Chương 7
Then she sighed.
“No but.”
That mattered.
More than he wanted to admit.
“I was angry,” she said.
“I wanted her to listen.”
Daniel nodded even though she could not see him.
“Kids don’t always listen.”
“I know.”
“No.”
He spoke gently.
“I don’t think you do.”
The honesty created another silence.
A harder one.
But this time she stayed.
She did not hang up.
She did not attack.
“I don’t have kids,” she said quietly.
Daniel looked at Sophie.
“No.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes.”
The admission was small.
Almost hidden.
But it was real.
Daniel did not forgive everything in that moment.
He could not.
Some things needed time.
But he recognized something he had ignored before.
Caroline was not only cruel.
She was also insecure.
That did not excuse her.
It explained why she reached for control when she felt powerless.
“I think you need to stay away from discipline for a while,” Daniel said.
Caroline breathed in sharply.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“You’re punishing me.”
“No.”
He looked at the phone.
“I’m setting a boundary.”
The word felt unfamiliar.
He had avoided boundaries for years because he thought they created conflict.
Now he was seeing that the absence of boundaries created different kinds of damage.
“I need to think about that,” Caroline said.
“Okay.”
Another surprise.
He did not demand an answer.
He did not force the conversation to end perfectly.
They said goodbye.
Daniel placed the phone down.
Sophie looked up.
“Was that Aunt Caroline?”
“Yes.”
“Is she mad?”
Daniel considered the question.
Children deserved truth.
But not adult burdens.
“She’s trying to understand what happened.”
Sophie nodded.
Then she returned to her drawing.
After a moment, she asked, “Can she come over again?”
Daniel looked at her.
The question caught him off guard.
He expected fear.
Instead, there was curiosity.
Children did not always want people removed from their lives.
Sometimes they wanted adults to become safer.
“We’ll see,” he said.
Sophie accepted that.
Another thing adults could learn from children.
Not every answer needed to be immediate.
That weekend, Daniel went to Stallone’s house alone.
Sophie was spending the afternoon with Mara.
The visit felt strange.
For years, Daniel had only visited his father when there was a reason.
A holiday.
A repair.
A family obligation.
Rarely just because he wanted to.
Stallone was in the garage fixing an old wooden chair.
“You still have that thing?”
Daniel asked.
Stallone glanced over.
“It still works.”
“It’s falling apart.”
“So am I.”
Daniel laughed.
A real laugh.
Stallone smiled slightly.
“That was supposed to be a joke.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
They stood there for a moment.
The garage smelled like sawdust and oil.
Old tools hung on the wall.
Some had belonged to Stallone’s father.
Others he had bought after Daniel was born.
Objects passed through generations without anyone noticing.
“You ever think about what you would do differently?” Daniel asked.
Stallone kept sanding the chair.
“All the time.”
“What would you change?”
The question took longer than expected.
Finally, Stallone said, “I would have listened more.”
Daniel looked at him.
“I thought you were going to say you’d work less.”
“I should have.”
Stallone placed the sandpaper down.
“But working less wouldn’t have mattered if I still didn’t listen.”
Daniel looked at the chair.
The unfinished wood.
The uneven marks.
The places being repaired.
“You know what’s strange?”
“What?”
“I spent my whole life trying not to become you.”
Stallone nodded.
“And somehow?”
Daniel smiled faintly.
“I became the parts of you I was afraid of.”
Stallone did not deny it.
That was the thing Daniel was learning.
People changed when they stopped protecting the image they had of themselves.
“I’m sorry,” Stallone said.
Daniel looked up.
“For what?”
“For not teaching you better.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You can’t take responsibility for every mistake I make.”
“No.”
Stallone picked up the chair again.
“But I can take responsibility for the ones I made.”
The garage became quiet.
Not uncomfortable.
Just quiet.
Two men standing in the middle of everything they had failed to say for years.
And for once, neither of them rushed to fill the silence.
The conversation between them did not fix everything.
That was something Daniel appreciated more than he expected.
A perfect moment would have felt suspicious.
Too clean.
Too easy.
Their family had spent years building walls, and walls did not disappear because two people finally admitted they were there.
They disappeared one brick at a time.
Over the next few weeks, Daniel started noticing the small changes.
Not the dramatic ones.
The ones nobody else would have seen.
He started leaving work earlier on Wednesdays because Sophie had started asking why he was always the last parent to arrive at pickup.
He started putting his phone away during dinner.
Not every night.
Not perfectly.
But more often.
Sometimes he still caught himself reaching for it when a message came in.
Sometimes he stopped.
Sometimes he failed.
The difference was that now he noticed.
Before, he had considered distraction a normal part of being busy.
Now he understood that children experienced absence differently.
A person could be sitting right in front of them and still feel far away.
One evening, Sophie asked him to help build a small wooden birdhouse for a school project.
Daniel almost suggested buying one.
The thought came automatically.
A store could provide a cleaner result.
A finished product.
A guarantee that nobody would make mistakes.
Then he remembered something Stallone had said.
A repaired thing could be stronger because someone cared enough to fix it.
So Daniel sat on the garage floor with a small hammer and a confused instruction sheet.
“This piece goes here,” Sophie said confidently.
Daniel looked at the drawing.
“I don’t think it does.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Very sure.”
Daniel smiled.
“Okay.”
The piece did not fit.
Sophie looked disappointed.
Then she looked at him.
May you like
“Did we break it?”
Daniel held the unfinished birdhouse in his hands.
