Chapter 15
Three months after Cormac’s invitation, I arrived at the school courtyard early for picture day and waited outside the gate.
The morning smelled of wet pavement and cut grass. Parents crossed the courtyard with coffee cups and combs, steering children toward a folding backdrop beneath the sycamores. I’d worn a suit. In the car, I’d considered changing into something less formal, then decided the boys could make fun of me if they wanted.
I didn’t go in until Kelsey spotted me.
She watched from beside the courtyard gate, one hand resting on Cillian’s shoulder. The four boys clustered around her in their button-down shirts, their hair freshly combed and already coming undone.
“You’re early,” she said.
“I didn’t want to assume I could come in.”
A flicker of approval crossed her face—not quite a smile, but something I’d learned not to demand more of.
“Come in, then.”
I stepped through the gate. Cormac looked me over from polished shoes to tie.
“You wore a wedding suit.”
“Not a wedding suit.”
“Looks like one,” Callan said.
Connor nodded. “You look like you’re going to sell us a house.”
“I can change into something worse if that helps.”
“It won’t,” Cormac said, and all four laughed.
Their laughter took some of the stiffness out of my shoulders. I’d been coming when Kelsey said I could—sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a Saturday afternoon. We’d built a routine out of small permissions: a visit, a meal, a walk to the playground. If one of the boys changed his mind, we changed the plan.
I hadn’t promised them a future I couldn’t guarantee. I’d learned to show up for the day they were actually having.
The photographer called for the next group. The boys hurried toward the backdrop, then stopped and looked back at us.
“You’re all right there?” Kelsey asked them.
Four heads nodded.
I stood a little apart while the photographer arranged the boys on a wooden bench. Cormac leaned toward Callan. Connor whispered something that made Cillian snort, and the photographer lowered her camera.
“Let’s get everyone settled before the laughing starts,” she said.
“Too late,” Kelsey murmured.
She stood beside me, close enough that our sleeves nearly touched. The years between us didn’t disappear because we were in the same courtyard. Neither did the quieter, ordinary things we’d managed to build since the ballroom: school pickups, shared calendars, the boys learning which days I’d visit.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“Better when everyone keeps their promises.”
“I’m glad.”
“Don’t make that sound like you’ve solved it.”
“I haven’t.” I watched the boys squabble over who had to sit in the middle. “I know showing up now doesn’t give back what I missed.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”
There was no cruelty in it. That made it harder, and more honest.
“I can keep showing up,” I said. “And keep listening when you tell me what they need.”
Kelsey studied me for a moment. “That’s what I need from you, too. Not a grand gesture. Not you trying to make this feel like a family before they’re ready.”
“I understand.”
“I know you want to make up for the lost years.”
“I do.”
“You can’t.”
“I know that, too.”
She looked toward the bench, where Cormac had put an arm around Connor and was being gently shoved away.
“You’ve been reliable lately,” she said. “That matters. It doesn’t erase the rest.”
“I wouldn’t ask it to.”
The photographer waved us closer. “Parents, if you’d like to be in the picture, now’s the time.”
Kelsey looked at the boys. “Do you want Ethan in the picture?”
The question was theirs, not mine. I held still and let them answer without trying to help.
Cormac hopped off the bench and came toward me. His hand rose behind his neck, fingers brushing the place beneath his hair. He gave the little shake of his head I’d seen in the bathroom mirror on the day my life split open.
Then he dropped his hand and grinned.
“You’re still too tall,” he said.
“I’ll try to fix that.”
“You can stand next to me,” he decided.
Callan chose my other side. Connor and Cillian scooted along the bench, making room for Kelsey. She paused for a breath, then joined them. No one announced what we were. No one needed to.
The photographer lifted her camera. “Everybody look this way.”
Just before the shutter clicked, Cormac glanced up at me. His left hand rose behind his neck again.
Without thinking, I made the same small motion.
Callan noticed and copied us. Then Connor did it, and Cillian, until all four boys were grinning at one another and the photographer was laughing too.
The flash went off while they were still laughing.
Afterward, the boys ran to inspect the proof on the photographer’s screen. Kelsey stayed beside me as their voices rose over one another.
“You’ll get a copy,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“That’s not a promise about anything else.”
“I know.”
She reached into her bag and found the penthouse key card I’d returned to her that morning. She turned it once between her fingers.
“I don’t need the penthouse,” she said.
“I know. You don’t owe me a yes because I offered it.”
She studied me, then tucked the card away. “Good.”
The card had once meant: take this, and let me fix the night. Now it meant she could keep it, discard it, or use it someday without owing me entry into her life. That choice belonged to her.
At home, the engagement ring sat in a small box in my desk. I’d put it away, not because the past had vanished, but because I wasn’t going to carry someone else’s plan for my future in my pocket.
The boys came back arguing over who looked best. Cormac declared it was him. Callan said the picture was blurry. Connor insisted no one could tell because Cillian had blinked.
“He didn’t blink,” I said.
“You’re on my side?” Cillian asked.
“I’m on the side of the evidence.”
“That’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to pick.”
Kelsey laughed, and this time I didn’t mistake the sound for a promise. It was only a laugh, offered freely, in a courtyard full of ordinary morning noise.
The picture would show all of us together. It wouldn’t give the boys back the years I hadn’t known them. It wouldn’t turn Kelsey’s hurt into something finished, or make a family out of one good photograph.
May you like
But when the boys crowded close again and Cormac leaned his shoulder against mine, I stayed exactly where they had asked me to stand.
The picture caught us there—not as a restored past, but as the first honest record of what we might still become.
