She would have said in that specific Sarah Parker way, Ethan, don't be an idiot. He wasn't going to be an idiot. He got out of the car. He walked to the front door. He stepped over Lily's shoes in the hallway because he always did and probably always would.
He checked on her sleeping hand under cheek, 7 years old, and completely unaware that the world had just shifted a few degrees on its axis. He went to the kitchen. He drank the glass of water he'd skipped 3 hours ago. And then he went to his nightstand. He opened the drawer.
He looked at Sarah's reading glasses, wire rimmed, slightly bent on the left arm where she'd sat on them once, and laughed for five full minutes about it. He didn't move them. He wasn't ready to move them. But for the first time in 4 years, he didn't close the drawer because it hurt too much to look. He closed it gently. the way you close something you intend to come back to.
And he went to sleep. He didn't sleep well, not because of nightmares. Those had mostly stopped after the second year. He lay on his back in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about a woman who had looked at an empty seat and stayed where she was. And about a man who had shown up in a crowded bar with a cold smile and found every soft place in Ethan's chest with surgical precision, he replayed Daniel's voice. a man who's still in love with a dead woman.
He replayed his own hands on the table. He replayed Clare's voice saying, "I'm not asking you to put her away. I just want to sit next to her." At 2:00 in the morning, he gave up on sleep and went to the kitchen and made coffee he didn't need and sat at the table in the dark and had the honest conversation with himself that he'd been avoiding for 2 years. Not the managed version.
Not the version where he was responsible and measured and always had a good reason for every wall he'd built. The real one, the one that started with the question, "What are you actually afraid of?" Not losing someone again. That was the answer he'd been giving himself. And it was true as far as it went, but it wasn't the whole truth.
And at 2:00 in the morning, with bad coffee and nobody watching, he was too tired for partial truths. The whole truth was this. He was afraid that wanting something for himself was a betrayal of Sarah, of Lily, of the version of himself that had stood at that graveside and silently promised to hold everything together. Like happiness was a finite resource, and he'd already spent his share, and reaching for more meant taking it from somewhere it was needed. He sat with that for a long time.
Then he thought about what Clare had said. Some voice got into you that decided you're not allowed to want things. He thought about the plant that was 4t tall in her living room. He drank his bad coffee. By 3:15, he had reached a conclusion that was not dramatic and not revvelatory and did not feel like a turning point from the inside.
Because real turning points almost never do. It felt like exhaustion, like a man who has been holding a heavy thing for a very long time finally setting it down. Not because he's strong enough to let it go, but because his arms simply cannot continue. He was going to stop punishing himself for being alive. He was going to try.
That was all. Just try. It wasn't a declaration. It wasn't a promise. It was a tired man at a kitchen table at 3:00 in the morning giving himself the most basic permission.