“Come inside.”
The words left my mouth like they’d been waiting there for years.
My son stepped over the threshold slowly, like the floor might reject him. The baby carrier bumped his knee as he moved, the handle wrapped so tight in his fingers his knuckles looked pale.
I held the screen door open with one hand and kept my other at my side, because I didn’t know what to do with it.
Do you hug a ghost?
Do you hug someone who turned you into an empty chair for three Christmases?
The house smelled like old coffee and lemon cleaner. The same smell it’s had since my wife passed—like I’d been trying to scrub grief into something manageable.
My son’s eyes moved over the living room the way they used to when he was a kid, scanning for what changed, scanning for what stayed.
The porch repairs I’d done were visible through the window: new boards, fresh paint, a steadier railing. Quiet proof that life didn’t stop just because he did.
He swallowed hard.
“I didn’t think you’d open the door,” he said.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” I said—until he told me why he really disappeared.
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