No mention of “Call Ben.”
I think of that same kid checking the mail obsessively, waiting for something, or jumping at the phone when it rang.
But it never did.
I will not be that kind of dad. I won’t.
In my mental checklist, I add one item: BE THERE, and I underline it three times.
It’s corny as hell, I know that, but it’s the one thing I won’t ever stop trying to do.
I will be there. If I am nothing else, if I mess up everything else, I will be there.
I think about knocking on the Richards’ door, just like old times—Jason scowling then relenting, Gwen in an apron, Don with that little corner smile.
I think about how it’s never going to be just like old times again. I run a thumb along the edge of the ultrasound and try to make my peace with that.
But making peace with that feels too big. I decide to shoot for just not making it worse.
I pick up my phone and scowl at it. Paige said she’d call me as soon as dinner was over, but she hasn’t yet.
Is dinner still going on?
Did she forget to call?
I should call her.
I take the ultrasound and carefully place a magnet over it against the fridge. Who am I hiding it from now?
Then I grab my phone and find my way back out to the porch because the night’s deepened, and sometimes the dark helps. I sit on one of the chairs I put out there and breathe past the lump in my throat.
I mess with my black eye again, gently, like an idiot poking a bruise. I replay the look on Jason’s face in the office—not the punch itself, the second before it.
Hurt like a bloodless wound. There isn’t a version of this where I don’t have to sit with that for a while. If I push in too soon, I just turn hurt into rage and start the whole thing all over again.
“Coward,” part of me mutters.
“No,” I tell it out loud, surprising myself with the force of it. “Waiting isn’t the same thing.”
To give myself something to do, I think about all the huge changes that are about to enter my life: cribs and car seats and midnight fevers; first steps, first falls; Christmas morning; the day when a teenager glares at me and says I don’t understand anything and slams a door in a house she doesn’t pay for.
I think about how none of it scares me as much as the thought of that kid scanning a room looking for me and not finding anyone.
I flip the phone over, thumb hovering on her contact. Call. Don’t call. Call. Be a grown man and—
Headlights wash the maples white, then blue, as a truck noses into my drive.
I go cold and stand before I know I’ve moved, sliding the phone into my pocket. The engine cuts.
Jason swings out of the driver’s seat and shuts the door softly. He doesn’t slam. He doesn’t stalk. He just… walks across the lawn, hands empty, jaw set, the porch light making shadows under his eyes.
I make myself stay on the step. If he wants the yard, he can have the yard. If he wants the distance, he can keep it. He stops at the bottom like a silent agreement.
“Hey,” I say, because somebody has to start.
“Hey,” he says back, voice flat.
We look at each other for a second, the crickets doing all the talking. My eye still carries the faint yellow of last week, and he notices—of course, he notices—and his mouth tightens.
