.
But you came home, and that’s the part that matters.*
I read it twice.
Then I folded it carefully and put it in my coat pocket, close.
“Thank you,” I said.
To Daniel.
To Thomas.
To whoever was listening.
Daniel looked at the mantelpiece.
At the photograph.
At his father, young and certain, looking at something just out of frame.
“He was right about you,” Daniel said quietly.
“I didn’t want to admit that.
But he was.”
I looked at him — this tall, grey-templed man with Thomas’s jaw and Thomas’s eyes, who had arrived at my door with his fists already raised and was now standing in his father’s house helping me understand what I’d been given.
“He was right about you too,” I said.
Daniel made a short sound — not quite a laugh, not quite not one.
“Sunday dinners,” he said.
“He and I had them every week.
I don’t — I don’t know what to do with Sundays now.”
I looked at him.
“Come here,” I said.
“Next Sunday.
I’ll cook.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“You don’t have to do that.”
