Carter watched her, then turned and sat cross-legged on the rug. He patted the floor beside him, and I obeyed, sitting close enough to touch.
“You ever think about what it means?” he asked.
“What what means?”
“All of this.” He waved a hand—at the baby, at the house, at me. “Being a father. A husband. A person who’s... real.”
I considered it. “Feels like a mission. Just one you don’t get medals for.”
He smiled, but there was something sharp underneath it. “When I was little, my dad used to say that legacy was everything. That if you weren’t building something bigger than yourself, you were wasting your time.” He stared at his hands, turning them over as if searching for proof. “I thought that meant a company, or a fortune. I didn’t realize it could mean this.”
I took his hand, ran my thumb over the scar at the base of his palm—the one he’d gotten while trying to cut bread with a dull knife the first day we lived together. “You did good,” I said.
Carter exhaled, the tension leaking out of his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said. “We did.”
The baby snored, a tiny whuffle that made both of us laugh. I wrapped my arm around Carter’s waist and pulled him closer, so that our legs tangled and his head rested on my shoulder. Westayed that way for a long time, just breathing, the three of us in a bubble of new air.
Eventually, Carter stood and started opening windows, letting the cool air blow through. He moved from room to room, tweaking curtains, adjusting a picture frame, checking the pantry to make sure the food was lined up the way he liked it. He wasn’t nervous—just happy, uncontained, like a kid at a carnival.
I wandered the house, taking inventory. Every room told a story: the mudroom where we’d tracked in the first winter snow when it arrived, the kitchen where Carter had burned his first attempt at bread, the hallway where Margot had screamed herself hoarse the night her colic started.
I stopped at the back door and watched the sun come up over the ridgeline. It was a good view. The best. I turned to find Carter behind me, the baby slung over his shoulder, face flushed.
He looked at me, and I saw the future: Margot toddling across the yard, Carter calling her name, the sound of laughter and maybe, someday, another pair of feet chasing after hers. I saw birthdays and snowstorms and every spring, the world new again.
“You ready?” Carter asked, voice hoarse.
I nodded. “Let’s show her the world.”
We stepped out together, the three of us, into the morning. The grass was wet, the wind sharp, the sky wide enough to hold every hope I’d ever been dumb enough to want. I watched Carter walk ahead, baby in his arms, head high, unafraid.
It wasn’t what I’d pictured when I signed on for this life.
It was better.
They say a house isn’t real until you’ve thrown a party and had your floors stomped in by people who’ll never have to replace them. By noon, the place was already full—Rawley and Jojo showed up first, their baby asleep in a car seat with acrocheted blanket tucked up to his chin. Jojo carried a box of pies so carefully you’d think they were nitroglycerin.
Rawley, arms loaded with beer, nodded at the porch and said, “Looks sturdy.” I could hear the pride in his voice, even through the ribbing.
Next came the rest of the squad: Burke in a goddamn bolo tie, Decker with his hands full of wildflowers he’d cut off the highway, Hooper lugging a cooler the size of a body bag and already half in the bag himself. They sounded like a construction crew on a lunch break, voices carrying all the way to the barn, every joke louder than the last.
When Margot started to fuss, Hooper picked her up—no warning, no preamble, just hoisted her one-handed and cooed, “It’s okay, kiddo, you’re safe now.” The baby stopped crying, looked up at him like he was the most interesting thing in the world, and then spit up all over his flannel.
Hooper didn’t even flinch. “She’s a natural-born commando,” he said, dabbing his shirt with a napkin from the table.
Carter tried to apologize, but I waved him off. “If she can take down Hooper, she can handle anything,” I said, and he beamed.
By one-thirty, the driveway was lined with trucks and a couple of cars so new and expensive they looked like a dare. The Texas contingent had arrived: Carter’s father, Harrison, was first out of the Mercedes, followed by Barrett—hair slicked, suit jacket thrown over his shoulder, not even trying to hide his boredom—and Vivian, who was glued to her phone and snapped a photo of the porch before even saying hello.
Harrison took in the house like a general surveying a forward base. He eyed the beams, the stonework, the porch swing, then nodded as if scoring points in his head. When Carter opened the door and ushered them in, Harrison paused in the entryway, running a hand over the trim.
“Solid,” he said, not quite a compliment.
Carter’s smile was tight, but he didn’t let it slip. “Macon did most of the work himself.”
Harrison’s eyes flicked to me, then back to the woodwork. “Not bad,” he allowed.
Vivian drifted past, phone outstretched, capturing the foyer. She barely looked at the rest of us, but when Margot started to fuss again, she actually lowered the phone and said, “Aw, she’s even cuter in person.”
