My hands won’t stop shaking as I fold the laundry—her clothes smell like vanilla, like summer nights on the porch where we talked too long and too close. I hear her footsteps upstairs, light and hesitant, then the creak of the bathroom door closing. I shouldn’t be here, sorting her things, memorizing the curve of her handwriting on a crumpled note left in a jacket pocket.

But when she walks in, towel-dried hair clinging to her neck, eyes wide like she caught me doing something worse than breathing her air, I freeze. 'You didn’t have to do that,' she says softly. I nod, unable to speak. The space between us feels charged, dangerous.

She takes a step forward. 'Dad?'—she hasn’t called me that in weeks—'do you ever think about what would’ve happened if…?' Her voice trails off. I know what she means. So do we pretend this isn’t happening? Or do we finally admit it?