“So you just let yourself in? In the middle of the night? Without telling me?”
He set the milk jug down on the counter and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I came here one night to talk, to tell you everything… but the key still worked, so I let myself in, and when I saw you were all asleep, I lost my nerve.”
He paused. “I was too ashamed to wake you, so I just figured I’d help first.”
“Help?” I crossed my arms. “You’ve been sneaking into my house, cleaning my kitchen, buying groceries.
What’s this, Luke? What are you doing?”
He swallowed hard. “I’m trying to make things right.”
“Make things right?
You left us three years ago, walked out the door and didn’t look back… and now you’re breaking into my house at three in the morning?”
“I know.” His voice cracked. “I know I don’t deserve to be here, but I needed to do something. I needed you to know that I’m trying.”
“Trying to do what?”
He took a shaky breath, and for the first time, I noticed how different he looked: older, tired, with lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“When I left,” he confessed, “I wasn’t just overwhelmed. I was in a bad place. Worse than you knew.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited.
“My business was failing,” he continued. “The partnership I’d invested everything in was falling apart, and I was drowning in debt.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you or how to fix it, and when Sophie was born, I panicked.”
He looked down. “I looked at you holding her, exhausted and happy, and all I could think was that I was going to let you down, that I was already letting you down.”
My voice caught somewhere low, stuck between wanting to yell and just… sinking.
“I hid it as long as I could,” he continued. “But when things got worse, I didn’t think I deserved either of you anymore. I thought if I left, at least you’d have a chance to start over without me dragging you down.”
“So you just disappeared?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense.
I know it was the wrong choice, but I was in so deep, Clara. I didn’t know how to climb out.”
I leaned against the counter, arms still crossed. “And now?
After three years, you just suddenly decided to come back?”
“No,” he said swiftly. “It wasn’t sudden. I spent a long time at rock bottom, longer than I want to admit, but I met someone… a guy named Peter.
He’s the reason I’m here now.”
I frowned. “Who is he?”
“A friend. We met at a therapy group.” He looked down at his hands.
“He lost his wife in a car accident a few years ago, and even after everything he went through, he didn’t give up.”
“He rebuilt his life and showed me that maybe I could fix the mess I made too.”
I didn’t trust him, not right away. Because you don’t just erase three years of hurt with a few late-night apologies. But we talked for hours as he told me about the therapy, and the steps he’d taken to get his life back together.
He apologized over and over, and even though part of me wanted to kick him out and never see him again, another part… the part that still remembered who we used to be… listened. When he finally left, just before sunrise, he promised to come back. “In the daylight this time.”
***
Luke showed up this morning with a box of cookies and a bag of toys for the kids, and he didn’t sneak in through the back door; he knocked on the front like a normal person.
When I told Jeremy and Sophie that he was their dad, they didn’t know how to react at first. Jeremy tilted his head and asked, “The one in the pictures?” while Sophie just stared at him with wide eyes. But then Luke knelt down and asked if he could show them how to build a rocket ship out of Legos, and that was it.
Kids are resilient like that. He drove them to school, packed their lunches, and helped Jeremy with his homework when he got home. And the whole time, I watched from the kitchen with my arms crossed, still not entirely sure what to make of it all.
We aren’t trying to recreate what we used to be because that version of us is gone. But maybe we can build something new, something steadier. I don’t know what the future holds or whether we’ll ever be a family again.
But the kids have their dad back, and I have help. Slowly, carefully, Luke and I are trying to find our way forward. It’s not a fairy tale; it’s messy and complicated, and the scars are still there, along with the fears.
But there’s no harm in trying, right? What do you think? Should I keep building these bridges, or am I just setting myself up to fall again?
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