Chapter 5 - The Conversation We Didn't Finish

I sat at the dining table with a cold cup of coffee, turning it over until noon while Kayla made Ella lunch. Then I texted him: Can I come by this afternoon? I need us to finish this.

He answered in under a minute. Yes. Please.

That afternoon I sat across from him in his living room, hands cold in my lap, and made myself say it.

"The tattoo wasn't only about Danny, was it?"

He didn't answer.

"I've seen the way you look at us, Warren. And I heard Dominic at the party. The second-floor rebuild. That's for Ella and me, isn't it?"

His shoulders curled in on themselves.

When he finally spoke, it was almost a whisper.

"Somewhere this year it stopped being only about Danny. I started picturing it. A room for Ella. A whole life. I never said a word to you. But I was setting the table for it without admitting it."

I let the silence sit there.

"I won't cross a line," he said quickly. "Keep the job. I'll back all the way off. We can go back to how it was."

For one long moment I almost said yes.

I thought about Ella's preschool tuition. The mortgage. How tired I was of doing all of it alone.

Then I understood that staying, even carefully, would leave me exactly where I'd been for a year. Frozen. Living on things other people handed me.

"You're not a bad man, Warren. You're a grieving one. And I've leaned on you so hard that I let the lines blur too. That's on both of us."

I took a breath.

"But I can't keep taking your help. I have to leave and figure out my own way."

He nodded, staring at the table, ashamed.

He offered me a fair severance and a strong reference. No strings. I believed him.

I drove home with the windows down. Ella was waiting on the porch with her stuffed rabbit, hair wild from her nap, Kayla sitting right beside her.

I sank down next to them and finally let myself cry — quietly, the way I hadn't let myself in a year.

My daughter wrapped her little arms around my neck.

"I know Daddy's not really there, Mommy. I just miss him."

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"Me too, baby," I whispered. "Me too."

Kayla took my hand, and I knew we were going to be okay.