“You found those in the attic?”
“Yeah.”
He handed me a picture.
It showed him at six years old, wearing a paper crown at his birthday party. My wife stood behind him, laughing while frosting covered his nose.
“I don’t remember this,” he said.
“You cried because the cake was blue.”
“It was supposed to be green.”
“You said blue cake tasted dishonest.”
He smiled, then looked down at the picture again.
“I keep thinking about how easy it was.”
“What was?”
“For Lauren to convince me. She didn’t threaten me. She didn’t have to. She knew I was ashamed.”
I waited.
“She said if I told you we were behind on the mortgage, you’d ask me to move back here. I thought that would mean I had failed.”
“You had already failed.”
“I know.”
“Failure is not the same as surrender.”
He rubbed his thumb along the photograph’s edge.
“I thought you would see me as a child again.”
“You are my child.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
He leaned back against the bench.
“When Mom got sick, you told me the house was never a prize I had to earn.”
“She meant that too.”
“I forgot.”
I looked at the branches above us. New leaves had begun to show at the tips, pale and tentative.
“You forgot because someone kept telling you love had conditions.”
His eyes filled.
“Was that what she did to you?”
