I put my arm around his shoulders.
“I think he’d be proud of you.”
Ethan didn’t answer.
But he leaned against me for a moment before turning back to the stove.
Sometimes, healing didn’t arrive through a long conversation.
Sometimes it came through a burnt pancake, an old spatula, and the discovery that a memory could still be shared even when the person who created it was gone.
Halfway through dinner, Ethan’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and smiled.
“Lily wants me to help her make something else.”
“What?”
“She won’t tell me.”
He showed me the message.
Lily had sent a photograph of a piece of blue fabric and a single crooked pocket.
Underneath, she had written:
Don’t tell your mom what this is for yet.
Ethan looked at me.
“Am I allowed to keep this secret?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Depends. Is anybody’s parent going to get called to school?”
