Not full-time at first. I kept my city apartment for work and spent weekends at the house, clearing clutter, fixing what Dad had let slide during his final months, reclaiming rooms that had once belonged to me.

The first thing I did was take back my bedroom.

Marcus’s designer luggage, his stacked shoeboxes, the unopened flat-screen television—I moved it all into the garage. He could deal with it when he was ready.

Then I painted the walls sage green, the color I had always wanted but never felt allowed to choose.

Mom stayed in the guest room under the one-dollar lease.

We barely spoke in the beginning, but we also stopped fighting.

It wasn’t peace.

But it was no longer war.

And for us, that counted as progress.

On Sunday evenings, Grandma started coming over for dinner.

She would bring pie or casserole, sit at the kitchen table where I once did homework, and tell me stories about my grandfather—the stubborn man I apparently resembled more than I had ever understood.

I placed fresh flowers on the mantle beside Dad’s photo.

Yellow roses.

His favorite.

I only learned that because Patricia Callahan told me.