So I turned to the window and looked out at an ordinary Indianapolis street, at a sprinkler and a parked car and a dog asleep on a lawn, the whole indifferent world going about its afternoon, while behind me six years of separation came apart at the seams on a living room floor.

I did not need to watch it.

I could hear it — the particular sound of a boy who had held himself together for far too long finally, safely, coming undone — and it was, I think, the best sound I had heard in the three years since my own house went silent.

Chapter 26 — Room for Everyone

It did not all mend in a single afternoon.

I want to be honest about that, because the version where one hug fixes six years of separation is a lie, and these two had been lied to by enough adults.