“Some days I wake up, and I think I can do it. I think I can get him fed and dressed and keep the flat clean and maybe even go outside for an hour if the weather isn’t too bad, and I make all these little plans in my head like a normal person, and then I’m just...” She shakes her head. “I’m not moving. I’m standing in the kitchen staring at the cupboard, and twenty minutes have gone by.” I saynothing; her eyes stay on the table. “I don’t always know what day it is,” she says. “Or I do know, and it still feels wrong somehow, like I’ve missed one. I keep thinking I hear him crying when he isn’t. I hear him from the other room, I run in, and he’s asleep, then I feel stupid because I swear I heard him.”
She laughs then, letting out a short, miserable breath. “Yesterday I checked the cot four times in ten minutes because I was sure something had happened to him. There wasn’t any reason for it. My head just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
I lean back in the chair, careful not to react too hard, because I get the sense she’ll stop if she thinks I’m shocked. “Niko knows this much?” I ask, she hesitates, which tells me enough. “How much does he know?”
“He knows I’ve been having a hard time.”
“Cassie—”
“He knows some of it.” She rubs at one eye with the heel of her hand. “He knows I’m not sleeping properly, and I get overwhelmed. When he comes home, I panic when he has to leave.”
“How bad?”
Her laugh this time is flat. “Bad enough that I count how long he’s been gone. If he’s later than he says he’s going to be, I start thinking something’s happened.”
“Has anything happened here?” I ask, looking at the front door without meaning to.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, anything... unusual.”
“I took the baby out two days ago and ended up three streets over because I thought I was going the other way. I know the area. I just... I looked up and didn’t know why I was there.”
I rest my forearms on the table and look at her properly. “You can’t stay here on your own like this.”
“I’m not a bad mother,” she blurts out. There it is. The real fear under all of it.
“No one said you were,” I say firmly, holding her gaze.
“But that’s what people will think.”
“I’m people, and I don’t think that.”
“I love him,” she says, her voice shaking. “Even when I’m tired, or when I’m angry, even when I want ten minutes where nobody needs me, I love him. I know when he’s hungry, when his cry means a wet nappy and when it means wind. I know how he likes to be held when he’s fussy. I know all of that. I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“I’m trying so hard.”
“I know,” I say gently. She covers her mouth with one hand and bows her head, crying quietly, the kind of crying people do when they’ve been keeping a lid on it for too long and no longer have the strength for dignity. I get up, walk around the table, and crouch beside her so I am not towering over her.
I’m not good at this part. Niko got the easy charm. Still, I put a hand lightly between her shoulder blades and I keepit there. “You’re not failing because this is hard,” I say. “You are failing only if you pretend nothing is wrong until something worse happens, and you are not going to do that. Understand?” She nods once, crying into her hand. “Good.”
I wait until her breathing evens out a little before I move back to my chair.
“Niko told me that you said no to the flat. It’s family housing attached to base,” I say. “Not on the main barracks.”
She stares at me through damp lashes. “Why are you bringing this up?”
“Because I want you there.”
Her brow furrows. “Arseny—”
“You would have people nearby. Niko can get to you faster. If something goes wrong, you are not stuck out here on your own, counting minutes and staring at the front door. There are other families, medics, transport, and people coming and going. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.”
She shakes her head immediately, which I expected. “No. I can’t just move.”
“Yes, you can.”
