Page 179 of His Surrender

“What about twenty years of Christmas mornings? School plays? Sick nights? Birthday cakes?”

Images rise before I can stop them. Aubrey standing beside Liana on her first day of school. Aubrey asleep in our bed with a child curled between us. Aubrey laughing in my father’s kitchen.

Then an image of another baby in her arms.

Exactly the kind of life my father said he would choose again.

“You are so focused on protecting yourself from the ending that you are willing to erase the entire middle,” Dad says.

I stare at him for a long time. The fear hasn’t disappeared. I still imagine every awful possibility when I think about how much Aubrey matters to me.

“What if I can’t change?” I ask.

Dad’s expression softens. “You already have. You called me.”

Dad reaches for his sandwich at last. “You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have looked terrible since you walked in. Food may not fix your emotional crisis, but it will make you less unpleasant while you have it.”

A reluctant laugh escapes me, and he follows up with his own smile.

We eat in relative silence. Dad gives me the space to think, something he has always been better at than most people.

For most of my life, I have treated love as something that happens to other people. An unpredictable variable best removed from any plan.

But my father chose my mother, even after knowing what loving her ultimately cost. Aubrey chose me, even after seeing the worst part of me. Liana deserves more than a father who mistakes isolation for safety.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

AUBREY

By ten thirty on Monday morning, I feel no better than I did Saturday night.

Dean is now at work.

The apartment feels different without him, although nothing inside it has changed. Everything looks exactly as it did before Saturday night … but the warmth has gone out of it.

Liana sits on the rug in front of me, holding a soft fabric block between both hands. She turns it slowly, studying each brightly colored side before attempting to push the entire thing into her mouth.

“No,” I tell her gently, reaching forward to lower it. “We don’t eat blocks.”

I replace the block with a rubber teething ring and watch her immediately bring it to her mouth. Her small body relaxes once she gets what she wants, and she leans heavily against my leg, as though she has never questioned whether I will still be sitting here when she needs me.

I run my fingers lightly over the soft curls beginning to form near the back of her head.

“You make everything complicated—you know that?”

Liana continues chewing.

“You were supposed to be a job.”

The words come out as little more than a whisper.

“I was supposed to help your dad figure things out for a while, find something in my field, and move on with my life.”

She reaches for my pajama pants and curls her fingers into the fabric.