“Not improve anything?”
He nodded.
“You said your dad’s birds weren’t perfect, but you loved them exactly as they were.”
I pressed my lips together.
I couldn’t remember saying those exact words, but I must have.
Ethan had been listening all those years.
Not just to the stories I told, but to the small details I had forgotten I ever shared.
Then I noticed the table.
I approached it and ran my hand along the edge.
There was a small dent near one corner.
My heart lurched.
“That dent.”
Ethan smiled.
“It was already there.”
“Dad dropped his hammer on it when he was fixing one of the chairs. He tried to hide it with a tablecloth, but I saw him do it.”
I looked up at Ethan.
“You kept it?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to sand it away.”
I sat down slowly.
For a moment, I could almost hear Dad humming while he cooked breakfast. I could almost hear the scrape of a chair against the floor, the clatter of a pan, and his cheerful voice telling me to stop stealing pancakes before everyone else had eaten.
