The photographs are still in my wallet.
The clock is still ticking.
But my house is warm, and my girls are laughing, and for five minutes tonight, it sounded like a home instead of a bunker.
I'll take it. Five minutes is more than I've had in a long time.
CHAPTER SIX
Leah
I don't know when I started coming here every other day.
It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a conversation.
Nobody sat me down and saidLeah, you're going to spend your evenings at a single dad's house helping one daughter with physical therapy and the other with seventh-grade math, and you're going to like it.
It just... happened.
The way important things tend to happen—not with a bang, but with a slow, quiet slide you don't notice until you're already in the middle of it.
Tonight, I'm cross-legged on Coin's living room floor with Wrenleigh, guiding her through ankle rotations that she insists are "medieval torture devices disguised as healthcare."
"Ten more," I say.
"I've done ten."
"You've done six. I'm counting."
"Your counting is wrong."
"I'm a nurse. I count things for a living."
She huffs—full-body, dramatic, the kind of exhale that could put out a birthday cake from across the room—and finishes the rotations.
Her mobility is improving.
The boot is doing its job, the swelling is down, and she's got more range of motion this week than last.
She'll deny it if I point that out, so I don't.
Sadie Jo is on the couch behind us, her math textbook open on her lap, but she stopped doing homework twenty minutes ago.
She's watching us.
Not in the suspicious way she watched me the first time I came over—measuring, testing, deciding whether I was safe.
This is different. This is a thirteen-year-old girl settling into the presence of a woman who keeps showing up, and quietly deciding she doesn't mind it.
She hasn't asked me for help with her homework tonight.
She just migrated from the kitchen table to the couch on her own, like she wanted to be in the same room.
If you ask me, that means a lot.
A kid choosing to be close to you shows how much they trust, or like you.
"All right," I say, standing and stretching my back. "You're done for tonight. Ice it for twenty minutes before bed."
