“What was it like working in that house when he was writing The Devil’s Regret?” I find myself asking. I knew that that series, the one he moved my mom and me upstate to Isham for, had been his most successful. Because of some foresighted tech investments in the late seventies, he’d been able to pivot to writing full time by the mid-eighties. By the time I was born, he’d already become quite famous, but The Devil’s Regret had launched him into a new stratosphere of literary stardom. He wrote other books throughout my childhood and into my adulthood, but he would always be best known for that one series.

Sometimes, in my lowest, most shadowy moments, I blame myself. Blame myself for his peak being so early in my childhood. If I didn’t exist, if he hadn’t had to care for me all alone, who knows how prolific he would’ve been, how many other series he could have written?

“He was just very intent on working. We couldn’t bother him throughout the day. He never got angry with you, though, when you’d inevitably knock on his door. He relished you. He loved you, so, so much. And I’m sure everyone has told you that, but I saw it firsthand, every day during those early years of your life.” I move closer to her then, clutching her fingers, my bitten nails barely leaving a groove on her skin.

“This was a big thing for me to do, meeting you here,” I blurt out. And then want to gulp it back down, because I sound like a needy kid, begging for praise. But Anneliese’s eyes hold no judgment.

“What I’m saying is that I don’t leave my apartment much since Dad died. It’s hard for me. And having so many questions about him doesn’t make it any easier.” I look back at Jordan, enjoying the playground, and I’m thrust into déjà vu, a tinge of a memory. Anneliese bent down in gravel, leaning to bandage me up, tying her hair back to dab antiseptic on a scrape as I squeeze her arm so hard that it turns red. You’re allowed to cry, honey. You don’t have to hold back tears for me.

And then Jordan falls.

And it seems like I feel his yell before I hear it and I jump up, because he’s bleeding and sprawled on the ground, his arm clutched to his chest, his small face blurred with tears.

But her hand on my shoulder holds me back. “Sit. Let him come to us.” She’s nudging the stroller like nothing’s happened, her gaze drifting past Jordan’s collapsed body.

I swallow. “He looks injured, though. I can sit with Lola if you want. It’s not a problem.”