The first words I ever heard him speak came from his lips then, soft and small, like a sound barely formed. “My stomach hurts.”

Mom’s gaze softened, but Dad gave a small chuckle. “You’re just full,” he said, offering a smile that didn’t match the tension in his voice. “You haven’t eaten this much in a long time, Blake. You’ll get used to the feeling.”

After a long silence, Blake finally met my gaze. Haunted green eyes locked onto my blue ones with a look of surrender.

I offered him a smile, hoping it might bring him some comfort.

His gaze dropped, settling on my lips. He seemed both fascinated and confused by the way my lips moved when I smiled. It was as if he didn’t understand the gesture and didn’t know what to do with it.

How could anyone not know what it meant to be smiled at?

Did he know what cartoons were? Had he ever eaten a grilled cheese sandwich? The questions were endless.

The moment passed, and after dinner, Mom took him upstairs to show him the guest room and settle him in for the night. Dad stayed seated, his face turned away, eyes fixed on some distant point on the wall over my head. I could tell something had shifted in him—his breathing had deepened, and there was a tremor in his jaw.  He was holding back tears.

“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked him, worried.

He blinked, as though he’d forgotten I was there. Then he turned to me with a smile. “I’m okay,” he replied, his voice thick, as if the words were hard to form. “Just a long day.”

That wasn’t convincing at all.

Mom called out to him from upstairs, and he stood quickly, hurrying to her side. There was a brief exchange in the hallway, followed by a soft murmur. “He wants you, Arthur.” Mom’s voice was a quiet plea. “He won’t talk to me. He said he wants you.”

“Alright,” Dad responded, and I imagined him kissing her forehead. “Go ahead and put Beverly to bed. I’ll take care of him.”

I froze, a strange heaviness pressing down on me.

My mother never put me to bed. That was always Dad’s job. Those moments had always been ours, something constant, something mine. But now Blake was here, taking up space in ways I couldn’t quite understand. A sharp pang of jealousy flared inside me, deep and unsettling, mixing with a sense of loss.

By the time Mom came back down, I had already withdrawn into myself. I kept my eyes on the floor, swallowing the sharp edge of anger I couldn’t shake. Mom spoke to me, but I ignored her. The world had shifted too fast, too abruptly, and I felt…displaced.