He had been choosing what he thought would hurt me least. In his young mind, inviting me felt like asking too much from someone already stretched thin. His step-mom, trying to be kind, offered to go if I couldn’t, and somewhere between adult compromises and hushed logistics, he absorbed a quiet, cruel lie: that I didn’t really want to show up for him.

Over pancakes the next morning, we unraveled it together. I told him, without drama or doubt, that there is nowhere I would rather be than in the bleachers with cold coffee, at school dinners under bad fluorescent lights, beside him in every ordinary moment he thinks I won’t miss. His small shoulders finally relaxed as he leaned into me and whispered that he’d missed me that night. We spent the day stitching ourselves back together—proof that when love is spoken clearly and often, even the softest fractures in a child’s heart can heal.