“Did you ever visit him?” “A few times. It was awkward. His new wife didn’t really know what to do with me, and my half siblings were so much younger that we didn’t have anything in common. Eventually, I just stopped going. It was easier.” “What about your mom?” Alicia asked softly.
“She tried. I think she really did, but she was so angry about the divorce, about being left, about having to raise me alone. She wasn’t great at hiding it. By the time I was twelve, I was in boarding school. By fifteen, I was spending summers at academic programs instead of coming home. It wasn’t that we didn’t love each other, exactly. We just didn’t know how to be around each other.”
Marcus’s voice was gentle. “When did she pass?” “Two years ago. Cancer. Very aggressive. I was in Singapore when it happened, and by the time I got back, she was already gone.” Nathan stared out at the fireflies. “The worst part was realizing I’d been so busy building my company that I’d barely talked to her for months. I thought there’d be time. There’s always supposed to be time.”
“I’m sorry,” Alicia said. She reached over and took his hand, squeezing it. “That must have been really hard.” “It was, but honestly, the hardest part was standing at her funeral and realizing I was alone, completely alone. No parents, no siblings, no family at all. Just me and a penthouse full of expensive furniture and a company that made money but didn’t mean anything.” He turned to look at them. “That’s why being here matters so much to me, why I keep coming back. You two are the closest thing to family I’ve had since I was a kid, maybe the only real family I’ve ever had.”
Marcus was quiet for a long moment, then he said, “My daddy used to tell me that blood makes you related, but loyalty makes you family. You don’t need the same last name or the same DNA to be kin. You just need to show up for each other when it matters.” “Your daddy was a smart man,” Nathan said. “He was, and he’d have liked you.” Marcus smiled. “Would have given you hell about those soft city hands, but he’d have liked you.”
They sat in silence for a while longer, and Nathan felt something settle in his chest, something that had been restless and searching for as long as he could remember. He’d spent thirty years trying to fill an empty place with achievement and money, when what he’d actually needed was this, a porch, a sunset, and people who chose to love him, not because of what he could give them, but because of who he was. It was almost too much to believe it was real, but real or not, Nathan was going to hold on to it for as long as they’d let him.
As summer turned toward fall and Alicia’s departure for Columbia drew closer, she began to pull away. It was subtle at first, taking longer to respond to Nathan’s texts, being less available when he visited, disappearing into her room earlier in the evenings. Marcus noticed but said nothing, assuming she was just dealing with the anxiety of leaving home. But Nathan noticed, too, and it hurt more than he wanted to admit.