“I know,” Dad repeated.
“Do you?”
The question hung there.
Dad considered it.
“Maybe I’m learning.”
Madison looked at me.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you happy?”
I almost gave the automatic answer.
Fine.
Busy.
Good.
Instead, I looked at Mom’s letter.
“Sometimes.”
Madison waited.
“I love my work,” I continued.
“But I’ve spent so much time being useful that I’m not sure I’ve been very good at building a life outside it.”
Ethan frowned.
“You have friends.”
“I have excellent friends.”
“That counts.”
“It does.”
I smiled.
“But Mom was right about something.
I don’t ask people to know me.”
Dad looked at me carefully.
“Did I teach you that?”
There was no good answer.
So I gave him the true one.
“Partly.”
He absorbed it without defending himself.
Then I finished the letter.
The last paragraph was shorter.
