“I’m complicated,” I say, and gather up the diaper bag, the signed policy packet, and the small human who immediately decides my shoulder is an acceptable mattress.
The drive is short enough to feel like a held breath. The new building smells like fresh paint and someone else’s takeout. Our door is the color Riley picked after arguing with herself for an hour and then texting me,This one. It looks like yes.
“Ready?” I ask, stupid, because I’m already reaching.
She lifts her arms like she’s at TSA. “Traditional?”
“Traditional,” I confirm, and scoop her up with a hand under her knees and a hand behind her back. She yelps, laughs, clamps one arm around my neck and the other around Oliver, who grumbles at the jostle then resettles, unimpressed. I nudge the door with my hip. It gives.
We cross the threshold as a unit—ridiculous and exactly right. The lights click on when I bump the switch with my elbow. The place opens ahead of us like a rink under new lights—wide, echoing, full of the kind of silence you can fill.
Boxes everywhere. A taped-off rectangle where a couch will be. Sun catching on the plastic of a floor lamp like a cheap halo. And on the kitchen island, a note in handwriting I could spot across a crowded arena.
Welcome home. Nursery’s ready. —S
There’s a cartoon duck sticker in the corner because Sophie is an agent of chaos and joy.
Riley breathes out a sound that is not a laugh and not a sob. “She didn’t,” she says, already walking it back because of course Sophie did.
“She did,” I say, throat doing that tight thing. I set Riley down carefully; she stays wrapped around Oliver for a second longer, forehead tucked into the soft cap like she’s taking a snapshot with her skin.
We stand there, two people who have outrun and outwaited and out-argued the loud parts of our lives, and look at a sea of boxes that are mostly just tape and possibility. My chest does that expansion trick it learned at the hospital.
The baby monitor on the counter crackles to life—one white noise sigh and a soft, curious coo like the smallest stakeholder is ready for the tour.
Riley meets my eyes. “Nursery?” she asks, a question that holds a year and a promise.
I reach for her hand, for the monitor, for the note with the duck that meansyou’re not doing this alone, and we start toward the hallway?—
—as the monitor sharpens and a new sound threads through the static, something like a mobile chiming from down the hall, already moving.
Chapter 33
Forever on Ice
Riley
The house smellslike fresh paint and takeout soy sauce, which shouldn’t go together and somehow does. Boxes stack in uneven skylines along the walls, labeled in my tidy block letters and Jason’s chaotic slant—KITCHEN (PROBABLY)sits on top ofMISC. (SORRY)like a confession. The hall is a tangle of bubble wrap and promise.
Jason makes a racetrack out of it without asking permission from physics or me. “Okay,” he narrates to Oliver, who is monarchal in a wrap across his chest, fists tucked under his chin like he’s considering vetoes. “Long straightaway—watch the footwork—tight turn at the hall tree—annnd we’re clear.”
He jog-walks past the living room, balancing a lamp under one arm as if this is what bodies are for, laughter echoing off bare walls. Oliver blinks, unimpressed, and then gifts him a drowsy half-smile that I feel in my knees.
“Please don’t try to beat your personal best while holding both a human and electricity,” I call, peeling blue painter’s tape off the nursery door. “I like all of you attached.”
He skids to a theatrical stop and bows at the doorway like a performer hitting his mark. “Noted. Safety third.”
“First,” I correct, but there’s no heat in it. He knows. I know he knows. I watch him anyway—because I can, and because I want to memorize this version: Jason Maddox, terror of backchecks, humming off-key to a lullaby track while paint dries on his forearm in the exact place where his wrist tape usually starts. His hair is a mess. His grin is a light source. I remember the man I fell for, the one I fought, the one who learned how to be quiet with me and loud for me. They’re all here, layered like coats you keep because each one has weathered something.
The nursery is almost a room. Sophie’s note on the door—NO SHOES. NO STRESS.—makes me smile every time I pass it. The walls are a soft blue-gray that looks different depending on the hour; right now it’s late-afternoon ocean. Shelves wait for board books and inexplicable treasures. A mobile hangs from a hook at the window, little wooden skates turning absently in the draft. I picture a tiny hand reaching, missing, reaching again, unbothered by failure.
Jason hums a bar I recognize—badly—and dips the lamp to point at the ceiling. “In my professional opinion, we put the chair there so when you’re doing night feeds you can see the stars,” he says, then turns so Oliver faces the window. “You, small teammate, will learn the constellations before you learn my plus-minus.”
“Ambitious,” I say. The word tastes good. Ambition rethreaded into us, not the world. I cross to him and thumb the streak of paint on his skin. It’s a soft white that will dry warmer than it looks in the can. “Also, you have committed a crime against décor.”
He glances at the smear, faux-offended. “I’m branding myself in a new line:Contractor Who Cares.”
“You can start by caring where the screws go,” I say, pointing at the crib hardware like a detective. He leans in to read the tiny diagram with the solemnity of a man defusing something. Oliver huffs, which we both take as commentary.
