Good, he'd said. Just that.
I pressed the cloth harder against my jaw.
The thing was, I didn't regret any of it. The restraint, the stepping in for Bellows, the walking away. That was the man I was trying to be and I'd been it, more or less, and I was glad about that. What I regretted was the look on Maddie's face when she'd seen the bruise—the way something had flickered in her eyes before she'd smoothed it over. Something careful and old.
She'd believed the corner story, mostly. Except I'd seen themostlypart of it, and I didn't like it.
I should tell her, I knew that. We'd done the work in her apartment, the real conversation, the one that cost both of us something, and I'd told her I was done with the twelve years of nothing. I meant it. Keeping things from her, even the smallthings with innocent explanations, was the wrong direction. It was a step back toward the version of myself I was trying to leave behind.
I'd tell her Friday.
I stared at my reflection. The bruise, the jaw, the face I’d been looking at for thirty-six years—one that still occasionally startled me with how much it looked like his.
But I’d kept my hands down. I’d stood between Bellows and the noise, taken the hit, and walked away. In the history of the Henley men, that wasn’t nothing.
I turned off the light, leaving the version of me that looked like my father in the dark.
The bruise wasn't the only thing I was keeping from her. That was the other truth of it, sitting in the back of my mind while I went downstairs to start Lily's dinner. There were other pieces moving, other things not yet said, and I was going to need to find the right moment for all of it.
Friday, I thought.
I'd figure it out Friday.
Chapter Fifty
Madison
Dinner on Wednesday hadn’t been in the schedule.
Jack had planned for Friday, but Lily had staged a mid-week intervention that involved a grocery bag of mozzarella and a refusal to take no for an answer. By six o'clock, she was standing on a step stool at the counter like a tiny Michelin-starred chef who had strong opinions about cheese distribution.
Jack had been demoted to dough duty, a role he accepted with quiet patience. I’d been assigned sauce, which Lily supervised with the usual intensity.
It had been loud and slightly chaotic.
The pizza had come out slightly lopsided—and completely fine—and we'd eaten it at the kitchen table while Lily gave us a detailed account of a disagreement between Noah and another kid about whose turn it was on the climbing frame. The story had so many characters and subplots that I'd lost the thread somewhere around the third act, but Jack had followed with apparent ease. He’d asked clarifying questions at the right moments, which made Lily feel heard and made me feel something warm and difficult to name.
Halfway through dinner his phone had buzzed. He'd glanced at it, put it face down, glanced at it again.
"You can take it," I said.
"It's fine."
"Jack."
He'd picked it up, excused himself, gone to the hallway. I'd heard his voice, low and careful, the register of someone not wanting to be overheard. He'd been back in three minutes, easy and present, and we'd finished dinner. I'd told myself it was work.
It was work. Of course it was work.
* * *
Thursday I was walking back from the pharmacy on Calloway Street when I saw him.
I almost missed it. I was scrolling through a consult report on my phone, and I only looked up to check the curb. And there he was—visible through the window of The Anchor.
Twelve years ago, it had been a dive bar with a sticky floor and a flickering neon sign. Now, it had been bought and renovated into something upscale, all exposed brick and soft lighting and overpriced craft beer. But it was the same building. The same glass.
And he was right there, sitting at a table tucked into the back corner.