I felt something cold settle in my chest.
“For what?”
“To come back.”
I stared at him.
He rushed on.
“Not to the house.
I’m not saying that.
I mean…
back into our lives.
Your mother can’t stop asking how we did this.
I can’t walk past those front steps without remembering what I did to you.
Everyone knows Lily confessed.
Everyone knows we were wrong.”
There it was.
Not money.
Not some secret emergency.
Something more uncomfortable.
They needed absolution.
My father needed the son he’d thrown away to return so the family could stop looking like what it had become.
“You want me to make you feel forgiven,” I said.
He winced.
My mother whispered, “We want our family back.”
“Your family didn’t disappear.
You threw part of it out the front door.”
She closed her eyes.
My father looked at me for several seconds.
Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.
“Yes.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“Yes what?”
“Yes.
I want forgiveness.
I want you back.
I want to wake up one morning and not be the man who hit his innocent son and left him with nowhere to go.”
His voice cracked.
“And I know now that wanting that doesn’t mean I deserve it.”
For the first time since I entered the coffee shop, I believed he understood at least one piece of what he’d done.
Not all of it.
Maybe he never could.
But one piece.
My mother reached into her bag and placed an old photograph on the table.
It was our family before everything happened.
Dad.
Mom.
Lily.
Me.
Nobody looked afraid of anybody.
I stared at the younger version of myself.
He had no idea how quickly belonging could become conditional.
“Take it,” Mom said.
I shook my head.
“I don’t need proof I belonged there.”
Her face crumpled.
“You need to understand something,” I said.
“I already have a family.
I have a wife.
