“Where is she?”
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Noah shrugged. “Aunt Diane wanted to tell you, but she said it was Lily’s decision. Then, when they found out that Caleb was still coming over here, that you’d grown close…”
He didn’t say the rest. He didn’t need to.
“She’s okay, Mom,” Noah continued. “She’s really okay. She wanted to come home but she was scared. She’s been waiting.”
I was already standing, already reaching for my keys.
He didn’t say the rest. He didn’t need to.
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We drove three hours mostly in silence.
Diane opened the door before we reached the porch.
And then there was Lily.
Thin, watchful, quiet, but there. Standing in the hallway light with her arms already rising.
She walked past me first and into Noah’s arms, and I understood exactly why. He had earned that. He had earned it a hundred times over with every silent Saturday, every flinch he swallowed down, every week he said nothing because she had asked him not to.
And then there was Lily.
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When she finally reached me, I held on.
“I’m so sorry,” I said into her hair. “I should have been someone you could tell.”
She didn’t say it’s okay, because we both knew it wasn’t yet. But she stayed in my arms, and that was enough to start with.
On the drive home, Noah sat in the back between us, and for the first time in almost a year, I heard my children talking to each other — quietly, easily, the way they always had — like two halves of a heartbeat that had finally found its rhythm again.
“I should have been someone you could tell.”
