« That walk is for real fathers » wasn’t him rejecting Kaylee.
It was him protecting Kaylee — from the thing he’d lived — and protecting himself from the one rejection he could not survive: hers.
He thought that if he claimed that walk, that rose, that word, and some part of her still wished it were her real dad up there, he would be Hollis. He would be the man forcing himself where he didn’t belong.
What he didn’t understand — what he could not let himself believe — was that Kaylee had asked him first. Before Grandpa. Before anyone.
She didn’t want a real father.
She wanted him.
And it took a seventy-nine-year-old man on a cane, crossing a basketball court one squeaking step at a time, to show Travis the only thing that had ever actually been true about fatherhood.
It was never about being real.
It was about showing up when you’re asked. « What time should I be there, sweetheart? »
Travis had been asked. And he’d said no. And now he was watching a man four times Kaylee’s age say yes with his whole failing body, and I watched my husband’s rule break apart in his hands at the end of our bleacher row.
