Chapter 10 - CALEB GETS THE BADGE BACK
Caleb knew how the meeting went before the girls said anything.
Mia came through the airport doors looking emotionally wrecked but lighter.
Chloe looked like she had completed a tax audit on a ghost.
Emma stood beside Caleb with folded arms.
She had refused to stay home.
All four drove back together.
No one asked questions in the car.
At the house, Mia handed Caleb the brown envelope.
He opened it.
Saw the badge.
And sat down.
The photograph showed Nathan at twenty-three with a ridiculous mustache and Caleb at twenty in the reflection behind him, apparently making a rude gesture toward the camera.
Caleb laughed unexpectedly.
Then turned it over.
When I get home, give this back to Cal and tell him he was right about everything.
His smile disappeared.
“He kept this?”
“Twenty-two years,” Chloe said.
Caleb put it on the table.
Emma looked at her sisters.
“Well?”
Mia answered:
“He’s sorry.”
Emma’s expression stayed hard.
“Great.”
Chloe said, “He also knows sorry doesn’t fix it.”
“Even better.”
“Emma.”
“No. I mean it. I’m glad he’s discovered vocabulary.”
Caleb held up a hand.
“Hey.”
Emma’s eyes flashed.
“Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are about to.”
“I was about to defend you.”
That stopped her.
Caleb continued.
“You don’t owe him anything. Neither do they. But Chloe and Mia meeting him isn’t a vote against you.”
Emma looked away.
Her anger was easier than grief.
Caleb knew that because she got it from him.
Eventually she said:
“I know.”
Mia sat beside her.
“You never have to see him.”
Emma’s voice cracked.
“What if I want him to want me anyway?”
That broke all of them.
Because there it was.
The thing adult children of abandonment sometimes hate most:
they can reject the person who left and still ache to have been chosen.
Caleb crossed the room.
Emma let him hold her.
“I know,” he whispered.
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want him.”
“I know.”
“But I wanted him to come.”
Caleb held her tighter.
“Of course you did.”
Emma cried then.
Not like a twenty-two-year-old policy graduate.
Like the little girl who once asked why every class had fathers at the picnic except hers.
Later that evening, after the sisters went upstairs, Caleb called Nathan.
Not because he had changed his mind about meeting.
Because something needed to be said.
Nathan answered.
Caleb said:
“Emma is furious at you.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. She’s furious because part of her still wanted you.”
Nathan didn’t speak.
Caleb continued:
“Do not contact her.”
“I won’t.”
“Not a letter. Not a birthday card. Nothing unless she asks.”
“Okay.”
“Mia and Chloe might keep talking to you. If they do, you don’t use them to reach Emma.”
“I won’t.”
Caleb looked at the badge on the table.
Then said:
“And stop telling yourself staying away now is noble. Respecting a boundary is not the same thing as hiding.”
Nathan was silent.
Then:
“Got it.”
Before hanging up, Nathan asked:
“Caleb?”
“What?”
“Did they call you Dad at graduation?”
Caleb’s throat tightened.
“You saw the video.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Caleb looked toward the staircase.
“Yes.”
Nathan exhaled.
“Good.”
It was the first time Caleb heard his brother say something without a trace of self-interest.
May you like
He almost hated him more for arriving at sincerity twenty-two years late.
Almost.
