Page 79

I opened my eyes.

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is,” she said. “Being an adult is terrible. I do not recommend it.”

That almost made me smile.

Almost.

She stepped forward and put her hand on the side of my face, the way she had when I was nine and had fallen through pond ice and tried to pretend I was not shaking.

“You are allowed to want home,” she said.

The words moved through me slowly.

Home.

Not the contract.

Not the version of myself I could carry into a room and have people respect because it was expensive enough.

Home.

Lena lowered her hand.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Tommy’s voice carried from the living room, narrating some structural crisis with the moat. Ranger stayed pressed against my shin like he had decided I was not cleared for independent standing.

“You decide, little brother,” Lena said. “A destination and a parade. Or a home and a life.”

The answer settled in my chest. Not heavy. Clarifying.

“Stay for dinner,” she said.

“I should call Mark.”

“You should eat first. Men make terrible decisions when they’re hungry and convinced they’re tragic.”

Ranger barked once, as if seconding the motion.

I sat at my sister’s kitchen table while she put a plate in front of me, and Tommy explained, at length, why the Frost Bank Center moat still needed improvements.

The window had closed, but I had been the one who stood still long enough to let it.

For the first time in three days, I stopped waiting for the decision to become something else.

It was what it was.

Not certainty.

Direction.

Chapter twenty-nine

Samantha

Monday morning, I knew something was wrong before Sandra said my name.

It was not her face. Sandra’s face was professionally competent. You could tell her the arena roof had collapsed, and she would still look like she had a spreadsheet for it somewhere.