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Fletch cuts the engine. “You expecting someone?”

I shake my head slowly. “You?”

“Nope.”

His knuckles tighten around the wheel, the kind of tension that thrums through the car like static before a lightning strike. We both know what this might mean, even if we don’t say it

I brace myself as we head up the porch steps. The screen door creaks open, letting out the scent of cinnamon and wood polish and something warmer—like family, like memory, like something I thought I’d lost for good.

But what hits me harder than the scent is the sight.

There, in the kitchen like it’s the most natural thing in the world, stand my parents.

Dad’s still in his worn Patriots hoodie, face a little more weathered than I remember but his eyes the same soft brown that always made my chaos feel less loud. He’s holding a coffee mug, nodding at something Thorin says while Reese bounces Eli on her hip.

And beside him—like some kind of impossible mirage—is her.

My mother.

The woman who gave me life and then spent the rest of it making me wish I’d come out screaming louder.

She looks…different. Not younger, not softer, but like someone carrying something too heavy for too long. Her hair’s pulled into a tight braid like always, but her posture isn’t all sharp lines and judgment this time. It’s curved. Like something inside her finally cracked.

I stop just inside the door, hand still gripping the knob like it might save me from myself.

Dad looks up first.

“Hey, baby,” he says, and just like that I’m ten again and running out onto the field after his game, heart full and hands outstretched.

I walk straight into his arms and let him fold me into that safe, quiet space he always kept open for me, no matter how far I wandered. He kisses my forehead like he did the day I woke up in the hospital. Like I didn’t just wake up from a coma but from a decade of keeping people out.

“Glad you’re home,” he murmurs.

I nod, throat tight. “Me too.”

When I pull back, I brace myself for the hard part. The part I haven’t prepared for.

And yet—when I turn to my mom, she doesn’t look at me like she’s here to pick another fight. She doesn’t cross her arms or narrow her eyes or say something backhanded with a smile sharp enough to slice bone.

She hugs me.

Not stiffly. Not because someone’s watching. But like she means it.

Her arms wrap around me and for a second I forget how to breathe. The world narrows to her perfume—still the same gardenia and guilt—but mixed with something unfamiliar.

Grief.

Regret.

Maybe even…love?

And then—God help me—her shoulders tremble.

When she pulls back, there are tears in her eyes.

Not the performative kind. Not crocodile. Real.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, voice warbling like she’s barely holding it together. “For everything. For not showing up. For making you feel like you had to do this alone.”