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Me: It’s incredible.

Halley: Thank you for pushing me in this direction. A dream come true.

Me: Rock, paper, scissors foreshadowed this, remember? If I won, you were going to chase your dreams—wings spread, eyes on the sky, no looking back. I won.

Halley: Feels like I won. :)

And yet…it felt like we’d both lost.

Lost something vital. Something fundamental.

Sadness trickled in, dampening my schoolyard smile. She was one-thousand miles away. Too far to touch, to hold, to cradle in my arms and lull to sleep with the beats of my heart.

I drummed my fingers on the desk before sending a reply as a knot hollowed out my throat.

Me: I’m going to head home and make dinner.

Halley: Have some perogies for me!

Me: Not the same without you. Rice Krispies it is.

Halley: The Christmas edition?

Me: You know it.

Halley: Goodnight, Reed.

Me: We should do this again some time.

Halley: We should. Maybe the weather will get better. Sunny skies ahead.

Me: The forecast is looking up. Goodnight, Comet.

Signing off, I lingered at the desk for a few more gloomy minutes before gathering my keys and heading back home. Late-October chill nibbled at my skin as I jogged from the studio over to my condo a mile away, my somber thoughts drifting to my daughter. The last two years had been painful, trying to maintain a semblance of a relationship with Tara, while her cold shoulder and glaring eyes cut me into pieces.

I truly thought it wouldn’t take this long for her to see the light.

The truth.

To open her heart to me again and view me as something other than a nefarious monster.

A lunch date six months ago had been arranged with little progress coming from her. But she’d showed up, slumped in the diner booth across from me, making squiggly designs in her ketchup as itchy silence scratched between us. Whitney had encouraged her to go. To make amends. And I’d fucking tried so hard to reroute her pain into acceptance with ill-timed jokes, forced smiles, and questions about beauty school, only to be sliced down by cool indifference.

She’d been a brick wall.

But…she had come.

And that had been the tiniest beam of sunlight in my cold, shadowy world.

As I approached my front door and sifted around for my keys, I was surprised to find that it was already unlocked when I reached for the handle.

Weird.

Cautiously, I cracked open the door and peeked inside, freezing in place when a silhouette came into view, seated stiffly on my couch.

I blinked, convinced I was imagining her. “Tara?”

Sullen emerald eyes lifted to my face, the twinkle long-since faded. She sat like a stone, waiting for me to enter the condo.