“Now we can eat,” Mrs. Jackson says.

I fall back and watch with a pang of nostalgia as the familiar Jackson brunch ritual plays out. Everyone fills their plates and mugs, the brothers poking fun at each other, Mrs. Jackson smiling proudly at her children.

Shay catches me watching. “We’ve squeezed around that table for years, but it just got to be too much.” She shoves a plate in my hand. “So now we split up between the kitchen and the dining room.”

“It’s different,” I say softly. On the one hand, it’s just like they did it when I was a kid. I have fond memories of sleeping over on Saturdays and waking up Sundays to a massive meal with this family that became so precious to me. On the other hand, the differences are impossible to ignore. There are so many more people, and it’s crowded, but most notably, Frank Jackson isn’t here to keep his arm around his wife and steal kisses like they’re teenagers.

“The only thing guaranteed in life is change.” Pain flashes over Shay’s face, and I’m thrown back to her father’s funeral and the feel of her in my arms as she cried. The way her sobs were so powerful, they shook me. The way I took her grief in my hands and made it so much worse.

I open my mouth to apologize—for that night, for the years I let her shut me out—but I snap it shut again. There are too many eyes on me right now, and I don’t think Shay wants them to know why I owe her an apology.

Shay

After brunch is cleaned up, everyone scatters. Levi and Ellie leave to run some errands, Ethan, Nic, and Lilly head out to a movie, and everyone else heads to the basement to play games. I use my revisions as an excuse to stay upstairs with my laptop, but I can’t face my dissertation while I’m this distracted, so I sit at the kitchen table and respond to student emails instead.

Lucky me, I have an email from a student about his two-week-late paper as an outlet for my frustrations. I’m a lengthy paragraph into a careful recap of my course policies when I hear the basement door open and close again. I know without looking that Easton just came back upstairs. Why is that? Why do I feel him when he’s around, even after all these years?

I lean closer to my computer, pretending I’m not aware of every step he takes, pretending I don’t notice when he pulls out the chair beside me and sinks into it.