My dad shook his head. “Stevie, wait a second. I know you’re upset,” he said, jumping in when I started to say something. “But listen to me. Around seven tonight, after I spoke to you, we received orders from the judge to remand all the files. There had been an issue with the chain of evidence. So I had been working late—until I was legally compelled to stop.”

“You—were?”

“And since I assumed you would be coming in with your mother, I didn’t think it would be a good idea—or fair to her—to tell you that since I was now free, we would go to dinner instead. So Joy and I went out to eat, because I didn’t think that I could have dinner with you any longer.”

“Oh.”

“I wouldn’t have lied to you,” my dad said, a half laugh in his voice somewhere, and I could tell how much he wanted to get this conversation back on ground we were both more comfortable with. “But I can understand why you would have been upset by that, honey. Of course I do.” He smiled at me, and it was like I could see the door that I was supposed to walk through. The one that let this go, that let us go back to who we’d always been to each other.

But I couldn’t do it. I’d come too far tonight to back down now.

“But I believed it,” I said, my voice shaky. I looked up at him and saw my dad frown. “When Carla told me. I was upset because I believed it. Because I believed that was something you would do. What does that say?” I could feel hot tears building up, but I just had to keep going—I knew that much. “I just feel,” I began, then had to stop and take a breath as the first tears started to hit my cheeks. “That I’m not—that important to you.” My dad was shaking his head, about to jump in, but I held my hand up, just like he’d done. “I never see you anymore, but you see Matty and Margaux all the time, and you never come to see me and I tell you it’s fine but it’s not fine. And you didn’t come to see me in my last—last play. And I miss you.” Tears were pouring out over my cheeks, and I wiped them away and made myself keep going. “And I’m going to go to college next year and I don’t know how often we’ll get to see each other and I…” It was getting hard to speak, but I took a ragged breath and made myself finish this out. “I just feel like I’m always the last thing on your list. And I hate it.”