Chapter 9: Sunday
The call was supposed to be at two o'clock.
At one fifty-five, Lucas was sitting on the kitchen counter eating apple slices and explaining to me in great detail why the T.
rex was better than the triceratops in every possible way.
"The triceratops has three horns," I said.
"The T.
rex doesn't need horns," he said.
"It has the biggest mouth."
"That's your argument?"
"That's the truth," he said, very seriously.
The phone rang at exactly two.
I answered it and held it out to him.
"Someone wants to say hello."
He took the phone with both hands the way he always did, like it might escape.
"Hello?" he said.
A pause.
Then, from the phone, a voice I knew very well said, "Hi, Lucas."
My son looked at me with wide eyes.
"He knows my name," he whispered.
"He does," I said.
Lucas put the phone back to his ear.
"How do you know my name?"
I stepped back and leaned against the counter and let them talk.
I don't know exactly what Damon said in those first few minutes.
I heard Lucas laugh once, loudly, and then launch into the T.
rex argument with full conviction, and I heard the low sound of Damon's voice responding, and I heard my son say, very matter-of-factly, "My mama says you live far away."
A pause.
"But not too far," Lucas added.
"She said not too far."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
I had not said that.
Not in those words.
But somehow he had understood it anyway.
The call lasted forty-one minutes.
At the end, Lucas handed the phone back to me and slid off the counter and went back to his toys without ceremony, the way children move through enormous moments as though they are simply the next thing that happens.
"He's extraordinary," Damon said.
"I know."
"You did that."
"We both did," I said.
"Whether we meant to or not."
A silence.
"Sunday in two weeks," he said.
"If that's all right."
"Sunday in two weeks," I said.
I hung up and stood in the kitchen for a moment.
Lucas appeared in the doorway.
"Mama," he said.
"Can that man call again?"
"Yes," I said.
"He can."
"Good." He considered this.
"He thinks the T.
rex is better too."
He disappeared back into the living room.
I made coffee for one, the way I always did, and sat at the kitchen table, and outside the window the late afternoon light was coming through the curtains the way it did on good days in this small town where nobody knew the name Damon Vale.
Except now one person did.
And he had just decided, all on his own, that the man on the phone was allowed to call again.
I wrapped both hands around the mug and let that be enough for today.
---
*Some people stay in our lives because they were always meant to.
Others leave and spend years finding their way back to what they should never have let go.
This story is about what happens when the truth finally arrives — and whether love, once broken, can be rebuilt one careful Sunday at a time.*
Have you ever had someone come back into your life after a long time apart — and had to decide whether to let them in again?
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