Alicia wiped her eyes. “You promise?” “I promise. You’re stuck with me now. I don’t care if you go to New York or Tokyo or Mars. You’re my family. That doesn’t change.” She lunged across the bed and hugged him, and Nathan held her while she cried, relief mixed with fear, mixed with the complicated emotions of growing up and leaving home. After a while, her breathing evened out, and she pulled back, managing a watery smile. “I’m sorry I’ve been weird.” “You haven’t been weird. You’ve been scared. That’s normal.”
“Dad’s going to be so lonely when I leave.” “Your dad’s going to be fine. He’s got the farm and the community and me making sure he doesn’t work himself to death. You focus on school. We’ll hold down the fort here.” Alicia nodded, then said quietly, “Thank you for coming tonight, for saying all that, for being—” She trailed off, searching for the word. “Family?” Nathan supplied. “Yeah, for being family.”
The day Alicia left for Columbia, Nathan drove the two of them to the train station in Wichita. Marcus sat in the backseat, uncharacteristically quiet, and Alicia rode shotgun with her headphones on, staring out the window at the Kansas countryside rolling past. Nathan understood both of them. He understood Marcus’s fear of being alone, of watching his daughter step into a world he couldn’t protect her from, and he understood Alicia’s mixture of excitement and terror, the knowledge that everything was about to change and you could never go back to the simplicity of before.
What he didn’t fully understand until they pulled up to the train station was that this moment was healing something in him, too. The last time Nathan had watched someone he loved leave on a train, he was ten years old and his mother was sending him to boarding school for the first time. She’d been crying but trying to hide it, and Nathan had been angry and confused, feeling abandoned even though she’d explained it was for the best, that she couldn’t afford proper after-school care while she worked, and the boarding school offered scholarships.
He’d watched her get smaller and smaller through the train window, and he’d felt something crack inside him, some fundamental trust that the people who loved you would stay. Now he was thirty years old standing on a different platform in a different state helping Alicia with her luggage while Marcus hovered nearby trying to be helpful but mostly just getting in the way. And instead of that old crack opening wider, Nathan felt something shifting. Some rewriting of the narrative that said leaving always meant abandoning.
They checked Alicia’s bags and stood on the platform waiting for the boarding call. Marcus kept touching her shoulder, her arm, her hand like he needed to maintain physical contact for as long as possible. Alicia tolerated it with good grace occasionally rolling her eyes but mostly just letting her father have his moment. “You have your phone charger?” Marcus asked for the third time. “Yes, Dad.” “And you’ve got Dr. Patterson’s number in case you need a prescription transferred.” “Yes, Dad.” “And you know you can call anytime day or night if you need anything.”
“Dad.” Alicia took his hand. “I know. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.” Marcus nodded not trusting his voice. The boarding call came over the loudspeaker. This was it. Alicia turned to Nathan first and there was something significant in that choice. Something that said he wasn’t an afterthought or an add-on but an actual part of this family moment.