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She comes to him across the kitchen, and he wraps his arms around her, buries his nose in her hair He does this often, trying as of late to recapture that first-encounter smell--some mix of perfume and conditioner and core essence that once ed now, been lost, or becoer detect the scent, which, when he could, always carried hi even than her short blonde hair and green eyes A feeling of newness A fresh turn Like a sharp October afternoon and the sky blue and bright and the Cascades and Olyinning to turn
He e and the shah are still raw He can’t say for certain, but he suspects that if she’d done the saone Marvels at her love for hi he deserves, it only intensifies the shao look in on him," Ethan whispers
"OK"
"When I come back down, you’ll sit with me while I eat?"
"Of course"
He drapes his coat over the banister, slips out of his black shoes, and pads up the stairs, skipping over the squeaky fifth step
There are no bad floorboards the rest of the way, and soon he’s standing in the threshold of the bedrooht has carved through the space between the door and the jamb
For Ben’s fifth birthday, they painted the walls to reflect space: Blackness Stars The swirl of distant galaxies Planets The occasional deep-space satellite or rocket An astronaut drifting
His son sleeps in a tangle of blankets, a solden, plastic boy kicking a soccer ball
Ethanstray LEGO pieces and Hot Wheels
Crouches down beside the bed
His eyes have adjusted to the darkness just well enough to draw out the details of Benjamin’s face
Softness
Serenity
They’re shut, but he has his mother’s almond eyes
Ethan’shere in the dark by the bed of his soon-to-be-six-year-old son in the wake of another day he’s missed co he’s ever laid eyes on, and he feels, acutely, the inexorable passing of a thousand moments with this little person ill be a ine
He touches Ben’s cheek with the back of his hand
Leans forward, kisses the boy’s forehead
Brushes a wisp of hair back behind his ear
"I’ine"
Last year, the e and pneumonia, his father asked Ethan in a raspy voice, "You spend time with your son?"
"Much as I can," he’d answered, but his father had caught the lie in his eyes
"It’ll be your loss, Ethan Day’ll codole hour with your son as a boy To hold him Read a book to him Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong He doesn’t see your failings yet He looks at you with pure love and it won’t last, so you revel in it while it’s here"
Ethan thinks often of that conversation, ht and everyone else is asleep, and his life screaht of bills and the future and his prior failings and all these --all the lost joy--perched like a boulder on his chest
"Can you hear me? Ethan?"
Sohts co to it
A life raft
"Ethan, I want you to grab hold ofyou to the surface of consciousness"
Letting it play over and over until the anxiety recedes and the exhaustion comes and he can finally slip under