Todos los capítulos de His Greatest Regret: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

TARIKThe first few visits go better than I let myself hope for.I bring a new dinosaur the first time—not because Malik needs another one, but because I don’t know what else to bring. What else might feel like the visit is something other than an apology I’m too late delivering. He runs to me at the door the way he used to, wraps both arms around my neck, and for a few minutes I let myself believe this might actually be simpler than I’ve been telling myself it is.I read to him that night, some book about a truck that gets lost and finds its way home, and he falls asleep against my side before I finish it. I sit there a long time after, not moving, not wanting to be the reason he wakes up to an empty spot on the couch.I think, driving home that night, that maybe this is fixable. Maybe showing up enough times in a row is its own kind of proof.On one visit, a stack of paperwork sits on the kitchen counter while I wait for Sophia to bring Malik down from his nap. I don’t mean to look.

SOPHIAI stand at the window long after his taillights disappear down the street, watching the space where his car was, feeling something heavy settle into my chest that I don't have a clean name for.Guilt moves through me, unexpected in its sharpness. I think about the way he crouched down to say goodbye to Malik tonight, the careful, deliberate gentleness he's been practicing for weeks now, like a man relearning a language he let himself forget. I think about thank you for letting me keep coming, said so quietly, so much less certain than the man who once told me I knew what I signed up for when I married him.He's trying. I let myself hold that thought a moment, turn it over, weigh it honestly. He's trying, and I'm about to disappear from him without a word of warning, the same way I once begged him not to disappear from us.But I remember, too, exactly how many times I asked him to show up when it mattered, and how many times the answer was a silence I had to build an entire life

SOPHIAThe first morning in our new town, I wake to the sound of Malik moving around the room beside mine, followed by my mother telling him for the third time that socks go on before shoes. I smile before I even open my eyes.The house still doesn't feel completely familiar. Unopened boxes line the hallway walls, a few framed pictures waiting to be hung, and a stack of books sitting on the floor because I haven't decided where they belong. But there's something comforting about hearing Malik's voice travel through the house — it makes the unfamiliar place feel less like somewhere we've escaped to and more like somewhere we've begun to live.When I walk past his room, I find my mother putting away his clothes. She's already sorted his school things, arranged his shoes by the door, and managed to make his room look more settled than the rest of the house.I lean against the doorway. "You know you don't have to do all that."She doesn't turn around. "And you don't have to remind me ever

SOPHIA I catch myself in the bathroom mirror longer than I mean to that morning, toothbrush still in hand. Thirty-eight looks back at me — dark hair a little longer than I've kept it in years, past my shoulders now. Fine lines have settled at the corners of my brown eyes that weren't there five years ago. My shoulders are set in a way that doesn't apologize for taking up space the way they used to. Somewhere in the last five years the woman who used to sit in her car in the driveway, too afraid to walk into a building she used to move through without thinking, quietly disappeared. I don't remember the exact day it happened. I just remember one morning realizing she was gone. *** Malik's mostly fine these days — a rescue inhaler still in his backpack out of habit more than necessity, nothing that's needed using in over a year. He's grown into a lanky eight-year-old, all elbows and knees, my dark hair and Tarik's same deep brown eyes, a gap-toothed grin traded now for a full set of s

TARIK The shortlist sits where I left it last night, dead center on the desk, like moving it might change what's printed on page four. Forty now, more weight through my shoulders than I carried at thirty-five, a tiredness settled permanently around my eyes that no amount of sleep touches anymore. There's a stillness to me these days, an unhurried, controlled kind of confidence — nothing like the restless energy I used to walk into rooms with. I've read the shortlist enough times I don't need to open it again. I open it again. Cole & Bennett Architecture — Sophia Bennett, Lead Partner. Five years, and her name still does something to the air in a room. My assistant knocks once and doesn't wait for an answer before stepping halfway in — used to my mornings by now. "Ethan's on his way up. Ten minutes." "Fine." She looks at me a second too long before she goes. I don't ask what she saw. Ethan comes in without knocking, tie already loosened, a folder under one arm. I slide the short