I crouch so I’m eye level. “Two choices. One: you both mop the hall and reset every chair you knocked over, together. No talking exceptsorryandpass the bucket. Two: you apologize right now, then you shadow me for thirty minutes while I check doors and cameras. You learn what it takes to keep this place safe. Pick.”
Mason’s mouth twitches, caught between defiance and relief. “Option two,” he says, like he’s daring me to say no.
Nick swallows. “Me too.”
“Good.” I release their arms. “Before we do anything—apologies. Eyes up.”
They glance at each other. Mason’s jaw works. “Sorry,” he gets out. It’s rough, but it’s real.
Nick nods. “Sorry, I called you a name.”
“Better.” I reach into the first-aid kit on the wall, pull out wipes and a little tube. “Nick, sit.” I clean his split lip, and he hisses. “This part stings, but it means it’s working.” I look at Mason’s knuckles; they're a bit raw in places. “Your turn.” He offers them as if it costs him.
“Rule for the day,” I say, wrapping a quick strip of gauze. “Hands stay open unless you’re helping. Understand?”
Two more nods.
“Good.” I stand, clap once. “Let’s go see about that back door sensor. You’re on my six.”
They fall in beside me, small chests squared like soldiers trying on a uniform three sizes too big. I glance back, just once.
Sophia is watching me, not the boys. One hand rests over her heart like she’s steadying something inside it. The little girl is still at her feet, fingers twined in Sophia’s skirt, where she seems to feel safe. That white feather is still inher hair. Sophia looks at me like I’ve just told her a secret I didn’t know I had.
I tip my chin to her. She smiles—soft, proud—and sets her hands on the keys again.
The first notes lift, a hopeful thread through hush. I start walking the perimeter with two shadows at my heels, pointing out cameras, hinges that need oil, the spot where the fence sags, and why each thing matters. Mason listens harder than he pretends to; Nick matches my steps like it’s a game.
“You see all this?” I tell them. “Keeping people safe isn’t just muscle. It’s eyes. It’s thinking ahead. You want to be strong, you start here.”
“Yes, sir,” Nick says. Mason doesn’t, but his shoulders have lost their spikes.
By the time we circle back, the boys are calmer, breathing even. I nudge Mason’s shoulder. “You make a decent right hand. Help Nick set the chairs back. Then grab a snack and sit where you can see the piano. Deal?”
“Deal,” he says, almost smiling. Nick grins full-on, gap-toothed.
I turn, and Sophia is mid-phrase, watching me over the curve of the piano like she’s decided something. The music swells, not just mournful anymore; there’s a lift in it, a future I can almost touch.
For the first time, I let myself imagine it: this room on a Tuesday, the same two knuckleheads arguing about whocarries the mop, a little hand wrapped around my finger, Sophia laughing by the piano, the word she gave me this morning carved into the doorframe like a promise: Catskills. Home.
I stand guard in a room full of tender things and let the notes do what they do—stitch, soften, set bones right—and I think, yeah.
I can be this man.
I can be this kind of father.
And she sees it.
Liszt’slast chord shivers into silence, and then the crash—metal scraping tile, a breathless tangle of limbs. I lift my hands. Raffael is already there, voice like a line drawn through chaos. “Enough.”
I watch him separate the boys like he’s untangling wires, but he doesn’t yank; there is no rage, just that calm, immovable authority. He makes them breathe. He makes them look him in the eye. He cleans a split lip with the same care he uses to holster a gun. He gives choices, not lectures.
“Anger’s a signal,” he tells them. “What you do with it—that’s on you.” When he says, “In here we take care of people smaller than us,” something in my chest clicks back into place.
The room exhales. The boys shadow him around the perimeter like ducklings in oversized sneakers while I findthe keys again, lighter now, a strange brightness fluttering under my ribs.
I don’t go back to Liszt. My hands want air. I let them play something I don’t have a name for, something that sounds like sunlight catching in leftover rain. A gentle bounce in the left hand, a ribbon of melody in the right that keeps lifting and setting down, lifting and setting down. If anyone asked, I’d call itFeather Waltz, because that’s what it feels like, the small white scrap still tucked in my hair, learning how to fly.
The little girl stays at my feet, palm on my shin like I’m an anchor. The mothers stand more easily. When Raffael circles back with the boys, both of them are breathing steadily. One of them—the older one, Mason—almost smiles. Raffael tips his head at me, eyes warm. The song inside me gets braver.
