Sarah stood near the steps with two neighbors, talking as if he were no longer fully present.
“He wasted his whole life,” she said. “On a child who never even belonged to him.”
Michael looked down into his coffee. His hands were not as steady as they used to be. He thought of the hospital waiting room. He thought of the laundry basket lined with towels. He thought of Noah at six, holding up that drawing with Dad written above his head.
He did not think of it as waste. He thought of it as the only thing he had ever done that made the rest of his life make sense.
Then tires crunched on the gravel drive.
Sarah turned first. A dark SUV rolled slowly toward the house, clean but not flashy, the kind of vehicle that said someone had worked hard enough to stop apologizing for needing reliability. The engine went quiet. The driver’s door opened.
