Three days. Go to sleep, or I will take away your phone.
Anna:
Why are you texting me when you are right here?
“You have them in a group chat?” Aleks says, causing me to jump and nearly drop my phone.
“Anna’s doing, I assume.” I chuckle. “And Hildy must have taken her phone.”
When I walk in, I hear music and a sweet voice singing,Lucy, “I’ll follow you into the park. Through the jungle, through the dark. Girl, I never loved one like you. Moats and boats and waterfalls, alleyways and pay phone calls. I’ve been everywherewith you.” I pause, removing my coat slowly as she continues, not wanting to interrupt, very happy to be here to listen. “Home, oh, home, let me come home. Home is wherever Hildy is with Lou. Oh, home, let me come home, home is wherever Hildy is with Lou.”
I peek around the corner from the foyer and see Hildy dancing with Lucy, both have their hair braided, both smiling. I stay that way through the entire song, watching Hildy sing animatedly to Lucy.
I am not a man prone to sentimental theatrics, but as I stand here—one foot still inside the foyer, keys pinched between two knuckles and my coat slouched halfway off my shoulder—a surge of something purely animal, unexamined, surges up and scorches a line through the center of me. It’s not just that Hildy and Lucy are singing and dancing, which I’ve never seen: it’s the way it feels like they’re smiling with their whole bodies. Lucy’s joy reflected in Hildy’s eyes, their smiles and the obvious practiced steps of their choreography. The track is a little corny, the lyrics a little too all over the place, with singing and then talking, but somehow the sound vibrates through this home and the hollow of my sternum, hitting me with more force than any puck that’s ever come at me.
Lucy has a sweet, young voice with a rasp that seems too old for her age. She drags her vowels and loses the tune whenever her arms flap out for jazz hands or to catch Hildy’s wrist. Hildy’s voice is the same, but with age. She stays in tune even when they move.
The sight is so intimately theirs. Two sisters who were never meant to meet, but were unmistakably destined to. I feel I should back up, that I shouldn’t be here for it, but instead I stay and watch from my little hiding spot.
Lucy’s socked feet slide on the kitchen tile, her little body doing the best to match Hildy with a clumsy little box-step asthe chorus repeats. I find myself bracing for the moment when one of them glances up, and the spell is broken, but it doesn’t happen; they’re so locked in, neither notices me.
The song winds down, and Lucy’s giggle morphs into a hiccup and then, abruptly, a sob. Hildy scoops her up, holds her close, and rocks her gently as she sinks down to sit on the floor, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She mouths something into Lucy’s hair—words I can’t hear, but I don’t need to. It’s all there: the care, the grounding, the radical patience. I feel something raw pool in my throat and realize that, in all the places I have lived and all the rooms I have entered, I have never come home to anything like this.
It’s a lightning-rod moment, the kind you can’t pretend didn’t happen. I could stay here in the doorway forever, pretend I saw nothing, and shuffle off to my room, but what I want is to belong to this scene, to step forward and wrap them both in my arms.
It twists through me, the urge to reach for Hildy’s hand, to kneel beside Lucy and let her clutch at my neck, to have my presence mean comfort to her too, promise her that she will have the life she deserves, a family that is more than blood, it’s one chosen.We all will.
When Hildy finally opens her eyes, her gaze meets mine—those bright, sharp green eyes brimming with tears, not the kind that signal undoing, but something more fragile and more defiant. For a second, she just holds, really holds, the look. No flinch, no embarrassment at being seen cradling her little sister on the kitchen floor, no attempt to recover or explain or hide. It’s as if, in her world, old wounds and new joys coexist in the open, and there is no shame in feeling them both at once. The only movement is a quick swipe of her thumb over Lucy’s cheek, and then a small smile that’s all pride and none of the wary self-effacement she sometimes wears for my benefit.
She doesn’t speak—she doesn’t have to—but her chin tips up just enough to acknowledge me, an invitation written in the softest possible script: If you want in, come in. Her arm makes a subtle shift that opens a space, not just in the physical sense, but in a way that rearranges the gravity in the room. The next moment, Lucy, still hiccupping from her spent tears, turns and follows Hildy’s line of sight. Her face, blotched and wet, splits into a crooked grin when she sees me, so unguarded that it makes my chest burn for reasons that are, as usual, both obvious and unnamable. I think of all the times I’ve pretended not to want what I want, all the ways I’ve trained myself to weigh every step before I take it, and realize that three-year-olds don’t bother with such calculations.
Another song I don’t know is still playing, the tinny notes echoing in the kitchen. Hildy doesn’t move from the floor, just adjusts Lucy in her lap so there’s room for me to join them on the wood slats. I cross the last few feet with the caution of a man who knows he’s approaching something sacred, and as I lower myself, Lucy wriggles free of Hildy’s hold and launches herself at my neck, clutching with a force entirely disproportionate to her size.
Hildy’s hand, warm and steady, lands on my forearm. Her smile is softer up close, edged with relief and something like triumph. There is no cool distance, no edge of irony, no performance. Just Hildy, as she is, offering me a place in the scene she’s made for herself and her sister, a home for them, in a place that up until them felt temporary to me, and now feels like … home.
I let Lucy collapse into the hollow of my shoulder and, for once, don’t count the seconds before letting myself be still. Hildy leans her head against the cabinet, closes her eyes, and lets out a shaky breath that I feel more than hear.
For the first time in a life built almost exclusively on contingencies. I no longer care about angles or an exit; I only see them, and the truth of what I want, loud and clear.
I sit beside her, Lucy on my lap. Hildy sliding back against the cabinets, Lucy slotting herself neatly under my arm. The air smells like cinnamon and old books, and the heat of the radiator hums beneath the music.
I don’t say a word. Neither does Hildy. Lucy, half asleep, mumbles, “You’re home now,” and I nod because it’s the only answer I can give.
So, this is what it’s like, I think. To be noticed, to be wanted, to be let in.
Home is wherever Hildy is with Lou.
Chapter 18
Home
Hildy
Ileave Anna tucked into her room on the second floor, the door cracked just enough to let the warmth travel, air circulate, and to keep a promise to keep Lenzin away.He can’t get sick.
The bowl sits steady on her nightstand, Milchreis thick and pale, cinnamon blooming across the surface. Lucy added the sugar and cinnamon, measured it herself. Anna’s fever has her glassy-eyed, but she smiles anyway. Says it smells like home. I tell her to sleep and mean it the way you mean things when care has turned directive.
By the time I make my way back down the stairs, wide steps worn smooth at the edges, rooms that hold sound differently depending on where you stand, it’s warm and feels like a home should feel. I never saw it when it was the Puck Pad, only heard the tales. I imagine its soft hum used to be more of a shout.
