At home, everything felt wrong. The lights were too bright. The couch looked unfamiliar, like we’d rearranged our life while we were gone. Lucy refused to change out of her clothes at first, like they were armor. When she finally did, she asked if we could keep the hallway light on.
Then she asked if one of us could stay in the room.
Then she asked if we could sit closer.
So I sat on the edge of her bed, and she held my hand while Chris leaned in the doorway, helpless and furious, his shoulders rigid like he was holding back an explosion.
“She keeps saying sorry,” Chris whispered to me when Lucy turned her face into the pillow. “She keeps apologizing for… for nothing.”
I swallowed. “I know,” I said. “She learned that from somewhere.”
Lucy eventually fell asleep, but not deeply. Every so often her breathing hitched, like her body was still waiting for the moment it would realize no one was coming. I watched her chest rise and fall and felt that specific parental madness settle in— not wild, not reckless, but surgical. The kind that makes you capable of decisions you didn’t think you could make.
My phone lay on the nightstand. Silent.