~Narrator’s~

“You always knew how to coddle him, but never how to love him.”

Leo’s voice doesn’t tremble. It slices. Clean. Sharpened by years of silence.

He leans forward in the booth of the restaurant, his coffee barely touched, going cold beside his plate. Sunlight dances through the tall windows behind him, but it feels wasted. It can’t warm the conversation sitting between him and the screen of his phone.

Mrs. Cuss exhales on the other end of the call, intentionally. “I did what I had to do.”

Leo’s jaw clenches. “No. You did what was easiest for you.”

There’s a pause. Not because she’s surprised—he knows she’s never surprised—but...