Marisol and I moved into a small rental on the edge of Cedarbrook that same year, nothing fancy, a modest two-bedroom with a kitchen too small for both of us to cook in at the same time comfortably. But the bills got paid every month, the refrigerator stayed full, and the house, for the first time in my entire life, actually felt peaceful in a way our old family estate never once had.
A few months after the wedding, Eli started calling me Dad, without anyone once suggesting it to him, the word simply arriving on its own one evening at dinner like it had been waiting for the right moment.
I was, honestly, happier than I’d ever expected to let myself be.
For three years after that, my mother and I didn’t speak at all. Not a call, not a card, nothing beyond the occasional secondhand update passed along through my cousin at the family holiday she still hosted every year, gatherings I stopped attending the same month I got married.
Then, last week, out of absolutely nowhere, she called.
PART 4
Continue reading on the next page →
