It wasn’t everything. It was, at least, honest, which by then felt like the only currency actually worth anything between us.
I still think about that driveway sometimes, the brand new car sitting between two very different kinds of fathers, one offering metal and paint as proof, the other standing quietly by the porch railing with nothing to offer but years of Tuesdays nobody had ever asked him to show up for.
I think about the exact moment I turned away from the keys and toward the porch instead, how small that choice looked from the outside, how enormous it actually was.
Nobody watching from the street that day, no phone camera catching a blurry ten-second clip, could have possibly understood what that turn actually cost, or what it actually bought instead.
People sometimes ask if I regret selling the car, given how expensive it clearly was.
