My phone vibrates in my pocket, the security system app alerting me that the front door has been opened.
Hildy calls out, “Anyone home?”
“We’re doing math!” Lucy calls.
I hear her coming down the hall and look up over my shoulder from my position on the floor when she stops in the hallway.
“We got all the way to ten blocks.” Lucy smiles as she tries to put an eleventh one on the tower, and it falls down.
“What is this?” Hildy asks, looking around with a beautiful, surprised smile.
“It’s school, and play, and books, and colors, and all the things we love.” She pushes up on the floor, and I notice she’s using her casted arm a little more now.
She runs over and, instead of hugging Hildy, takes her hand and pulls her. “Come on, let me show you what Daddy did for you.”
“What did you do?” she asks as she’s pulled down the hall.
I push up and slowly make it to the doorway, where I am gifted the ability to see her take it all in. The desk. The shelves. The reading chair angled toward the windows. The brass lamp already glowing softly on the corner of the desk, as if it had been waiting for her.
“You…” she breathes.
I lean against the doorframe. “You needed an office.”
Her eyes move slowly across the room. “You built me a library.”
Her hand slides across the desk. “This desk probably costs more than I imagined my first car could.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Lenzin.”
“You’re writing a dissertation,” I say simply. “You get a desk. You want a car, you get the safest money can buy.”
She looks at me then, really looks. “I’ll never leave this room.”
I wink at her, “The desk is sturdy, we’ll make do.”
We’re doing dishes when my phone rings.
Hildy glances over at the counter, where it’s vibrating, then at the screen. Her eyebrows lift.
“Well,” she says dryly, nudging me with a hip check that nearly knocks the plate from my hand, “I faced mine this week.”
I glance down, it’s not the group chat, it’s my fucking father.
Of course.
Hildy flicks soap from her fingers and nods toward the phone. “Your turn.”
I exhale slowly. “You mind if I take it inyouroffice?”
She rolls her eyes, “Go.”
I lean down and kiss her forehead, breathing in the faint scent of her shampoo and dish soap. “Love you.”
“Love you.” I grab the phone and walk down the hall.
For a moment, I pause in the doorway of her office, feeling like I’m going to fuck up the vibe in here by dealing with this, but it must be done.
