Page 133 of Wreckage and Rain

"I know I haven't made it official. I've been in Wicker Park for months and I've been telling everyone it's temporary. It isn't temporary. I'm not moving back to Charleston. Colt isn't moving back to Charleston. We're looking at apartments in Lincoln Park."

Autumn's eyes are wet. She has known this was coming. Knowing it and hearing it out loud are different things.

Jake nods once. Slow. "Good."

"You're okay?"

"I'm okay. Of course I'm okay. I'm just going to need a bigger Christmas budget for plane tickets."

"You're going to come up four times a year and you're going to like it."

"Yes ma'am."

I look at Greg. He hasn't moved. The dishrag is in his hand and the counter is half wiped and he's looking at his daughter across the diner with a face I can't read. He sets the rag down. He goes behind the kitchen pass. I can't see him for thirty seconds. When he comes back, he has a bottle in his hand. He walks the length of the diner with it, slow, his work boots squeaking on the tile. He stops at our booth. Sets the bottle down on the formica between Summer's plate and mine.

Bourbon. The one that lives behind the kitchen pass for occasions, which in this diner happen approximately once a decade.

"That for us, Daddy?"

"That's for him."

Greg King looks at me. The same look from the night we arrived. The diagnostic look. The look of a man deciding whether I'll hold.

"You taking my baby to Chicago?"

"She's taking me, Greg."

"Don't be cute. You know what I'm asking."

I look up at him. The whole diner is quiet. Autumn has stopped breathing. Jake is pretending to study the dessert menu he has had memorized since he was ten.

"Yes. We're going to Chicago. We're getting an apartment. We're going to live there. I'm going to keep showing up for her every day for the rest of my life, Greg, and I'm going to come down here every couple of months and let your wife tell me I'm toothin, and I'm going to be the man you would want her to be married to. Even on the days that's hard."

"Especially on the days that's hard."

"Especially then."

He looks at me for a long time. Then he puts his hand on the back of the booth next to my shoulder. Squeezes once. The Greg King benediction.

"Welcome back, son."

"Greg."

"Don't make me regret it."

"No, sir."

He picks up the bourbon. Hands it to me. The seal is unbroken. He has been holding this bottle behind the kitchen pass for years, waiting on a day worth opening it.

"Open it tonight. Not now. Tonight. You and her. One glass each. That's how you drink the bourbon. You don't drink it in a hurry and you don't drink it alone."

"Yes, sir."

"And one more thing."

"Yes, sir."

"You're family. You hear me. I'm not saying it because you fixed it. I'm saying it because Sarah and I decided you were family the first time you sat in booth four, let her order for you, and ate every bite. That hasn't changed. Whatever happens, that doesn't change. You're Summer's husband and you're my son the same as Jake is. You have been forgetting that for too long. Stop forgetting."