Page 9 of What You left in Me

I meet her gaze this time and let the corner of my mouth tilt. “Only the kind no one can trip.”

“That sounds ominous,” she says, but there’s a tiny spark in her eyes, like she appreciates the line even if she won’t show it to her mother.

Dad laughs, grateful for anything buoyant. “All right, all right. Enough garden espionage. Tomorrow, we have a lot to do. The sun’s supposed to cooperate so we can do some outdoor activity. Finn, you’ll come?”

“Sure,” I say, which meansI’ll be there and thinking about signal strength. “What time?”

“Ten,” he says, pleased. “We’ll bring coffee. Real coffee,” he adds to Eleanor, who takes it as a provocation.

“I’ve never servedfakecoffee,” she replies, smoothing her napkin into a blade.

“You serve coffee that’s been bullied into submission,” he says, and he’s teasing, which is how I know he’s happier than he pretends.

The Whitakers peel off early with apologies about early mornings and dogs. The chairs scrape, the candles gutter, and the room exhales. I stand when Dad does. He squeezes my shoulder again, not ready to let go.

“Walk with me to the porch,” he invites. “Let’s spend some time together. I miss you.”

It’s not like I can say no to that.

Outside, with no candle lights to warm us, it’s chilly. Beautiful, too. The stars are like needles pricking through velvet. I can never see them in the city. There’s nothing, either, like the lake as it holds the moon like a quiet secret.

Dad leans against the rail and looks at me the way he always has. In the face, not through me like he’s trying to study me. “I am glad you’re here,” he says again, softer.

“I know.” I toe at a groove in the old wood. “I’m not here to start a war this time.”

“You never were,” he says. “You just carried one.”

I breathe out through my nose and watch the white of it in the cold like I used to as a kid, counting ghosts. “How’s the board nonsense?” I ask, because he loves to be asked, and I can give him this, at least.

“Annoying, which means I’m alive.” He smiles, eyes crinkling. “They’ll grumble and then pass the budget. They always do if you explain it like they’re adults.”

“You’re good at that,” I say. It’s the only thing I envy him, the way people become more themselves around him, not less.

He pats the rail. “You could be, too.”

“Different job description.”

I let the quiet thicken. A light shifts in a window upstairs and Eleanor’s silhouette cuts past.

He follows my glance. “She’s happy you came, even if she can’t say it in a way you like.”

“I’m not here for her,” I say, then wince because it sounds harsher than I mean. “I’m here for theanniversary,” I correct, but he hears what I don’t say:I’m here for you.

He nods, like that’s enough. “That’s enough. Goodnight, son.”

“Goodnight, Dad.” The words sit strangely but I hang onto it anyway.

Back inside, the house has that after-dinner hush with plates stacked in the kitchen, the last clink of a faucet, and the whisper of a towel. Eleanor passes me in the hall with a smug look that could polish silver.

“No phones at the table tomorrow,” she says, like there was a phone at the table tonight.

“Noted.” I don’t tell her Eric could run a small country from my inbox. I built the system so I could be anywhere but here.

At the base of the stairs, I pause because halfway up, Ariane appears at the landing, fingers light on the banister.

The overhead chandelier scatters light across her collarbones like broken coins.

“Goodnight, Finn,” she says, her voice soft and almost sleepy.