“Here you go, squish.” She coaxed the nipple into his mouth, and the fury dissolved into hungry snuffles. “Teamwork,” she told him. “You and me.”
“Bless you, baby girl.” Caroline passed through with a stack of plates. She brushed a kiss over Aubrey’s crown and aimed a look at me that said she’d slept maybe four hours total in the last two nights and would do it all again without complaint. “How many tacos did you eat? Be honest.”
“An even dozen.”
She snorted. “Liar.”
“Okay, eleven and a half. Logan stole one and ate just the tortilla.”
“Carbs are life,” Logan announced from the stairs, hopping down each step like it was a personal trampoline. He stopped beside me and peered up with chocolate ice cream ringed around his mouth like a villain mustache. “Daddy says I can help him fix the deck light tomorrow.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. Because I know how to hold the flashlight still. He said that’s the most important job.”
“It is.” I nodded solemnly. “No ship was ever saved by a wobbly flashlight.”
My nephew considered this, nodded, and sprinted for the bathroom. A beat later, the sink squealed to life, water blasting tile, followed by Hoyt’s patient baritone: “Buddy, hands under the water. Under. That’s right.”
I leaned my hip against the long kitchen island and let it all wash over me—the clink of plates, the hiss of the dishwasher, the sweet-milk scent of Eli’s formula, the lemon cleaner Caroline favored, the faint sunscreen tang that seemed baked into every surface from a summer lived outdoors. The house was a riot of color, reflecting all the warmth and chaos we hadn’t had growing up. Caroline and Hoyt had built it together until it felt like something durable and loved. It was a good house. A home meant for comfort and relaxing.
My shoulders didn’t get the memo.
They ached, coiled and ready, even here. Even safe. Night was the worst, and nights here had stacked up like cups in a game, all the sounds of a family layered one on top of another. Eli’s midnight snaps into wakefulness. The soft pad of Caroline’s feet. Hoyt’s murmur. The click and whine of the monitor. The house settling. The ocean. The ocean again. My body cataloged each one, searched for threat in domestic noise, and never quite believed me when I said there wasn’t any.
I hadn’t told my family the truth. Not all of it. I was home because the Navy and I had agreed to part ways “quietly,” and quiet had never been so loud in my head.
“Earth to Rios.” Caroline slid a glass of water in front of me. “You drifting?”
“A little.”
“Drink.” She bumped my elbow with the glass until I took it. “And go sit down. You did dishes last night. You are officially off duty.”
“You cooked.”
“I assembled tacos. That doesn’t count.” Her mouth curved. “Besides, you’ve been kid-wrangling for three days. Hoyt owes you hazard pay.”
“Add it to my tab.” Hoyt appeared with Eli scooped easily into the crook of one arm. He pressed a kiss to Caroline’s temple as he passed and transferred the baby with the kind of gentle muscle memory that made you trust him with anything. “Your presence has been requested for bath time. You wanna swap bedtime?”
“I’m always on bedtime. ’Tis my lot in life.” She angled her head into his shoulder for one second more with an expression of bliss that said she wouldn’t have it any other way, before peeling away, already gathering Logan’s abandoned art project and sweeping glitter-escaped sprinkles into her palm. “Aubrey, grab the story basket?”
“On it.” Aubrey eased the now-dozy Eli from their mother’s arms, jostled him with practiced rhythm, and marched upstairs like a tiny general escorting a prisoner of war to a very soft cell.
Hoyt watched her go, pride bright and unhidden. “She’s a good kid.”
“They all are,” I said. “Even the sugar-possessed one.”
“Logan! Five-minute warning!” Caroline sang toward the upstairs hall. She glanced at me. “You look like someone hit your pause button.”
“Thinking.”
“Dangerous.” Hoyt jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. Porch.”
We stepped through the wide sliders onto a wrap-around porch that ran the length of the house. The Atlantic stretched black-blue beyond the dunes, the horizon a thin smear of silver under a sky littered with stars. Ceiling fans whirred lazily overhead, and somewhere out of sight a neighbor laughed.
I kept one hand on the railing as we settled into Adirondack chairs. Old habit: touch the boundary, know where you are. The railing was solid and slightly warm from a day of sun. My back found the angle of the chair and protested. I breathed through it.
Inside, bath chaos started in earnest—Logan’s dramatic odes to the injustice of shampoo, Aubrey’s patient narration for Eli’s benefit, Caroline’s, “You will not flood the hallway, I mean it.” A family symphony.
