"Yes," Erath says.
Penny nods. She turns this over in her mind, and Erath can see her working through it, not with anguish but with a child's practical logic, fitting the information into the framework of her understanding and finding a place for it.
Then she asks, "Are you going to marry Sidney?"
Erath's mind goes blank.
It's not a large blank, he recovers quickly, but it's there, a beat of absolute silence in his head, because he was prepared for questions about death and grief and loss and he was not prepared for this. He looks at Penny and she looks back at him with the patient expectation of a child who has asked a question and is waiting for an answer and does not understand why it might be complicated.
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He closes it.
Penny doesn't seem to need an answer. She has already moved on, her attention shifting with the mercurial speed of a five-year-old who has allocated her interest in this topic and exhausted it.
"I think you should," she says, adjusting her bear's position on the pillow. "He makes good pancakes."
The logic is airtight. Erath cannot argue with it. He doesn't try.
"Can I have a story?" she asks.
Erath tells her one. It's about a fish who lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean, he's been building on this universe, apparently, because Penny has informed him that the fish from the river story moved to the ocean in the sequel, and the fish meets a starfish who is looking for a home. The fish invites the starfish to live in her cave, and the starfish says she doesn't know if she should because she's never had a home before, and the fish says that's okay because neither had she until she found the cave, and sometimes you don't know what home looks like until you're already in it.
Erath is not a natural storyteller. He delivers the narrative with the flat, measured cadence of someone reading a manual, and his character voices are nonexistent, and his plot structure is questionable at best. Penny doesn't seem to mind. She interrupts twice, once to clarify that the starfish is pink, not orange, and once to suggest that the cave should have a door,and then she falls asleep mid-sentence, her hand on Erath's wrist, her breathing going soft and deep and even.
He stays there for a long time. Kneeling on the floor beside her bed, her small fingers curled around his wrist, the nightlight casting a warm circle on the ceiling. He watches her sleep and thinks about the question she asked, are you going to marry Sidney, and he doesn't have an answer, not in the way she means it, not in the human way of rings and ceremonies and vows. But in another way, in the way that matters, the answer has been yes for longer than he'd realized.
He disentangles his wrist from Penny's grip, slowly, carefully, tucking her hand back under the blanket. He pulls the covers up to her chin and moves the bear closer to her face and stands and his knees ache from the floor but it's a good ache, the ache of kneeling beside your daughter's bed, and he carries it with him down the hallway.
Sidney is in the bathroom. The door is open, he's started leaving it open, a small change that Erath noticed and didn't comment on, because it means Sidney no longer feels the need to seal himself in, and the steam is drifting into the hallway in slow, curling wisps. Erath can see him through the doorway, submerged to his chin, his blond hair wet and slicked back from his face, his eyes closed. He looks peaceful. Not performing peace, not arranging his features into something that resembles calm, actually peaceful, in the unguarded way that only happens when Sidney forgets to hold himself together.
Erath leans against the doorframe.
Sidney's eyes open. He finds Erath without turning his head, he's been doing that lately, sensing his presence before he sees him, the conduit bond making him aware of Erath's proximity in a way that bypasses sight and sound.
"She asleep?" Sidney asks.
"Out cold. Mid-sentence."
"Classic Penny." A pause. The water shifts as Sidney adjusts. "What was tonight's story?"
"The fish found a roommate."
Sidney's mouth curves. "The starfish?"
"She's pink. Not orange. I was corrected."
"You always are." Sidney watches him for a moment. The steam moves between them and the bathroom light is warm and the water is still and Sidney looks at Erath from the bathtub with an expression that is quiet and full and unhurried.
"She asked me if I'm going to marry you," Erath says.
He says it before he can decide not to. It comes out directly, without preamble, because he has been holding it for less than an hour and it's too warm to contain. He says it and watches Sidney's face and waits.
Sidney doesn't react the way Erath expects. He doesn't stiffen, doesn't deflect, doesn't reach for a joke. His expression shifts, a flicker of surprise, then something softer, then something that Erath has seen only in glimpses and half-moments and never at full strength. Tenderness, unguarded and unashamed.
"What did you tell her?" Sidney asks.
"Nothing. She told me you make good pancakes and then asked for a story."
Sidney huffs a breath that's almost a laugh. "Sound reasoning."
