The room filled with all the things they had never learned how to say without cutting each other.
Then my mother turned to Noah.
“Hello, Noah.”
He did not answer.
I placed a hand lightly on his shoulder, not pushing, just reminding him I was there.
My mother swallowed.
“I owe you an apology.”
Noah stared at the floor.
She looked at me.
I said nothing.
She continued, voice careful, as if stepping across thin ice.
“On New Year’s Eve, I hurt you and Emma. I left you out on purpose. That was wrong. You did not deserve it. You did not do anything to cause it.”
Noah’s fingers tightened around his compass.
“I was angry at your mother,” she said. “And I used you to hurt her. That was cruel.”
My father closed his eyes.
I felt my own breath catch.
No excuses.
No “but.”
No “families are complicated.”
