Daniel hadn’t spoken to his father in six years. Not since the argument. Not since the slammed door, the silence that stretched into years.  

When the call came, his hands trembled. “It’s the flood,” the neighbor had said. “Your father’s house... most of it’s gone.”

Daniel drove all night, arriving at dawn to find the wreckage. The little white house where he’d grown up was half-swallowed by the river, the porch broken, the walls buckling. His father sat among the ruins, shoulders hunched, hands covered in mud. He looked smaller than Daniel remembered. Older.  

“You came,” his father murmured.  

Daniel didn’t reply. He just picked up a plank of wood and started clearing the wreckage.  

At first, they worked in silence. Days passed in hammering, in sawing, in rebuilding the skeleton of what was lost. Nights passed in quiet dinners, in careful glances, in words unspoken. Then, as Daniel reinforced the beams of the house, his father handed him a nail without being asked. Later, Daniel poured him a cup of coffee before making his own. Small gestures, but they filled the space between them.  

One evening, as they sat on the half-rebuilt porch, his father exhaled. “I should’ve called first.”  

Daniel nodded. “I should’ve picked up.”  

The river had taken the house, but not everything. Some things, they could still rebuild.  

By the time the roof was finished, the silence between them was gone. And for the first time in years, when Daniel left, he knew he’d come back.