She nodded and went back inside.

I drove home with no grand promise and no certain answer about us.

That uncertainty no longer felt unbearable.

It felt like respect.

PART 16

The first time Mason called me Dad to my face, there was no music playing and nothing especially memorable about the weather.

It was an ordinary Thursday in August.

I had come to watch his soccer practice, and he was searching through his bag for a water bottle he’d somehow buried under a sweatshirt and three mismatched socks.