He followed her inside. The screen door closed behind them with a soft click.
I stood on the porch alone, my hands aching from gripping the railing, and listened to the murmur of their voices through the screen door. The sound of eleven years of history turning into something I might not be able to stop.
Marcus settled in like a returning king.
He booked the corner suite, the one with mountain views and the four-poster bed that had been Gran’s pride. He paid for two weeks upfront, cash, like money could buy back what he’d thrown away.
Over the next few days, I watched him insert himself into Grace’s life.
He went to her prenatal appointments. I saw them leave together, Marcus’s hand on her lower back, guiding her toward his car like she couldn’t find it herself. He came back talking about the ultrasound, the baby’s heartbeat, and the due date.
Our baby, he said.Our little miracle.
He charmed the guests at breakfast. Told stories about his work in Denver, about his plans for the future, about how excited he was to be a father. He never mentioned Emma. Never mentioned the engagement that had imploded. Never mentioned that two months ago, he’d been planning a life with someone else.
He tried to charm Mrs. Patterson as well. She smiled politely and excused herself to her room. Later, I saw her watching him from the window, her expression unreadable.
I watched all of it from the margins.
From the carriage house. From the station, where I picked up extra shifts just to have somewhere else to be. From the edges of rooms I used to feel at home in.
This is right,I told myself.This is how it should be.
Marcus was the biological father. He had a claim I didn’t, couldn’t, would never have. Grace deserved the chance to see if he’d changed, if a family was possible. If the man she’d loved for eleven years could become the man she needed.
That’s what a good friend would want for her.
But every time Marcus touched her shoulder, something twisted in my chest. Every time he saidour baby, I felt it like a blade between my ribs. Every time Grace laughed at something he said, I had to look away.
It wasn’t just protectiveness anymore.
It was jealousy. Real, undeniable, burning jealousy that sat in my stomach like something rotten.
When did that happen? When did she stop being my friend and become something else entirely? When did I start wanting something I had no right to claim?
I didn’t have answers. I only had the ache in my chest and the knowledge that feeling it didn’t give me the right to act on it.
I was walking past the nursery when I heard Marcus’s voice inside.
The door was open a crack. I shouldn’t have stopped. Shouldn’t have listened. But his tone made me pause, made my feet root to the floor outside.
“We should register for new furniture,” he was saying. “Something more modern. This stuff looks homemade.”
“Itishomemade. Owen built it.”
I could hear Marcus’s dismissal before he even spoke. Could picture the way he’d wave his hand, the slight curl of his lip.
“Owen’s been very helpful.” His voice carried that particular warmth of someone who doesn’t mean a word they’re saying. “But now that I’m here, he doesn’t need to hover anymore. We’re a family now. We’ll figure it out together.”
Hover.
The word landed like a fist to my solar plexus.
I stood frozen in the hallway. Sixteen years of friendship. Of Saturday mornings and cinnamon rolls and showing up when no one else did. Reduced to hovering.
The nursery I’d built with my own hands. The crib with its mortise-and-tenon joints, solid enough to hold generations. The walls were painted the exact yellow of her safest memory. All of it was dismissed as amateur work, like care could be replaced by a receipt.
I could walk in. I could tell Marcus exactly what I thought of him, of his modern furniture, of his sudden interest in a baby he’d known about for all of five days.
