I was done living my life that way. I’d been almost-mugged tonight and made friends with college students and taken care of a dog and been to a fancy photo shoot and could have shut down Manhattan’s hottest restaurant. I needed to say what I felt. I needed to take up some space.

It was time.

I glanced at my reflection in the hallway mirror, trying to prepare myself. I knew this was going to be more than a little scary—going against everything I’d done up until now, against the way I’d grown up. But it was going to be better this way, I somehow knew. Harder—but in the long run, better.

I exhaled and made myself keep walking down the hall until I got to the apartment at the end, 24C. I knocked, and a second later, the door swung open and there was my dad.

He looked the same as ever, his gray hair carefully parted. Everyone said I looked like my mom, so it was always a little startling when I saw my dad and remembered that I took after him much more—his nose, his ears. And I recognized his expression as one I’d seen on my own face—equal parts happy and guarded. He was wearing dress pants and a black cashmere sweater I didn’t recognize. “Hi, pumpkin,” he said, using what had always been my nickname. “What’s going on?” He leaned out into the hall and looked around. “Is… your mother here?”

“No,” I said, pushing past him into the apartment. It was so strange for me to see things that had been in our house in Connecticut, part of our lives there, in this two-bedroom on the twenty-fourth floor in Manhattan. Like it was one of those circle-what’s-out-of-place puzzles.

“Stephen?” Joy called, coming down the hallway. It looked like she was still wearing her work outfit—a suit with a skirt, all in black. Though she had, I noticed, swapped out her work shoes for a pair of fuzzy slippers, also black. As ever, she looked almost preternaturally composed—her sharp silver bob didn’t have a hair out of place. Her eyebrows raised when she saw me. “Stevie, hi,” she said, giving me a nod and coming to stand next to my father. “Is everything… all right?”

It was like they were both willing me to tell them that things were fine. That this was just an unexpected social visit, but nothing was really wrong. Nothing that anyone had to have their night wrecked over. And the part of me that was used to being obliging wanted to go along with it. But I made myself push back. “No,” I said, swallowing hard and looking right at my dad. “I need to talk to you.”