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I knew that. I think I knew that. It was one of those things that’s just sort of in the walls of a family that nobody says. I never heard my father say it out loud. Not once in nineteen years.

“A lot,” he says. He turns his wineglass. “Money went missing. Rent went missing. He went missing, sometimes, for a weekend, and came back like nothing had happened, and my mom acted like everything was fine.”

He takes a sip of the wine. He looks at it.

“I decided pretty early I wasn’t going to live like that,” he says. “I didn’t always get it right. I did some stupid things when I was young. But when Rafferty was born, that was it. I wasn’t going to ruin my son’s life for selfish reasons.”

He looks at Tessa now.

“You can spend a lot of years asking why somebody else didn’t make better choices,” he says. “I did.” He pauses. “Eventually, you have to live your life.”

Tessa doesn’t say anything for a second. She’s looking at him. Not the way she looked at him in the front hall, holding his eyes like she was proving something. This is different like she’s reading him and finding something she didn’t expect to find.

“I respect that,” she says.

My father looks at her.

“What you built,” she says. “Not just this.” She doesn’t wave at the room or the house. “The whole thing.” She looks at my mom.

My father is quiet for a moment. Then he nods.

“Thank you,” he says.

That’s all. He doesn’t say oh, it was nothing, or I had help, or any of it. He just takes it the way he takes everything, like it’s something he earned and is glad somebody noticed.

And I sit there and look at the two of them.

My dad, who called her a dime-store diamond through a windshield. Tessa, who has it harder than anyone else I know. And she’s looking at him like she sees something in him I can’t. Something I haven’t been able to see in him because I’ve been standing too close to it with his hand on my shoulder.

I don’t know what to do with that.

“Rafferty’s got his own version of that ahead of him,” my father says. “June will answer a lot of questions.”

Tessa looks at me.

“If he goes where we’re expecting,” my father says, “We’ll have decisions to make. Whether he stays at Woodbury another year, or two. Or whether he signs and goes pro. Depends on the team. Depends on what they want to do with him.” He picks up his wine. “Either way, Woodbury isn’t permanent for him either.”

I hate that.

I don’t know why. It’s true. It was never permanent. It’s college. Everybody leaves college.

I just hate the way he says it.

“That’s exciting,” Tessa says and looks at me and smiles a little, like she’s happy for me. Like it’s good news, and she’s glad about it.

And it doesn’t bother her. Not at all. I can see it. Of course it doesn’t.

I’m the only one at this table it bothers.

I sit and eat my mother’s roast and think about it.

My whole life, I’ve known where I was going. Finish the season. Get drafted in June. Stay a year, maybe two, whatever the team wants. Sign. Camp. The minors, for a while. Then the real thing. Money, eventually, a lot of it. I can see every step. I’ve been able to see every step since I was twelve. The only questions are which city and how soon.

And hers is: will there be an email in January that lets her come back in the fall. And if not, where does she go. And how much can she make selling sweaters between now and then.

I’ve been thinking I’ll leave eventually. That I’m the one who goes. My father just said it out loud. You’ll have to leave her behind.

She might not even get to stay that long.