cook.
It was strangely appropriate.
When we were children and Dad was exhausted, cereal had been his emergency dinner solution.
We spent hours talking about him.
Not the polished funeral version.
Our father.
The stubborn one.
The funny one.
The man who quietly repaired something Eric had broken as a child without ever lecturing him because, in Dad’s mind, Eric already knew he had made a mistake.
Eventually, we looked at the painting leaning against the wall.
Dad had started it when our mother left.
We had been eleven and eight.
He had worked on it, on and off, for twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years trying to get the light right.
Neither of us knew what to say after realizing that.
Then Eric looked at the red jacket hanging over a chair.
“He told me I belonged there,” he said.
He explained that when he first found the suit, he didn’t
