“No.”
He studied my face.
“Grandma looked mad.”
“She is mad at me.”
“Because I broke it?”
“You didn’t break it.”
“She said it was an accident.”
“It was.”
He looked confused.
I chose my words carefully.
“The accident wasn’t what made me angry.
What happened after it did.”
He looked toward the house.
“She didn’t say sorry.”
“No.”
“She always says I have to say sorry.”
That almost undid me.
“Yes,” I said.
“She does.”
He thought about that.
Then, in the quiet voice children use when they are revealing something adults should have noticed long ago, he said, “I don’t think Grandma likes me very much.”
I gripped the steering wheel.
Eight years of excuses lined up inside my head, ready to march out automatically.
Of course she likes you.
She just shows it differently.
She’s busy.
She’s not good with feelings.
I swallowed every one of them.
“I think Grandma has treated you in ways that made you feel that,” I said.
“And I should have listened sooner.”
Liam stared down at his hands.
“Do we have to come back next Christmas?”
“No.”
His shoulders dropped.
Not dramatically.
Just an inch.
But I saw it.
Relief again.
That was the moment I stopped wondering whether I had overreacted.
Children should not feel relieved when you tell them they do not have to see family.
I drove us home.
The calls began before we reached our street.
First my father.
Then Patricia.
Then my mother.
I did not answer.
At home, I helped Liam take off his coat.
He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with the small repair box he had used while restoring the cardinal.
“Maybe I can fix it again,” he said.
I looked at the wrapped glass in my hands.
Some pieces had shattered into powder.
One section of the painted wing was missing entirely.
“I don’t know if it can look the same.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
“It didn’t look the same the first time either.”
I stared at him.
