Part 13: The Motel Room
I called the motel at six in the morning.
The Pinecrest Motor Lodge on Fifth Street.
Clean.
Simple.
Sixty-two dollars a night.
I paid for seven nights with my card.
I told Ethan the room number by text.
He replied with two words: Thank you.
That afternoon, I drove past the motel.
I did not stop.
I just drove by and saw his truck in the lot.
Room 14.
The curtains were drawn.
I kept driving.
That evening, Linda and I sat at the kitchen table.
She was painting.
I was reading the paper.
“I want to see him,” she said.
I looked up.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Not yet,” she agreed. “But soon.”
“When you’re ready.”
“I’m not ready. But I think I need to not be ready and do it anyway.”
I nodded.
“Okay.”
She dipped her brush in blue paint.
“Tom?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think he’ll ever be the same?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think he will. I think he’ll be different. Maybe better. Maybe not. But not the same.”
She painted a long stroke of blue across her paper.
“I think I need him to be different,” she said. “The old Ethan, the one who couldn’t say no, the one who followed everyone else’s lead—I think that Ethan is the one who locked me out. And I don’t want him back. I want the new one. The one who’s in that counselor’s office saying the words out loud. I want to meet him.”
I set down my paper.
“You’re braver than me, Linda.”
She smiled.
Small.
Tired.
Real.
“No, Tom. I’m just older. And I don’t have time to be afraid anymore.”
Three days later, Linda went to the motel.
She did not tell me until after.
She drove her own car, parked in the lot, and knocked on the door of Room 14.
Ethan answered in a t-shirt and jeans, unshaven, hair messy.
He saw her and froze.
“Mom.”
“Hello, Ethan.”
They stood in the doorway.
Linda held a paper bag.
Inside: a container of soup, a loaf of bread, a bottle of his favorite hot sauce, and a small tin of cookies she had baked that morning.
“I’m not coming in,” she said. “I just brought you something to eat.”
He took the bag.
His hands shook.
“Thank you, Mom.”
She looked at him.
She did not hug him.
She did not step closer.
But she looked at him, really looked, the way a mother looks at a child who has been lost in the woods and finally stumbled back to the tree line.
“You look thin,” she said.
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
“I’m trying, Mom.”
“I know.”
She turned to leave.
Then she stopped.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah?”
“I forgive you.”
He broke.
Right there in the doorway of Room 14 at the Pinecrest Motor Lodge, my thirty-two-year-old son put his hand over his mouth and cried.
Linda did not hug him.
She was not ready for that.
But she stood there.
She stayed.
She let him cry.
And when he was done, she said, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean the door is open. It means I’m not carrying this anymore. You understand?”
He nodded, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“I understand.”
“Good. Eat the soup before it gets cold.”
She walked to her car.
She drove home.
She told me everything.
And then she went back to her painting.
The sunset she was working on now had a small figure in it.
A person standing at the edge of the frame.
Looking in.
Not quite inside.
Not quite outside.
Just at the threshold.
I understood.
Part 14: The Counseling
Family counseling started in January.
Not all of us.
Not yet.
Just Ethan and a therapist named Dr. Patricia Yoon.
Dr. Yoon had a small office above a bakery on Main Street.
The smell of cinnamon rolls drifted up through the floorboards.
Ethan went twice a week.
He told me this in fragments.
Texts.
Brief phone calls.
Never long conversations.
He was not ready for those.
And I was not ready either.
But the texts told me enough.
“Talked about control today. About how I never had any growing up so I tried to take it from you.”
“Talked about Ashley. About how I let her make every decision because I was afraid she’d leave if I disagreed.”
“Talked about the house. About how I saw it as an inheritance instead of a home. I never thought about what it meant to you and Mom. I just saw dollar signs.”
“Talked about the grocery bag. I can’t stop thinking about the grocery bag. I handed my own mother a grocery bag like I was sending her away with leftovers.”
I read every text.
I did not respond to all of them.
Sometimes I just sent a period.
Or the word “okay.”
Or “I hear you.”
It was not much.
But it was something.
In February, Dr. Yoon suggested a joint session.
Ethan and me.
Just the two of us.
I said I would think about it.
I thought about it for nine days.
On the tenth day, I said yes.
The session was on a Thursday at four in the afternoon.
I wore my good flannel shirt.
Linda ironed it for me.
She did not say anything.
She just ironed it and hung it on the door.
Dr. Yoon’s office was small.
Two chairs facing each other.
A window with a view of the bakery roof.
A box of tissues on the table between us.
Ethan was already in his chair when I walked in.
He was wearing a button-down shirt.
Tucked in.
He had shaved.
He looked nervous.
I sat down.
Dr. Yoon smiled.
“Thank you both for being here. I want to start by saying there is no agenda today. No goals. No expectations. You are here to talk. Tom, you can speak. Ethan, you can speak. You can be silent. You can cry. You can be angry. This room is safe for all of it.”
I nodded.
Ethan nodded.
Silence.
Long silence.
Dr. Yoon waited.
Ethan spoke first.
“Dad. I don’t know how to start.”
“Just start,” I said.
He swallowed.
“I was ashamed. Before the house. Before Ashley. Before all of it. I was ashamed of you.”
The words hit me like cold water.
“What?”
“Not of you,” he said quickly. “Not of who you are. Of what you had. Of how much you built. The store. The house. The life. Everyone in town knew you. Everyone respected you. And I was your son, and I couldn’t build anything. I couldn’t keep a job. I couldn’t make a plan work. And I thought if I could just take what you built, I could finally be someone. I could finally be enough.”
I stared at him.
“You thought you weren’t enough?”
“I’ve thought it my whole life, Dad. You’re this giant. This man who built a house with his hands and a business from nothing and a family that works. And I’m just—I’m just the kid who quit the hardware store after three weeks. The kid who got a DUI. The kid who couldn’t figure out his life. And I thought if I had the house, if I had the store, if I had the name, then I’d be you. And I’d finally matter.”
My eyes burned.
“Ethan. You never had to be me.”
“I know that now. I didn’t know it then.”
Dr. Yoon leaned forward gently.
“Ethan, what do you need your father to hear right now?”
He looked at me.
His eyes were wet.
“I need him to know that I’m not asking for the house. I’m not asking for the store. I’m not asking for the trust or the money or any of it. I don’t want it. I never really wanted it. I wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere. And I thought belonging meant owning. And it doesn’t. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I tried to take it instead of asking. I’m sorry I hurt Mom. I’m sorry I made her feel like she didn’t belong in her own life.”
I looked at my son.
This thin, tired, scared man in a button-down shirt.
And I saw the five-year-old hiding behind the PVC pipes.
Giggling.
Waiting for me to find him.
“Ethan,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You were always enough. You didn’t need the house. You didn’t need the store. You were enough from the day you were born. I just—I don’t think I told you that enough. I was so busy building that I forgot to say it. I forgot to look at you and say, you’re enough, you’re mine, you don’t have to earn it.”
He cried.
I cried.
Dr. Yoon handed us both tissues.
We sat in that small office above the bakery, smelling cinnamon, and we cried like children.
And it was the first honest conversation we had had in fifteen years.
Part 15: The Second Letter
In March, Ashley’s second letter arrived.
Not at the store.
At the house.
Linda found it in the mailbox.
She brought it inside and set it on the kitchen table without opening it.
“It’s from Ashley,” she said.
I looked at the envelope.
Purple ink.
Cream stationery.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
Linda picked it up.
She turned it over in her hands.
“I want to read it,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. But I want to.”
She opened it.
She read it silently.
I watched her face.
It shifted from guarded to surprised to something soft and complicated.
She set it down.
“Read it,” she said.
I picked it up.
Dear Linda,
I don’t expect you to read this. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even expect you to believe me. But I need to say it.
I was jealous of you.
Not of your house. Not of your money. Of your life. Of the way Tom looks at you. Of the way you stand in that garden in the evening like the whole world is enough. I grew up with nothing. My parents split when I was nine. I moved six times before I was sixteen. I never had a home. Not a real one. Not one where someone built it for you and stood in the doorway and said, this is yours.
And I saw you have that. And I wanted it. And I didn’t know how to ask for it, so I tried to take it.
I’m in therapy now. Ethan told me you were, and I thought, if he can face what he did, I can face what I did. I’m learning that what I wanted wasn’t your house. It was the feeling of being safe. And I can’t steal that from someone else. I have to build it myself.
I don’t know where I’ll be in a year. I don’t know if Ethan and I will ever speak again. He hasn’t called. I haven’t called. Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe we were only ever together because we were both scared and scared people cling to each other.
But I needed you to know. You were not the obstacle in my story. You were the thing I wished I had. And I’m sorry I tried to take you out of your own life to get it.
You don’t have to respond. You don’t have to forgive me. You just have to know that I see you. I see what you built. And it’s beautiful. And it’s yours.
Sincerely,
Ashley
I set the letter down.
Linda was watching me.
“What do you think?” she asked.
I thought for a long time.
“I think she’s telling the truth,” I said.
“I think so too.”
“Does it change anything?”
Linda considered.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t change what she did. It doesn’t change the gate or the grocery bag or the fear. But it makes her a person instead of a villain. And I think I need her to be a person. It’s easier to heal when the person who hurt you is human.”
I nodded.
“What are you going to do with the letter?”
She picked it up.
She walked to the kitchen drawer where we kept old recipes and expired coupons.
She put it inside.
Not in the trash.
Not in the safe.
Just in the drawer.
Where things went when you weren’t ready to let them go but didn’t need to look at them every day.
I understood.
We went back to dinner.
She had made pot roast.
It filled the house with the smell of rosemary and garlic.
We ate slowly.
We talked about the garden.
About the roses that would need pruning soon.
About Megan’s next visit.
About the painting class Linda was taking on Tuesdays.
Small things.
Ordinary things.
The things that make a life.
Part 16: The Warehouse
In April, I drove to the warehouse where Ethan was working.
I did not tell him I was coming.
I parked my truck across the street and watched the loading dock.
At three-fifteen, he came out.
He was wearing a safety vest and work gloves.
He was carrying a box of something heavy.
He set it on a pallet, wiped his forehead, and went back inside.
He looked strong.
Not happy.
Not healed.
But strong.
There was a difference.
I watched him work for twenty minutes.
He moved boxes.
He stacked pallets.
He talked to a coworker, a young woman with a ponytail, and they both laughed at something.
He looked normal.
He looked like a thirty-two-year-old man doing a hard job.
Not a monster.
Not a villain.
Just a man.
I drove away.
I did not go in.
I did not need to.
I just needed to see him.
To know he was upright.
To know he was moving.
That night, I texted him.
“Saw you at the warehouse today. You look good.”
Three dots appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then appeared again.
“You came to watch me work?”
“I came to see you. That’s all.”
A pause.
“Thank you, Dad.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know. But I want to.”
“Okay.”
Another pause.
“How’s Mom?”
“She’s good. She’s painting. She took a class. She’s getting better.”
“That’s good. That’s really good.”
“She made a sunset. It’s on the fridge.”
“I bet it’s beautiful.”
“It’s terrible. She loves it.”
He sent a laughing emoji.
The first one he had sent me in months.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I put my phone down and went to bed.
Linda was already asleep.
The sunset painting was on the fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a rooster.
It was, objectively, a terrible sunset.
The proportions were wrong.
The colors bled into each other.
The sun looked like a fried egg.
It was the most beautiful thing in our kitchen.
I turned off the light.
I slept.
Part 17: The Garden
In May, Linda and I replanted the front garden.
The roses needed dividing.
The soil needed compost.
The old trellis on the east wall was rotting and needed replacing.
We worked on it together on Saturday mornings.
She dug.
I built.
She planted.
I watered.
We listened to the radio.
Old country songs.
The kind my father used to play in the store.
One Saturday, Linda was on her knees in the dirt, pulling weeds from around the rose bushes, and she said, “Tom, I want to invite Ethan for dinner.”
I stopped watering.
“Not inside,” she said quickly. “Not yet. But the porch. A plate of food. A conversation. I want to sit across from him and talk about something that isn’t the worst thing that ever happened to us.”
I set down the hose.
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I want to try.”
I looked at her.
My wife.
Sixty-two years old.
Dirt on her knees.
Paint under her fingernails from Tuesday’s class.
A small scar on her left hand from the kitchen fire in 1997.
Eyes that had cried outside a gate and cried in a motel doorway and cried in a kitchen at midnight.
But still here.
Still planting roses.
Still building a life.
“Okay,” I said. “You invite him. I’ll grill.”
She smiled.
It was a real smile.
Not brave.
Not forced.
Just real.
I called Ethan that night.
“Your mother wants you to come for dinner. Saturday. Six o’clock. On the porch. Not inside.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Okay,” he said.
“Bring nothing. Wear something warm. It’ll be cold after the sun goes down.”
“Okay.”
“Ethan?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s nervous. I want you to know that. She’s doing this because she wants to. But she’s nervous. So be gentle.”
“I will, Dad. I promise.”
“Good.”
I hung up.
I went to the garage.
I checked the grill.
I cleaned the grates.
I made sure the propane was full.
Small tasks.
Familiar tasks.
The kind that keep your hands busy when your heart is loud.
Part 18: The Porch Dinner
Saturday came.
Linda made a potato salad and a pie.
I grilled chicken and corn.
We set the table on the porch.
Three plates.
Three glasses.
A candle because Linda said it was nice.
At five-fifty, Ethan’s truck pulled up.
He parked on the street.
He walked up the path slowly.
He was wearing a clean shirt.
He had combed his hair.
He carried a small bouquet of wildflowers.
Not roses.
Not anything from our garden.
Just field flowers.
Daisies and something purple I didn’t know the name of.
He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.
Linda was standing at the top.
They looked at each other.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Ethan. Those are beautiful.”
He held out the flowers.
She took them.
She put them in a glass of water on the table.
“Sit down,” she said. “Your father’s grilling.”
He sat.
I came from the side of the house with a plate of chicken.
“Ethan.”
“Dad.”
“Chicken or burger?”
“Chicken. Please.”
I set a plate in front of him.
Linda served the potato salad.
We sat.
We ate.
For the first ten minutes, nobody spoke.
Just the sound of forks on plates.
The cicadas starting their evening song.
The grill ticking as it cooled.
Then Linda said, “How’s the warehouse?”
And Ethan said, “Hard. But good. I got promoted to shift lead last week.”
“That’s wonderful,” Linda said.
“It’s not much. But it’s mine. I earned it.”
“That’s more than much. That’s everything.”
He nodded.
He ate another bite of chicken.
“The counselor says I should think about what I want to do long-term,” he said. “Not what I think I should do. Not what Ashley wanted. Not what I thought you wanted. What I actually want.”
“And what do you want?” I asked.
He thought.
“I want to work with my hands,” he said. “I want to build things. Not houses. Not businesses. Small things. Furniture. Cabinets. Maybe restore old pieces. I used to love it when you let me sand things in the garage. I loved the smell of the wood. I loved making something rough into something smooth.”
Linda reached across the table and touched his hand.
Just briefly.
Just her fingertips on his knuckles.
Then she pulled back.
“That sounds like you,” she said.
“It feels like me,” he agreed.
We ate the rest of dinner.
We talked about small things.
The weather.
Megan’s dog.
The new bakery downtown.
The roses that needed pruning.
Ordinary things.
Safe things.
And when the pie was eaten and the plates were cleared, Ethan stood up.
“I should go,” he said.
“Okay,” Linda said.
He hesitated.
“Can I come again?”
Linda looked at me.
I looked at Linda.
She turned back to Ethan.
“Yes,” she said. “Next month. Same time. I’ll make the pot roast.”
He nodded.
He walked down the steps.
He got in his truck.
He drove away.
Linda and I stood on the porch.
The candle flickered.
The cicadas sang.
She leaned into me.
“That was terrifying,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“And good.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m proud of myself.”
“You should be.”
She looked up at me.
“Thank you for letting me decide.”
I kissed her forehead.
“You built this house with me, Linda. You get to decide who sits on the porch.”
She smiled.
We went inside.
We washed the dishes together.
She dried.
I washed.
Like we had done ten thousand times before.
And the house was quiet.
And the house was warm.
And the house was ours.
Part 19: The Summer
Summer came slow and golden.
Ethan came to dinner once a month.
Always on the porch.
Never inside.
He brought flowers every time.
Different ones.
Never roses.
Linda put them in a glass on the table.
They talked.
About his work.
About her painting.
About the counselor.
About nothing.
About everything except the night at the gate.
That subject lived in a locked room.
We did not open it.
Not yet.
In July, Ethan quit the warehouse.
He told me over the phone.
“I’m scared, Dad. But I’m doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Taking a woodworking course. Eight months. At the community college. I’m going to learn to build furniture. Properly. With joinery and design and all of it.”
“Can you afford it?”
A pause.
“Barely. I’ve been saving. And the counselor helped me find a scholarship for career changers. It covers half the tuition.”
“And the other half?”
“I’ll work part-time. Nights. Maybe at a restaurant. Maybe stocking shelves somewhere.”
I was quiet.
“Dad?”
“I’m proud of you,” I said.
He breathed out.
“Thank you.”
“Go do it.”
“I will.”
He started the course in August.
He called me sometimes after class.
Excited.
Talking about dovetail joints and wood grain and the difference between oak and maple.
He sounded like he did when he was eight and had discovered the creek behind the house.
Full of wonder.
Full of questions.
Full of life.
Linda listened to these calls from the kitchen.
She would smile and stir her soup and pretend she wasn’t listening.
She was always listening.
Part 20: The Anniversary
In September, Linda and I celebrated thirty-nine years of marriage.
We did not go out.
We did not have a party.
We sat on the porch with a bottle of wine and two glasses and watched the sun go down.
“Thirty-nine years,” Linda said.
“Thirty-nine years.”
“We built a house.”
“We did.”
“We raised two kids.”
“We did.”
“One of them locked me out.”
“He did.”
She sipped her wine.
“And one of them flew across the country to hold me while I cried.”
“She did.”
“I think that’s how it goes,” Linda said. “You build a family and some of it holds and some of it cracks and you keep building anyway.”
I put my arm around her.
She rested her head on my shoulder.
“Tom?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you came home that day. I’m glad you found me at the gate.”
“I’ll always come home, Linda. I’ll always find you.”
She squeezed my hand.
We watched the sun disappear behind the trees.
The roses caught the last light and glowed red.
We sat in the dark for a while.
Then we went inside.
She painted.
I read.
The house settled around us, creaking softly the way old houses do.
Breathing.
Living.
Ours.
Part 21: The First Step Inside
In October, Ethan came to dinner.
The porch.
The flowers.
The potato salad.
But this time, when the plates were cleared, he did not leave.
He stood up and said, “Mom. Dad. Can I see the kitchen?”
Linda looked at me.
I looked at Linda.
“The kitchen?” she said.
“I just—I want to see it. I want to stand in it and remember what it felt like before. Before I ruined it. I want to remember helping you make pancakes when I was ten. I want to remember the smell. I want to remember that it was home before I tried to make it mine.”
Linda stood up.
She walked to the back door.
She opened it.
“Come in,” she said.
Ethan stepped inside.
He walked slowly.
He touched the counter.
He ran his hand along the edge of the table.
He stood in front of the stove and closed his eyes.
“I remember,” he whispered. “I remember you singing while you cooked. You always sang. Off-key. And Dad would come in from the garage and say, Linda, please, the neighbors.”
Linda laughed.
A real laugh.
Small and surprised.
“I did sing,” she said. “Terribly.”
“The best,” Ethan said.
He opened the refrigerator.
The sunset painting was there.
The terrible, beautiful, fried-egg sun.
He stared at it.
“Mom. This is—”
“Terrible. I know.”
“No. I was going to say it’s the best thing in this house.”
She wiped her eyes.
“It’s just a painting, Ethan.”
“It’s you. It’s you making something just because you wanted to. Just for you. And it’s on the fridge. And it’s the first thing you see every morning. And it makes me happy.”
She pulled him into a hug.
The first real hug since the gate.
Since the grocery bag.
Since the code change and the attorney and the locks.
She held him tight.
He held her back.
And I stood by the sink and let them.
When they separated, Ethan looked at me.
“Dad. Can I say something?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m not going to ask for the house back. I’m not going to ask for the store or the trust or any of it. I don’t want it. I want to build my own thing. My own cabinets. My own life. My own house someday, if I’m lucky. And it won’t be this one. And that’s okay. I just—I needed you to know that I’m not here for what you have. I’m here for who you are. Both of you. And I’ll earn my way back. However long it takes. However many porch dinners. However many months. I’ll earn it.”
I walked to him.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
“You’re earning it,” I said. “You already are.”
He nodded.
He wiped his eyes.
“Can I come inside next time?” he asked.
Linda looked at the kitchen.
At the table where she had cried.
At the counter where she had set down the grocery bag.
At the door where she had walked out.
“Yes,” she said. “Next time, you can come inside.”
He smiled.
It was small.
It was tentative.
It was the first real smile I had seen on his face in a year.
He left at nine.
He hugged Linda at the door.
He shook my hand.
Then he walked to his truck.
And this time, he did not slam anything.
He closed the door softly.
He drove away slowly.
And the gate code stayed the same.
We did not change it back.
Not yet.
But Linda wrote it on a piece of paper and put it in the drawer.
The same drawer as Ashley’s letter.
Not in the trash.
Not in the safe.
Just in the drawer.
Waiting.
Part 22: Winter
December came.
The roses went dormant.
The garden turned brown and quiet.
Linda painted winter scenes.
Bare trees.
Gray skies.
A single red bird on a branch.
She was getting better.
Not good.
But better.
Her teacher at the community center said she had a natural eye for color.
Linda blushed when she told me.
She was sixty-two and blushing like a girl.
Ethan finished his first semester of woodworking.
He called me excited.
“Dad, I made a table. A real table. Walnut. Hand-cut joints. No nails. No screws. Just wood and glue and patience.”
“Can I see it?”
“I’ll bring it to the porch dinner.”
“It’s December, Ethan. The porch is freezing.”
“Then can I bring it inside?”
I looked at Linda.
She nodded.
“Bring it inside,” I said.
He brought it the next Saturday.
A small side table.
Dark walnut.
Smooth as glass.
The legs tapered elegantly.
The top had a grain pattern that looked like water.
He set it in the living room by the window.
Linda ran her hand over the surface.
“Ethan,” she whispered. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s for you,” he said. “For the house. For the window where you paint in the morning. You need a place to set your brush and your water cup.”
She looked at him.
She did not cry.
She just smiled and said, “Thank you, baby.”
He stayed for three hours.
Inside.
He helped me fix the hinge on the back door.
He helped Linda carry her painting supplies to the new table.
He ate pot roast and pie and drank two glasses of milk.
He sat in the living room and looked at the family photos on the wall.
Ethan at five, missing a tooth.
Megan at seven, holding a kitten.
Linda and me on our wedding day.
The four of us at the Grand Canyon, sunburned and grinning.
He touched the frame of the Grand Canyon photo.
“I was twelve,” he said.
“You were,” I said.
“You carried me the last mile because my feet hurt.”
“I did.”
“I forgot that.”
“You forgot a lot of things, Ethan. But you’re remembering now.”
He nodded.
He put his hands in his pockets.
“Can I come for Christmas?” he asked.
Linda and I looked at each other.
Thirty-nine Christmases together.
Forty with Ethan.
Thirty-five with Megan.
The last two had been just the two of us.
Quiet.
Small.
A little sad.
“Yes,” Linda said. “Come for Christmas.”
He smiled.
He left at ten.
He hugged us both at the door.
Not a quick, stiff hug.
A real one.
The kind where you press your cheek against someone’s shoulder and breathe them in.
The kind that says, I’m here. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m trying.
We stood in the doorway and watched his truck disappear down the street.
Then we went inside.
Linda put the kettle on.
I stoked the fire.
We sat in the living room with the new walnut table by the window.
“Tom,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I think we’re going to be okay.”
I took her hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we are.”…
