“Why?”
His mouth tightened. “Because hoping you were my sister and being wrong would’ve meant losing you twice.”
We sat like that for a long time. Somewhere between anger and exhaustion, something in me loosened — not all the way, but enough.
“Give me your number.”
“I don’t know if I can forgive you, Dad,” I said finally. “And I don’t know if I want you in Tyler’s life.”
His face tightened, but he nodded.
“I understand.”
“Give me your number.”
He looked up.
“If there’s another conversation, I’ll be the one who starts it. You don’t come here. You don’t wait for Tyler at the park. You don’t contact him at all.”
“Then I live with that.”
“I understand.”
“And if I never call?”
He swallowed. “Then I live with that.”
I nodded. “Good.”
I turned to my brother. I looked at him across the table.
“All these years, Tyler kept coming home talking about Mr. Lewis.”
He gave me a tired little smile.
I didn’t promise to use it.
“Good things, I hope.”
“Mostly the lollipops.”
He laughed, and somehow that nearly broke me.
“I’m glad it was you,” I said. “Of all the people who could’ve turned out to be my brother… I’m glad it was you.”
The first pale light of dawn touched the window. The old man wrote his number on the back of an envelope and slid it across the table.
I didn’t promise to use it.
That was the first thing all night that made me laugh.
A minute later, I watched him walk down the porch steps alone.
When I came back to the kitchen, Mr. Lewis was still sitting at the table.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to call you now,” I said.
A tired smile touched his face.
“Lewis still works.”
For some reason, that was the first thing all night that made me laugh.
I wouldn’t answer them with a lie.
I rested my forehead against my brother’s shoulder, just for a moment.
Upstairs, Tyler was still asleep. In the morning, there would be questions. Later, harder ones.
This time, I wouldn’t answer them with a lie.
