Chapter 6: The Warmer Room

“Mom?” Jake asked, pointing at the upcoming Sunday on the calendar. “Are we going to have to drive back there for Easter?”

I put my laptop aside and met his eyes.

He deserved the truth.

“I don’t think so, buddy. Not this year. Probably not ever.”

He stood quietly for several seconds, processing my answer with the seriousness of someone far older than nine.

“Is it because of the gravy thing?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered simply. “It is.”

He slowly nodded, carefully storing the information away the way he always did.

Then I saw something subtle happen.

The tension left his shoulders.

“Good,” Jake said quietly. “I didn’t really want to go anyway.”

My breath caught.

I hadn’t known.

Because I had never asked.

I had spent so much energy managing my own toxic, tangled feelings about my parents’ house—so much time forcing myself into the role of the dutiful daughter—that I had never stopped to ask Jake whether he even wanted to be there.

The same little boy who was always placed at the distant end of the table beside the cold window.

He looked at me now with those same wide brown eyes.

Only this time, there was no fear in them.

No hesitation.

“I like it better when it’s just us,” Jake said.

I reached for him and pulled him tightly against me, resting my cheek against his hair.

“Me, too, buddy,” I whispered into the quiet room.

And for the first time in my life, I could say it without grief weighing down the words.

It wasn’t second best.

It wasn’t what remained after losing something better.

It wasn’t surrender.

It was simply the cleanest, brightest truth I had ever known.

Me, too.