“Do you wear me?” Erin asked, voice low enough that the children didn’t hear the extra layer.
“Every day,” Alex replied quietly. “Even when you don’t think you do.”
Erin swallowed.
“Am I… a crown?” she asked aloud.
“Yes!” the children shouted, delighted.
Erin laughed, shaking her head, and pulled the card off her forehead to look at it.
A crown. Yellowed drawing. Slightly bent corners.
Not alive, no.
But in that moment, with Alex watching her like she was the thing that held Alex’s spine upright, Erin felt more alive than she had in a long, long time.
The game rolled on, round after round, until the children’s questions grew slower, softer. Their objections less sharp. Their laughter trailing into yawns.
Hyzenthlay puzzled her way to “snowflake” eventually, then spent five minutes discussing uniqueness and structural patterns with anyone who would listen. Vic listened, rapt, as if “snowflake load-bearing capacity” was the most interesting thing she’d heard all year.
Frank guessed he was a snowman only after someone asked whether he was at risk from climate change and he shouted, “I’m made of SNOW?”
Florence fell asleep first, head tipping gently sideways until it landed on Alex’s knee. Alex untangled her hand from Erin’s long enough to smooth hair away from Florence’s face.
Matilda nodded off mid-protest about bedtime protocols, still insisting she could handle “at least two more rounds.” She curled against a cushion like a cat, fingers still loosely holding an unused card.
Frank lasted longest, out of sheer determination not to be the first Kennedy triplet asleep. He lost his battle like a soldier on the front line—eyes closed one second, completely limp the next. Juno immediately climbed into his lap and decided he made an excellent mattress.
Hyzenthlay, true to form, attempted to document the exact time and position of each child’s collapse. Her pencil slowed, slowed, slowed… and slipped from her hand as her chin dropped to her chest.
Vic caught the notebook before it hit the floor.
“Data collection paused,” she whispered, gently easing the notebook aside. Her face softened as she looked at hersleeping daughter. There was still a hint of earlier fragility in her eyes, but tonight it was cradled within something steadier.
Love. Acceptance. A quieter kind of determination.
Julia saw it too. She rested her cheek briefly against Vic’s temple.
“You did well,” she murmured.
Vic didn’t answer aloud, but her hand reached for Julia’s and curled around it, squeezing.
Across the room, Alex and Erin made eye contact again.
We did it, Alex’s look said.
We survived, Erin’s answered. We did more than survive.
They gently ferried children to bed—Alex scooping Florence up with practiced ease; Erin lifting Frank, murmuring “got you, mate” into his hair. Vic carried Hyz, Julia trailing behind with Matilda.
Dogs followed, pads silent on ancient stone.
The sitting room, emptied of its smallest inhabitants, felt bigger for a moment. Echoey.
Then the adults drifted back in.
No one suggested more games. No one suggested bed just yet, either.
