The large front hall spills into the living room, both as dark with wood and fabric as ever, both as handsome—or potentially so, because my daughter is right. The place is a mess. Once there was plenty of sitting space. Now, newspapers, magazines, and books sit where we used to. Dirty glasses and mugs litter a side table seconds before Anne sweeps them up.

All of that is secondary, though, to the man in his chair. Seeing him here, I’m apprehensive as I wasn’t at Urgent Care. Here is home, which makes it different. I want him to recognize me. I want him to smile and be glad that I’ve come and say that he’s missed me. I want him to love me.

Well, that thought just slipped out. I push it away, but the point remains. I haven’t realized how high the stakes are—haven’t allowed myself to dwell on them, but now that I’m here, they hit me in the face. I want so much.

Dad’s chair is a large leather wingback thing whose claw feet must have put down roots through the carpet and into the floorboards by now. He always loved that chair. There was something throne-like about its placement, in that it gave him a view of the entire room. The rest of us knew not to sit in it, unless he and Mom were both gone, at which point we would fight over who would sit there. Well, Margo and Anne fought. I waited until they lost interest before sneaking in and curling up on the indented cushions with the smell of leather, Tom Aldiss, and a book.

“I need to talk with Papa,” I whisper to Joy and cross to him. When he lifts his eyes, I squat down with a hand on the nail heads outlining the chair’s leather arm. This steadies me as his sharp look does not. He is the only one of us with blue eyes; like Mom, we girls all have versions of green. Mom had wanted a boy, if only to maximize the chance of having one of her children looking like Tom. One of Margo’s sons has blue eyes. But so does her husband.

“Hi, Daddy.”

His sharp look—startled, perhaps—softens with a smile. “How are you?”

It’s a polite smile, but it’s something. “I’m good. And you?”

“I’m good, too.” He pauses, remembers. “Except for this.” He twitches the cast.

“Those attic stairs are treacherous.”

“Attic stairs?” he mocks, like I’m daft. “It wasn’t the attic stairs. I was running out to the car and tripped on a rock. Your mother always warns me not to run, but do I listen?”

He’s gotten the tense wrong with regard to my mother, and certainly the details of the accident. But the story he tells is credible enough. “Does it hurt?”