“And I like them.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
Elias took a breath.
“Then that is something the adults need to discuss. You don’t have to make yourself smaller to solve it.”
Arthur looked down at his list.
“She said you needed room.”
Elias remembered another conversation.
Three weeks earlier, Felicity stood in the hallway holding two framed photographs.
She asked whether he minded if she cleared some surfaces.
He had been reading a message.
“Whatever you need,” he said. “The place could use a change.”
Now his son sat before him, offering pieces of his childhood to keep one photograph of his mother.
Elias closed his eyes briefly.
Then he opened them.
“I said something careless.”
Arthur went still.
Elias did not tell him that Felicity had misunderstood everything.
He did not say his son should have known what he meant.
“I told her she could change some things in the house,” he said. “I didn’t ask enough questions about what she planned.”
“So you knew?”
“I knew some pictures were being moved.”
Arthur withdrew his hand.
His father let him.
“I didn’t know what she was telling you. But I should have noticed that the pictures mattered to you, and I should have spoken with you.”
Arthur stared at the floor.
“You didn’t ask.”
“No.”
The room became very quiet.
Elias wanted to reach for him.
Instead, he waited.
After a while, Arthur asked, “Did you want the baby one gone?”
“No.”
“The tooth one?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you put them back?”
There was no answer that made him look good.
“Because I wasn’t paying attention to something I should have cared about.”
Arthur’s eyes filled.
“Was I supposed to tell?”
“You were allowed to tell. You were also allowed to expect me to notice.”
His son wiped his face with his sleeve.
Elias passed him a tissue.
“I’m sorry.”
Arthur took it.
He did not immediately forgive him.
Elias remained beside him anyway.
Eventually, the boy lifted the photograph of himself with the missing tooth.
“Can this stay?”
“Yes.”
