“You are forgetting Dad,” David said, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of his anger.

He walked over to the glass-front cabinet where Thomas’s old pocket watch sat on a velvet stand.

David reached out and touched the glass, his hand trembling.

“Dad worked forty years to give us this life,” David said.

“He built this house with his own hands.”

“I know exactly what your father did, David,” I said softly.

“I was beside him for every single year of it.”

“Then act like it,” David snapped, turning back to face me.

His eyes were red around the rims, the dark circles under them deeper than they had been last week.

“You are letting this man slide right into Dad’s place,” he said.

“You are going to dances, you are laughing, you are pretending none of the past thirty years mattered.”

The accusation felt like a physical blow, cold and sharp in the center of my chest.

“That is not true,” I said, my voice rising slightly.

“I miss your father every single second of every single day.”

“Then prove it,” David said.