Chapter 38
Nathan looked down at her. “You can?”
She nodded seriously. “But you have to listen.”
“I can listen.”
Owen, from the floor, pushed his wooden truck under a chair. “He also has to learn pancakes.”
“I make pancakes,” Nathan said.
“With blueberries on top?” Owen asked.
Nathan hesitated.
Owen sighed. “We have a lot of work.”
The house visits became small chapters of discovery.
Lily found a box of Evan’s old things in Nathan’s closet—baseball cards, school photos, a science fair ribbon, a postcard from a camping trip. She held each object like a clue.
“Daddy had glasses?” she asked, staring at a photo of twelve-year-old Evan smiling awkwardly with oversized frames.
Nathan smiled. “For one year. He hated them.”
“Why?”
“Said they made him look like a worried owl.”
Lily giggled. “He did look like a worried owl.”
Owen found a dent in the garage wall and demanded its history.
Nathan scratched his jaw. “Your dad threw a tennis ball in here after I told him not to.”
“Daddy was bad?” Owen asked, thrilled.
“He was human,” Nathan said. “And I was mad for about six minutes. Then he fixed it badly, and I was mad again.”
“Where is the bad fixing?”
Nathan pointed to a patch of uneven paint.
Owen touched it with awe. “Daddy made that?”
“Yep.”
Owen looked at the wall like it was a museum exhibit.
The children were not simply meeting Nathan.
They were meeting their father through him.
That mattered.
May you like
I saw it, and though it hurt, it also steadied me.
My visits continued too, though they changed. Sometimes I met them at the agency. Sometimes Dr. Patel included me in therapy sessions when the children asked. Once, with permission from everyone, we met at a park.
