Chapter 22: Home Above the Bakery

Mom looked at me, and I nodded.

She pushed my chair to a bench at the bottom of the steps and set the brake.

Then she walked ten feet away with her arms folded.

Dad sat down on the bench.

He put his jacket between us.

For a while he looked at his shoes.

"I don't know how to start," he said.

"You could say sorry."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"For laughing, when you asked me for a heart doctor. For not looking at the papers in the file. For letting her handle you."

"You let her handle Mom, too."

"Yes."

"You said Mom was crazy."

"I did."

"She wasn't."

"No." His voice cracked. "She wasn't."

I waited.

I had waited a whole life for somebody in this family to say it.

I could wait a few seconds more.

"I'm not going to hug you," I said.

"I didn't think you would."

"I'm not going to say it's okay."

"It isn't okay."

"I know what I'm going to do," I said.

"I'm going to go home, and my mom is going to cook me something."

"And you're going to go sit in your house."

He nodded.

"If you want to be my dad, you can do it with things that cost you something. Saying sorry is free."

He looked at me for a long time.

"That's very smart for nine," he said.

"I have a good teacher."

He almost smiled, and then he did not.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, Mads."

I did not tell him that nobody had called me Mads since the first life.

Mom came back and took the handles of my chair.

We left him on the bench, in the cold sun, with his coat in his lap.

Nine days later, after the hospital let me go, I came home.

It was Wednesday, and it was raining, and the stairs behind the bakery looked steep as always.

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