “Don’t.”

“She would,” he insisted.

“Dad.” I whispered.

“She would also tell me not to cry into the pasta.”

I laughed even though my own eyes were burning. “She would.”

“And then push the bowl of cheese closer to you so you could add more to your plate without Will noticing.”

We sat there for a while longer. Hand in hand, lost in the past, but also ready for the future.

Later that night, I wandered through the house alone. I knew where I was going before I admitted it. The west wing was colder, or maybe I imagined that because grief made everything feel that way. The hallway lights were dimmed, casting the portraits and old photographs in soft gold. My footsteps were quiet against the runner. I passed the room my mother used as a studio. The reading nook where Will used to hide from tutors. The linen closet where I once locked myself during a game of hide-and-seek and sobbed because nobody found me for twenty minutes.

Then I stopped at his door, my chest tightened immediately. I knew the staff kept it dusted, and that sometimes when things got hard my dad would wander in there and stay for a while.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

My hand lifted toward the handle, but stopped halfway. I could picture his room perfectly. The navy walls, and the Blackridge pennant above his desk, the stack of books he pretended were for school but were mostly fantasy novels, the old soccer ball he refused to throw away because I had written our names on it in permanent marker when I was five. The photo of us at the lake; me missing both front teeth, and Will holding me on his back like I weighed nothing. My big brother, beautiful and untouchable; frozen in time while the rest of us kept aging.

My fingers trembled as I lowered my hand. Not tonight. Maybe that made me weak, or maybe grief was not a door you forced open just because you were tired of standing outside it.

I stood there for a long time. Close enough to touch his door, but far enough away to keep pretending that he was in that room.

Eventually, I felt my father behind me. He didn’t speak. Just stood beside me in the quiet hallway. His shoulder brushed mine as we both stared at the door.

After a while, he said softly, “He would like the woman you’ve become.”

My eyes burned. “You think?”

“I know.”

I let out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to. “I’m not ready.”