As the rental car rolled to a stop on the dark road, her fear increased by the moment. The headlights cut through the orchard rows like pale scissors, severing the trees into pieces of shadow and bone. She hadn’t been back in fifteen years. Not since the summer her father stopped speaking to her altogether. The engine ticked as it cooled. Beyond the windshield, the farmhouse waited. Smaller than she remembered. Smaller than the version her guilt had preserved. She turned the key and stepped out. Gravel shifted beneath her shoes with a sound too loud for the hour. The air smelled of dust and something faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. The porch light was still on. He always left it on. She hadn’t told him she was coming. There had been too many unsent letters already, each one folded carefully and abandoned in drawers across three different apartments. The screen door creaked when she pushed it open. He was sitting at the kitchen table, exactly where he used to be every morning at six, coffee cup in hand, newspaper folded to the crossword. Only now the newspaper was gone, and the coffee sat untouched. He looked smaller too. For a moment neither of them spoke. She noticed his hands first. They had once seemed permanent, capable of building anything. Now they trembled faintly, like leaves. “I wasn’t sure you’d find the place,” he said. She almost laughed. She could have driven here blind. She sat down across from him. Words came out wrong. Apologies always do. They snag on pride, on memory, on the shape of things you can’t undo. He nodded anyway. He always nodded. Even when he disagreed. Even when she told him she was leaving. The clock ticked behind them. He reached for his coffee but didn’t drink it. “I kept the porch light on,” he said. She knew. And that was the moment he finally understood what it had cost him.