David found me standing by the window, staring out at the dark water and the silhouette of a battleship in the distance.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind.
“You don’t have to keep waiting for them,” he said quietly, his voice vibrating against my back. “Family isn’t the people who are supposed to show up. It’s the people who actually do.”
I turned and buried my face against his chest, accepting the comfort he offered.
But later, when his breathing had deepened into sleep, I slipped into the cold bathroom. I turned on the shower to mask the sound, slid down the wall, and finally let myself break.
I pressed my fist against my mouth and sobbed until I had nothing left. The kind of ugly, silent crying that tears you apart from the inside.
The Morning After
The sun rose the next morning with cheerful indifference to my pain. We sat on the balcony trying to drink coffee we couldn’t taste, attempting to salvage something from what should have been a happy time.
Then my phone made a sound that cut through the quiet morning like a gunshot.
My heart did a foolish, treacherous leap of hope. Maybe they were reaching out to apologize.
I picked up the phone. It was a text from my father.
