I think about that pickup truck sometimes, the exact moment I saw Roy behind the wheel and understood, all at once, that whatever I’d been imagining for the past twenty-four hours was about to be replaced by something considerably harder and considerably more important than anything I’d braced myself for on that drive across town.
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Sienna still visits Gordon’s grave most weekends now, sometimes with me, sometimes with Roy, who’s become a steadier presence in both our lives than I ever expected after everything.
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“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she told me once, a few months after the funeral, both of us sitting on her bedroom floor going through old photographs of her father from before everything got complicated between the two of us.
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“I know,” I said. “I understand why you did it, even if I still wish you’d trusted me enough to just ask directly.”
