The nurse stayed sitting with us. She did not push either of us to say more. Daniel went back to staring at the wood grain and I watched the way his shoulders stayed curled forward like he was still bracing for something.

The fluorescent light buzzed steady above the table. I thought about the porch light I used to leave on and how stupid that seemed now.

“I figured you’d hate me too much to show up,” he said after a while. “After what I took.”

I shook my head but the motion felt small. “I should have called around more,” I said. “I should have done something besides listen to that man at church.”

Daniel let out a breath that sounded like it hurt. He did not reach across the table. The nurse checked the clock on the wall and told us we had a few more minutes before the next group started. Neither of us moved.

I kept waiting for him to ask me to leave. He kept waiting for something I could not name. The room stayed quiet except for the low voices from the hallway and the scrape of a chair being pushed back somewhere else in the building. My back ached from sitting so straight but I stayed right there with my hands flat on the table like that could hold the moment still.

He finally looked at me full on for the first time. His eyes were the same as when he was little but older around the edges. “I did not think you would actually walk in,” he said.

The nurse stood up then and touched my shoulder once before she walked away. Daniel and I sat with the space between us and the lemon smell and the sound of our own breathing.

I knew I could not undo the years or the pastor’s words or the nights I drove past the parks without stopping. All I could do was stay in the chair a little longer and see if he would say anything else.