He leaned closer, studying her with earnest attention.
Then, without warning, his hand lifted to her right eye.
Elizabeth stilled.
His fingers hovered, then touched lightly—without hesitation, without uncertainty.
She did not draw back. He had done this before. Children did not pretend not to see. They did not avert their gaze or soften their expressions. They observed. They touched. They accepted.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice gentle.
He frowned slightly, as though attempting to understand something that did not yet fit into his small experience.
“Eye,” he said.
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes.”
He tilted his head, his expression intent.
“Different.” The word was spoken with simple clarity.
Elizabeth felt something within her loosen—not painfully, not with regret, but with a recognition of truth unadorned. “Yes,” she said. “It is different.”
He considered this, then nodded once, as though the matter were settled.
“Lizzy,” he said.
Elizabeth smiled.
“Yes.”
He leaned forward then, pressing his forehead lightly against hers. The gesture was so spontaneous, so entirely without self-consciousness, that it caught her unprepared.
She let out a soft breath and closed her eye. In that moment, there was no difference. No absence. No reckoning of what had been altered. Only warmth. Only presence.
Elizabeth held him a little closer.
The thought returned—not insistently, not painfully—but gently, like something that might be acknowledged and then set aside.
Perhaps this would be enough. Perhaps this—this role, this place within the life of her sister’s child—would be what she was meant to have.
She would not be alone, nor without affection. She would be needed. The shape of her life would be different. But it would not be empty.
Thomas shifted again, pulling back to look at her once more. “Down,” he declared.
Elizabeth laughed softly. “You are finished with me already?”
He nodded.
She adjusted her hold and rose gingerly, setting him upon his feet. He wobbled for a moment, then steadied himself with surprising determination.
“Not running,” she said.
He looked at her.
Then—very deliberately—took one cautious step. Elizabeth smiled.
“Very good.”
