Chapter 5 - The Walls Come DownThe door opened.
Ethan looked like a man who had been hollowed out. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shirt wrinkled. He looked at Sophie, then at Mara, his gaze lingering on the tray.
"I don't deserve this," he whispered. "I don't deserve the silence to be broken."
"You don't deserve to be alone," Mara said, her voice shaking but firm. She stepped into the room, setting the tray on the desk. "My husband died in a crash, too, Mr. Caldwell. A night shift, a highway, a mistake. I spent ten years thinking I had to bury him to keep going."
Ethan looked at her, his vision blurring. "How do you do it? How do you wake up every day?"
"I don't do it for me," Mara said, gesturing to Sophie. "I do it for the life that’s still here. Grace wouldn't want you to be a machine. She’d want you to be a father, even if you never got the chance. She’d want you to be a human being."
Ethan sank into his chair, covering his face with his hands. For the first time in ten years, the machine broke. The dam that had held back a decade of grief burst, and Ethan Caldwell, the most powerful man in Manhattan, wept.
He didn't weep for his company or his money. He wept for Grace, for Hannah, and for the man he had been before he decided that suffering was the only way to honor them.
Sophie didn't try to stop him. She walked over and hugged his knee, while Mara stood by, letting him be broken, letting him be human.
When he finally looked up, his face was wet, but the tension—the rigid, iron-like tension that had defined him—was gone.
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"I’m sorry," he whispered.
"Don't be," Sophie said, handing him the yellow rubber duck. "Quackers says it’s okay to be sad sometimes."
