Epilogue
Asher
The front door opens before my hand reaches the handle.
My mother doesn't say hello. She comes down the steps with both arms already out and folds Audrey into a hug before I've finished saying her name.
"Mom—"
"You must be Audrey." She pulls back just far enough to hold her by the shoulders, looking her over the way she used to check me for fevers. "I've heard so much. Actually, nowhere near enough because this one tells me nothing."
Audrey laughs softly, the cake box balanced flat on one palm. "It's nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Calloway."
"Ellen. Mrs. Calloway is his grandmother, and she was terrifying."
Behind them my father comes out onto the step, and this is the part I've been turning over in the car for the last hour. Not my mother. My mother has been waiting for this for years. She'd have hugged a woman I picked up on the side of the road.
It's my father I can't get a read on.
He comes down with his hand out, and I watch his face the way I've learned to watch a pitcher's front shoulder. Waiting for the tell.
"Audrey." He takes her hand in both of his. "Welcome."
That's all. One word. But there's nothing held back in it, no second meaning loaded underneath, and something in my chest that's been clenched since the turnoff lets go a half inch.
Then a small body sags against my legs.
"That was a really long car ride." Eli says it into my hip, pure betrayal, like the drive was something I did to him personally.
"Eli." Audrey says, low. Half warning, half apology.
But Mom's already crouching down to his level. "You must be Eli." She says the name like she's been saving it. "Do you want to go stretch your legs out back? We fixed up the trampoline. It's all ready for you."
His head comes up off my hip, every trace of misery gone.
He makes a sound only dogs should be able to hear and bolts through the open door like the backyard might disappear if he's not fast enough.
"Shoes!" Audrey calls after him, already knowing it's hopeless. "Eli—this isn't our house—shoes!"
Mom herds us inside with a hand on Audrey's back, talking the whole way—the drive, the traffic on the pass, whether we ate before we left. She gets the cake box out of Audrey's hands before Audrey can set it down herself.
"You did not. After everything you do all week, you did not bring me a cake."
"It's just a lemon one."
"Just a lemon one," Mom repeats to the ceiling, like she's asking it to witness this. "Sit. Asher, get everyone something to drink. There's lemonade in the fridge."
By the time we've got glasses sweating on the side table, there's no pretending we don’t see the gifts. My parents are not above bribing for affection. At least my mother.
There's a box for Eli the size of a microwave, and he's back inside on his knees in front of it before anyone's finished their drink. He tears into the paper with both hands, no method to it, pure demolition—and then he goes still.
"It's a helicopter." He breathes it more than says it. "Mom. Mom, look. Is it real? Does it fly?"
"It does." Audrey crouches beside him. "Careful with the—"
But he's already tugging at the box flaps, and the box is not giving. Felicity drops down across from him, sleeves shoved up with scissors in her hand.
"Okay, okay, let me. These things have like nine hundred twist ties. They do it on purpose—Eli, hold this."
"I can get it."
"Trust me, kid. These things are engineered to defeat grown adults. Hold this." They work on all the ties and finally lift it out, this glossy red helicopter with four rotors, and Eli looks at it like he can't quite believe it's his.
"Outside," my mother says. Felicity walks out with him. "Lissy, watch the trees. You’re climbing them if it gets stuck in the branches.”
Felicity already has Eli, one hand between his shoulder blades.
"C'mon, we'll see how high this baby can go.
" Then they're gone, the slider banging shut behind them.
Through the glass I watch her get down on the grass with him and start working the controls, talking the whole time, her hands quick and sure on the little remote.
Sophie hasn't moved.
There's a box for her too, flatter, wrapped in paper she's been picking at one corner carefully, the way she's careful with everything. Mom crosses to her.
"That one's yours, sweetheart. Asher told us a bit about what you like.”
Little fawn turns to me and smiles.
Sophie peels the tape back without tearing the paper.
Inside, there's a set of wooden horses, a dozen of them, plain and unpainted, each one in a different pose.
Underneath them, a paint set. Not a kid's paint set.
The real kind that comes in a wooden case with two rows of tubes and brushes laid in a felt slot, the kind I've seen open on my mother's worktable.
Sophie lifts the case out with both hands and holds it.
"I paint too," Mom says, bending to her level. "Birds, mostly. Badly. But I love it. You can paint these any color you want. They're yours." She straightens. "Come on, I'll set you up at the table. Better light in the kitchen anyway."
Sophie looks at Audrey.
Audrey nods, and something passes between them, quick, a whole conversation in half a second.
By the time I've got a coffee in my hand, Mom has cleared the kitchen table, laid out newspaper, and filled a jar with water. Sophie has a brush in her hand and her tongue between her teeth, painting the first horse a deep, careful blue.
"You're not going to get those dry before we leave," I say. "We're heading out soon, Mom. We want to get to the hotel before midnight."
She doesn't look up from where she's sitting at the table. "Then you'll stop by on the way home from your vacation and get them." She smiles at Sophie. "We'll make cookies. What's your favorite kind?"
Sophie considers it with the seriousness of a Supreme Court ruling. "Snickerdoodle."
"A girl of taste. I have a recipe older than your mother."
Sophie returns the smile.
"I like the soft kind. Not the crunchy kind."
"That’s the only kind worth making."
And then they're off, the two of them, snickerdoodles versus sugar cookies, whether sprinkles count as a flavor, Audrey leaning a hip against the counter and putting in her vote.
My little baker, I think, smiling to myself.
Then Audrey does the smallest thing. She rubs once between her eyebrows. Holds her fingers there a little too long.
Most people wouldn't notice it.
I do.
I walk over to her. "You okay?" I ask quietly.
"Mm-hmm."
The answer comes out a little too fast.
I glance toward the hallway bathroom.
"Go take your pill."
Her eyes flick up to mine.
"Asher—"
"Go."
She studies me for a second before disappearing down the hall.
Mom keeps talking about cookie recipes.
Nobody else notices a thing.
"Asher." My father rises from his seat, jacket still on. "Walk with me a minute?"
The yard is loud. Eli’s abandoned the helicopter to Felicity and made it onto the zipline platform Dad built into the big oak the same summer I turned eight, except it's not the same platform.
The cable's new, bright and tensioned, the seat padded, a second line strung lower for a kid Eli's size.
The trampoline past it is new too. There hasn't been one since Felicity went to college.
They put these in before they'd even met the kids.
We stop at the porch rail. Eli launches off the platform with a scream that startles a bird out of a big oak, and Felicity, running underneath him with both arms up like a spotter at a gym, isn't doing much better.
"He's fearless," Dad says.
"He's seven. Being fearless is his full-time job."
Dad watches him a moment longer. Then he turns, resting his forearms on the rail, and I know the tone before he opens his mouth. It's the one he uses when he wants to make a point.
"I want to tell you something, and I need you to actually hear it.”
I nod, bracing for whatever’s coming. The thing I was worried about the whole drive over.
He looks out at the yard. "I've been watching you. Not the season. Not the numbers." He takes a deep breath. "You’ve changed. I’ve seen it in the last few months. Now I know why. I see the way you are with her. The way you are with those two."
I don't say anything. The zipline hums.
"I spent a long time looking at your life and seeing a spreadsheet that didn't add up. Talent, and no plan for it. Potential, going to waste." He says it without heat, like a man reading back an old entry he logged. "I wasn’t looking at it correctly.”
A truck passes out on the road. The cable hums again. Eli shrieks.
"I'm proud of you, Asher. Not because of baseball. Not despite baseball." He turns his head and looks at me, full on, and I have to make myself hold his gaze. "Just—proud of the man you've become."
The words land somewhere old.
Somewhere that spent years pretending it didn't care what he thought.
Somewhere that cared anyway.
I don't know what to do with it. I've spent fifteen years building a man my father was disappointed in from a comfortable distance, and now he's three feet away telling me it worked out anyway, and there's nowhere to set the thing down.
I stand there in silence. He lets me.
And then, easy, almost offhand, the way he's asked me at every dinner, every off-season, every birthday for the last twelve years:
"Have you thought any more about the firm?"
Here it is.
For once, I don't reach for the deflection. The joke, the we'll see, the redirect to the weather. I just look at him.
"No, Dad. I'm not coming."
He nods slowly. There’s a long pause where the only sound is the cable and the kid on the end of it.
"Okay," he says.
I let out a breath I hadn't planned on holding.
"I think I might run for city council."
His head comes around, eyebrows raised. Surprised. He studies me for a second, like he's recalibrating, fitting the new piece against everything he thought he knew about his son.
Then his face settles into something I haven't seen aimed at me in a very long time.
His mouth curves at the edges.
"I think you'll be fantastic, son.”