All the missed school plays. All the dinners eaten alone at a counter that seated two. "I kept the drawings," Simone said quietly. "The ones you made when you were little."
"The houses with the suns in the corner. I kept every one." Sophia's jaw tightened. Her eyes went bright.
"You never told me that." "I know," Simone said. "I kept a lot of things I never told you. I thought if I could give you enough, the company, the tuition, the apartment, that would be the same as being there."
"That would be enough." She stopped. "It wasn't." "No," Sophia said.
"It wasn't." Then Sophia put her arms around her mother carefully, as though the woman might break or might disappear. Both of which had recently seemed possible. Simone held on with the grip of someone who had been wanting to do exactly this for a very long time and wasn't sure she'd been allowed.
Richard stood at the window and looked at the harbor lights and gave them the moment. Later, when the corridor had cleared, the engineers had gone home, and Preston had finally been allowed to send his emails, Simone came to stand beside Richard at the east-facing window. "I need to tell you something," she said. He waited.
"When you sang to me that first night, before you knew my name, before I could offer you anything or open my eyes or even thank you..." She steadied herself. "No one in my adult life has ever simply stayed. Not without wanting something back."
"Not once." "I know," he said. "I could tell even then." "I fell in love with you," she said simply.
"Somewhere in those weeks in the dark, listening to your voice, I fell in love with who you were when you thought no one important was watching." Richard looked at the harbor lights moving slowly through the dark. "I've been alone a while too," he said softly. "Longer than my kids know."
She reached over and took his hand. He looked down at it, her hand in his, and something in his face settled. The way a room settles when someone finally comes home and turns the light on. He led her.
March 15th, 2026. The hospital garden. Nurse Lily had helped string lights through the bare branches of the ash trees along the path, the same battery-powered kind, four dollars a strand, because Simone had been specific. Richard had laughed and said, "Of course you were."