The story began with a frightened 1958 night when young Ryan hid under a kitchen table coloring the sky while his parents fought; his mother, Elise, spirited him from their home, and her admission that she loved Ryan’s father but loved Ryan most set a lifelong pattern of protection amid violence. As an adult in 1979 Fort Worth, Lillian Wright met gentle, art-driven Ryan at the public library; they talked over gyros, and his quiet generosity to a struggling diner sparked a relationship that deepened the next year as Lillian met Elise and Lillian and Ryan exchanged I love yous, even as Lillian hid that she had relinquished a baby in 1974 after musician Zack Melendez ended their romance for his career.

By 1981, Ryan launched the Sundance Gallery; the opening’s success ended in a proposal, and they married in 1982, honeymooning simply on the Gulf. Their early years mixed community, dancing taught by Elise, and gallery momentum, but a pivotal sale to a mother with a baby exposed their different bearings toward parenthood. After agreeing to try, Lillian conceived and miscarried within weeks, and grief bled into a faltering business and unspoken resentments. Elise arrived with casseroles and her own secret of a past loss, and though Lillian swore off pregnancy, a condomless night led to Jet’s healthy birth in 1986, bringing fierce love but not rescuing the gallery; soon Ryan began setting the baby by his easel, while Lillian returned to bank work and finally told him about the son she’d placed. In 1987, Ryan broke sobriety, escalated from beers to rage, threw a bottle that shattered by Lillian’s head, and then left, insisting distance would keep them safe; Lillian sheltered with Elise and raised Jet alone.

Through Jet’s childhood in the 1990s, Lillian built a modest, loving life with neighbor Shauna and her son Kendi, marking birthdays, school walks, and small rituals while Ryan drifted in and out, sometimes sober, often drunk, missing parties and breaking promises. Thanksgiving 1994 exposed the damage when Elise sent a drunk Ryan from her table, and Lillian adopted a border collie, Seth, to anchor their home. In 1996, Barton died; Memphis brought Ryan, Elise, Lillian, and Jet together for a sparse funeral, a checkers game, and a tender near-reconciliation that collapsed into relapse. Lillian later confronted Ryan’s lies in 1997 and maintained a facade at Jet’s spelling bee before naming Memphis a final false hope. By 1999, as Shauna and Michael got engaged and Jet neared adolescence, Lillian navigated nostalgia and worry; in 2000 she brought Jet’s promising photographs to Ryan, who proposed showing them and invited mother and daughter to dinner in a sober-seeming home, stirring careful hope. A private dinner revealed nine months’ sobriety, AA, and therapy with Elise; Lillian forgave him conditionally, and they rekindled their partnership.

In 2001, Ryan counted twenty months sober as he rejoined Lillian and Jet for dinners but kept a separate apartment. On the Fourth of July, he asked Lillian to “re-marry” him with fireworks that spelled her name, and she said yes; weeks later, while Shauna and Michael honeymooned and Kendi stayed over, Jet returned from a game and found Lillian dead on the bedroom floor from an apparent cardiac event, the new ring swelling her finger. Jet moved in with Ryan and quickly fled his drinking to Nana’s steady home, where therapy, a driver’s license, and quiet rituals gave structure to grief; she graduated in 2004 by summer work, wrestled disordered eating, and kept visiting Lillian’s grave, even as she pulled her photographs from Ryan’s gallery and declared love more dangerous than liquor. By New Year’s 2005, Jet confronted Ryan’s drinking on Shauna’s porch, then restored her friendship with Kendi at their old park, absolving him for not saving Lillian.

Jet inched forward: learning of Kendi’s high school “grunge” drift and return, reclaiming photography, and in 2009 receiving an email from Davis Condie—Lillian’s relinquished son—who sought connection. Shocked, Jet confronted Ryan, who produced an old envelope Lillian had addressed to Jet; Jet fled without opening it, then met Davis in San Antonio and began forming a warm, careful bond. Photographing a birth soon after, she poured anger and awe at Lillian’s choices into rain at the grave and decided to become a nurse-midwife. By year’s end she and Kendi cautiously reconnected; in early 2010 she earned nursing school acceptance, and Nana embraced Davis and his family over muffins at her table. When Nana died peacefully later that year, Jet and Ryan planned the funeral together and, over sundaes, opened a tentative reconciliation.

On a 2010 Houston trip for a wedding job, vows about loving despite loss pierced Jet’s defenses; that night Kendi admitted he had lied about a girlfriend to protect their friendship, and they confessed long-held love and chose each other. In 2011, after a miserable but safe flight in Kendi’s Cessna, he proposed with a pearl ring; Shauna, Michael, and Ryan celebrated, and Jet kept up “Photography Sundays” with Ryan as he worked at sobriety. Training as a midwife, she listened for fetal heartbeats and thought of Lillian’s chest and the night she died. In 2012 Ryan narrated Jet and Kendi’s simple, joy-filled wedding, where he walked her down the aisle and cried through their first father–daughter dance. Soon after, on a sweltering Sunday drive, Ryan opened Jet’s glove box and found a pregnancy test and Lillian’s still-unopened envelope; Jet finally opened it alone, discovering pregnancy photos and an unfinished letter naming her as Lillian’s third pregnancy after a miscarriage and the relinquished son. She returned shaken, admitting she had not told Kendi about the pregnancy and recognizing there had been no easy choices—only losses.

By 2013 Jet and Kendi expected a daughter, Apricity; Kendi took Ryan flying, where they spoke plainly about fathers and regret, and Ryan called Kendi “son.” Apricity’s birth jolted Ryan when he realized he was too drunk to remember seeing her; a recovering customer, Alan, invited him back to AA, and Ryan, moved by Apricity’s photo, returned and began praying, replacing bottles with brushes. In 2016 he wrote Apricity a letter about alcohol and addiction, naming himself an addict and hoping her life would keep alcohol small. By 2019 he was five years and seven months sober but dying of cirrhosis; Apricity visited with songs and trinkets, and Jet sorted his apartment as he asked that his art hang beside family photos. He wrote again to Apricity that saving is the faithful accumulation of small acts—that she had saved him even as he was dying—and blessed her stubborn joy. In hospice, Jet arrived in scrubs after delivering a baby and whispered that Apricity would be a big sister; Ryan promised he would be with them “here, and everywhere,” prayed for pity, and imagined Jet, Kendi, and Apricity carrying on under the wide oak that shaded the graves of those they loved.