Chapter 4
ETHAN
By Thursday afternoon, the house was almost done.
I stood in the hallway with a hammer in my hand, tapping the last nail into the trim while sunlight slanted through the window in that late-summer way that made dust look soft instead of dirty.
My phone buzzed in my pocket for the third time in an hour.
I ignored it.
Not because I didn’t trust them — because I did.
Beth, Chris, Mark.
I’d been shielding calls all week, answering emails late at night after Ma went to bed, keeping things short. Not disappearing, just… giving them space to run without me hovering.
They were good.
Better than good.
Jim had wanted Ivy kids. Top GPAs. Polished résumés that read like instruction manuals.
I’d picked the ones who reminded me of myself.
The kids who’d worked nights. Who’d scraped by. Who’d shown up early and stayed late because they didn’t have a safety net waiting under them.
I smiled to myself as I drove the nail home.
I’d watched them grow fast.
Lunches turned into happy hours. Happy hours into driving ranges after work, ties loosened, sleeves rolled, laughter carrying across the grass like we didn’t care who saw us.
Then weekends.
The first ski trip to Tony’s uncle’s place in Vermont — I could still see their faces pulling into the driveway. Silence. Awe. Mark muttering, Holy shit under his breath like he’d stepped into a brochure.
Bonfires at night. Snowmobiles lined up like toys. Skiing all day, then pointing out the snow-bunny bars after dark.
Mark hooking up with a woman who turned out to be a divorcee in her forties.
He swore off ski bars forever after that.
I laughed out loud now, the sound echoing down the freshly painted hall.
Patriot’s Day bar crawls. St. Paddy’s Day chaos. Green beer, bad decisions, stories that got better every year.
Christening ARTEMIS when Tony and I finally finished her — champagne spraying, Beth smashing the bottle against the hull like she’d been born to do it. Introducing them to Tony’s friends, watching the lines blur until it was one big group, no titles, no hierarchy.
Somewhere along the way, they stopped being my team.
They became… mine.
Family, in that adult way you don’t plan for.
I set the hammer down and leaned against the wall, sweat cooling on my back, hands rough and aching in a way that felt earned.
Ma was in the kitchen, humming to herself, packing up leftovers like she had somewhere important to be.
She did.
The library.
I was going back to the city soon — back to meetings and deadlines and the life I’d built — but I wasn’t leaving everything behind.
I’d done what I came to do here.
Fixed what needed fixing.
Put something solid under her feet.
And waiting for me in Boston wasn’t just work.
It was people who’d grown into my world the same way I’d grown into theirs.
I picked up my phone and finally checked it.
Three messages.
All some version of the same thing.
We’ve got this.
Take care of your mom.
See you soon.
I smiled, slid the phone back into my pocket, and went to help Ma set the table.
Because family wasn’t just where you came from.
Sometimes, it was where you were going back to.
Done for the day, I took a long hot shower then sat on the edge of my bed and picked it up with sure hands.
I had found it days earlier, buried in the back of my closet, behind spreadsheets printed for meetings that never mattered and suits I wore like armor.
I hadn’t touched it in so long I’d almost convinced myself I never really loved music in the first place—that it had just been a phase, something I outgrew like bad hair and cheap beer.
But sometime this week, between fixing Ma’s sink and making sure she ate dinner, I pulled it out.
My fingers gently tested the strings. They bit back at first—rusty, stiff, unfamiliar. I almost stopped. Almost shoved it back where it belonged.
Instead, I played.
Quietly. Carefully. Like the house might remember.
The sound filled the room in a way nothing else ever has.
Not Boston. Not glass offices or catered gin cocktails or networking dinners where everyone smiled too wide and pretended they liked each other.
Not the version of me that learned how to tan just enough, highlight just enough, say just enough of the right things to look like the perfect man on paper.
That guy faded with every note.
The room blurred.
And suddenly I wasn’t here anymore.
I was twenty-one again. On a low stage with bad lighting and a borrowed amp that buzzed if I moved wrong. My bass slung low, heart pounding, crowd loud and drunk and alive.
And Erin was right there.
Front row. Always front row.
She beamed at me like I was already someone. Like she believed in me before I’d figured out how to believe in myself. Her eyes locked on mine like the rest of the room didn’t exist, like we were sharing a secret just for us.
She was my first real love. My first girlfriend. The first girl who ever made me feel chosen.
And the first one who wanted forever before I even knew who I was.
By the time I graduated, she was talking rings. Houses. Fences. Babies. A life mapped out so clearly it terrified me.
I was twenty-two. I didn’t have a job. Didn’t have a dollar to my name. I loved music and freedom and possibility. She wanted mortgages and diapers and certainty.
So we broke.
Clean. Brutal. Final.
I hadn’t thought of her in years.
Until the guitar brought her back like she’d never left.
“I heard you,” Ma said softly from the hallway.
I hadn’t even noticed I was still playing.
She stood there a second, watching me like she didn’t want to spook the moment. “You sounded like yourself again.”
I swallowed hard.
Before I could say anything, she disappeared into the kitchen and came back holding something.
An acoustic guitar. Wooden. Warm. Worn in the right places. No amp. No noise. Just strings and soul.
“I saw it at the secondhand shop,” she said. “I figured… sometimes it’s good to have something that doesn’t need permission to be heard.”
My chest tightened.
“Thanks, Ma,” I managed, standing to hug her. “I mean it.”
She squeezed me hard. “Call when you get back to Boston.”
“I will.”
I packed both guitars.
Boston hit me fast—cold air, traffic, noise. It was Friday. I was exhausted in the way only pretending for too long can make you.
And still, there was only one thing on my mind.
Her.
The longer I’m away from her, the stronger the pull gets. Like an unresolved chord begging to be finished. Like a song I never got to play all the way through.