Will sets aside whatever he was working on, turning to face me completely. "How was it?"
"Hard." I look at my hands. "Cole's been taking care of it by himself all this time. Three years. Because I wasn't here."
The silence that follows isn't uncomfortable. Will doesn't try to fill it with platitudes or reassurances. He just waits.
"I missed their funeral." My voice cracks on the words. "Craig convinced me I shouldn't go. And I let him. I let him keep me away from burying my own parents."
"That's not on you."
I look up, startled by the certainty in his voice.
"It is, though. I could have?—"
"You were surviving." His eyes hold mine, steady and sure. "Whatever he did to you, whatever hold he had, you were doing what you had to do to get through each day. That's not weakness. That's survival."
The tears threaten again, but I blink them back. "How do you know that?"
"Because I know what it looks like when someone's been broken down piece by piece. And I know it doesn't happen to weak people. Weak people don't survive it." He leans forward slightly. "You're here. You got out. You came home. That takes more strength than most people will ever have to find."
I don't know what to say to that. No one has ever framed it that way before—not as a failure I need to atone for, but as a battle I managed to survive.
"Thank you," I manage.
He nods, and the tension eases. He gestures toward the side table. "Tax documents are waiting whenever you're ready. No rush."
I stand, steadier than I was when I sat down. My eyes catch on something as I move toward the table—a photo on the windowsill, half-hidden behind a stack of folders.
I know who it is before I pick it up. But I pick it up anyway.
Will, younger by maybe a decade, with his arm around Sarah on some beach. They're both laughing at something off-camera, and the joy on their faces is so raw and real that itmakes my throat tight. I remember her looking like that. At the Brotherhood cookouts. Around town and at the bar,
"She hated that picture."
I nearly drop the frame. Will is watching me, but there's no anger in his expression. Just a quiet sadness that I recognize.
"I'm sorry." I start to put it back. "I wasn't trying to?—"
"It's fine." He stands, moves closer, but not too close. "I keep it there on purpose. Reminds me that she was real. That it wasn't just something I dreamed."
"I remember her," I say softly. "She was always so kind to me. That last Christmas before I left, she gave me a bracelet she'd made. Said every woman should have something beautiful that was just for her."
Will's expression flickers. "That was Sarah."
"I still have it. Kept it hidden from Craig because—" I stop. Because he would have made me throw it away. Because he would have twisted it into something ugly. "Because I wanted one thing that was just mine."
"She would have liked knowing that."
I set the photo back on the windowsill carefully. "You two were what I thought love was supposed to look like. When I was younger, watching you together, I used to think—" I shake my head. "It doesn't matter what I thought."
"Tell me."
His voice is gentle.
"I thought if I could find someone who looked at me the way you looked at her, I'd be okay. I'd be safe." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "And then I found someone who made me feel like the center of his world, and I thought I'd found it. I didn't realize until too late that being the center of someone's world can mean being trapped there."
Will is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
"Sarah and I weren't perfect. What we had was real, but it wasn't easy. She struggled with depression before she got sick, and the illness made it worse. Some days she couldn't get out of bed. Some days she couldn't stop crying." He looks at the photo. "I'm not supposed to say that. I'm supposed to remember her as perfect. But she was human. Complicated and difficult and absolutely worth it."
