Another long stretch of silence, the kind that would have driven me crazy in another life. I let it stretch.
After a while, he said, “What now?”
I said, “Now we eat something, and then we sleep.”
He made a face, a real one—skeptical, but not dismissive. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I said.
He stared at the table, then at me, then at the baby. The skin under his eyes was bruised with exhaustion, and there were four little half-moon cuts on the back of his hand where his nails had dug in too hard and left a record.
“You want the legal rundown or the plain version?” I asked.
“Plain,” he said.
I leaned back. “Eleanor made her move. It failed. She doesn’t have any legal standing. The county won’t let her file unless she brings you into court personally, and even then, the best she can hope for is a hearing. You’re not a ward anymore. The marriage is solid. The baby is ours, nobody else’s. Even if she got a judge to listen, it wouldn’t matter. There’s nothing left for her to do except spin her wheels and pray you slip.”
His face twitched, not quite a smile. “She’s good at spinning wheels.”
“So are we,” I said.
He nodded, eyes wet but clear. “Thank you.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable with gratitude. “You did most of the work. All I did was stand on a porch.”
His gaze landed on me, direct. “You didn’t blink. She hates that.”
I huffed. “I used to get paid to out-wait people. She’s just the first one to ever bring a folder full of legalese.”
He laughed, soft and quick, then ducked his head. For a second, it looked like the weight might break him, but then he straightened his spine, squared his shoulders, and was himself again.
I looked at the baby, at the little foot poking out from the end of the blanket. “How’s he doing?”
“Same as before,” he said, voice softer. “He hates bottles now. He keeps looking for something that isn’t there.”
“He’ll figure it out,” I said.
He nodded, then looked up at me. “I don’t know how to stop waiting for the next bad thing,” he said, the words so quiet I almost missed them.
I didn’t pretend to have an answer. I just said, “You don’t stop. But you get help running the numbers. From now on, you don’t have to do the math alone.”
He let that land, then looked at the baby, who had started to stir, eyelids fluttering.
“We’ll be okay,” I said.
He nodded, and for the first time since all this started, I saw something relax in the line of his jaw.
“Okay,” he said.
Just that.
“Stay.”
His guarded eyes met mine, then softened. “I’ll stay.”
We didn’t talk after that. I made eggs and toast, and he ate them both without complaint, even though the eggs were too dry and the toast burned on one side. The baby woke, fussed, then settled again once Liam tucked him tight into the crook of his elbow.
After an hour, the three of us sat at the kitchen table in the kind of comfortable silence that is only possible after a fight is over and neither side has won or lost, only endured.
