“He’s just old-fashioned.”
Ethan was drawing something on the back of a flyer, the pencil moving in those careful loops he’d made since kindergarten.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just a bird. Nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing. It’s beautiful.”
My son shrugged, but a small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. For a second, the kitchen felt as if it belonged to us again.
Then I heard Richard’s footsteps on the stairs. Heavy, deliberate, the way they always sounded when he’d already decided something.
