Mason stayed in the guest room for three weeks while Rachel’s landlord remediated the flooding in her apartment. He was an easy child, cheerful and adaptable, and even Lily relaxed around him once the original insult was contained. They watched superhero movies in the den and bickered over cereal brands and developed an alliance against the bland casseroles Mom made whenever she wanted to seem industrious. If anything, Mason’s presence only exposed more clearly how unnecessary the attempted displacement had been. There had always been room. What my parents wanted was not practical space. They wanted authority—the right to decide that Lily could be moved, minimized, reassigned.
That was the real issue. Always.
Dad tried a dozen variations of apology in the first ten days and failed at every one because he kept circling back to his own intentions.
We didn’t mean it that way.
We thought she’d understand.
We were under pressure.
Your mother panicked.
Rachel was desperate.
Mason is little.
We thought the basement might be too isolating for him.