“She can tell you.”
“What if she doesn’t want me in her life?”
“She can tell you.”
Wade stared.
“You have one answer for everything?”
“No.”
“I have one answer for this.”
“Stop deciding what she thinks before she says it.”
Wade looked toward Lauren.
“Your daughter is exhausting.”
Lauren smiled.
“Imagine living with her.”
The reunion took place not at Wade’s house and not at Emily’s.
They chose a small park halfway between Asheville and Knoxville.
Neutral ground.
Wade arrived forty-five minutes early.
He sat on a bench.
Stood.
Walked.
Sat again.
At exactly eleven, a blue sedan pulled into the parking area.
A woman stepped out.
Wade knew her immediately.
She was forty-seven now.
Gray mixed with dark hair.
Glasses.
Simple sweater.
Jeans.
Nothing dramatic.
Nobody else in the park would have looked twice.
Wade could not move.
Emily stood beside the car.
She stared.
Then smiled.
“You got huge.”
Wade laughed and cried at the same time.
“You got old.”
“That’s your opening?”
“You started it.”
For several seconds they stood six feet apart.
Neither knew whether to hug.
Wade almost made the same mistake he had made with Sophie.
He nearly decided for both of them.
Instead he asked:
“Can I?”
Emily nodded.
They crossed the space together.
Wade wrapped his arms around his sister.
Carefully at first.
Then Emily held tighter.
Thirty years collapsed badly.
Not cleanly.
There was no magical sensation that the missing decades had disappeared.
They had not.
Wade felt every one of them.
Birthdays.
Holidays.
Their mother’s funeral.
Emily’s wedding.
The birth of her son.
The years Wade built the shop.
The years both had been alive within a few hours of one another and remained silent.
You could not hug those years back.
But you could stop adding more.
They sat on the bench.
Emily noticed the tattoo.
“You really kept it.”
Wade extended his arm.
“You want to see what a professional tattoo looks like after thirty years of bad decisions?”
She touched the raven.
Then frowned.
“You made the wing too broken.”
Wade looked at her.
“That’s how you drew it.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Yes, it was.”
Emily laughed.
“Idiot.”
“The wing wasn’t injured.”
Wade stared.
“What?”
“It was folded.”
“I drew the bird landing.”
Wade looked down.
For thirty years he had interpreted the image as a wounded bird.
He had told the tattoo artist to emphasize the scar underneath.
He had turned a folded wing into an injury because that was the story he believed.
Emily pointed.
“The other wing is open because it’s balancing.”
“It wasn’t trying to fly away.”
“It was coming down.”
Wade stopped breathing.
Emily smiled sadly.
“You spent thirty years wearing the wrong meaning on your arm.”
He laughed through tears.
“That sounds about right.”
She touched the initials.