Page 179 of The Incredible Ordinary

The house is impossibly loud again for a few minutes.

“You ready?” Dad asks, looking between me and Rory.

“Yup,” I say and nod. Ready as I’ll ever be.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving us,” Dad says. “Flying out of the nest.”

“It’s just college,” I say.

Dad shakes his head. “You should have been worse teenagers. Behaving abysmally is something your parents need in order to be okay with you leaving us. We never got that from you two.”

“I could set something on fire at graduation,” Rory says.

Dad claps him on the shoulder and squeezes it. “Let’s just say your heart is in the right place and leave it at that.”

“We could come up with a signal,” Rory says thoughtfully. “Like, if you stretch and wink at the same time, I know it’s chaos time.”

Dad presses his lips together and his palm to his chest. “I’m gonna miss you so much when you’re.” He pulls Rory in a tight hug.

“Let’s go before it gets too sappy,” Rory says and makes a face, but when Dad lets go of him, he smiles.

Milán laughs and claps Rory on the shoulder.

They all move out the front door, and I watch them gather on the street. Smiling. Talking. Laughing.

I lift my phone and take a picture. I want to remember this moment.

This moment is good.

It’s ours.

The love, too.

There’s a lot of it in this family.

And it’s all ours.