What if she laughs?
What if she cries?
What ifI breakand we lose this fragile almost-peace we’ve built from the scraps of bad timing and worse choices?
So I don’t ask.
Instead, I do other things.
I change the air filters.
I adjust the baby monitor to fix the pitch delay that’s been screwing with the alerts.
I take out the trash without being asked. Which apparently earns me a weird look and a muttered “thanks” like it’s never happened before.
I read to Caelix before bed.
He likes this one book. Something about a space mammoth who forgets everything except how to love. The story’s dumb. But he laughs every time I make the trumpet noise.
Alaina stands in the doorway some nights, arms crossed, biting her lip to hide a smile.
“Your voice is too low,” she says once. “You’re going to ruin the mammoth for him.”
“He loves it.”
“He laughs because it’s absurd.”
“Good. Life’s absurd. He’s ahead of the curve.”
She laughs then.
And I damn near lose it.
Because I haven’t heard herlaughlike that since?—
Since before the lie.
Since before I became a ghost in my own life.
One night,after Caelix’s down and the lights are low, she pours two glasses of synthwine and offers one without a word.
We sit on the couch, too close for casual, too far for honest.
She sips.
I don’t.
“You ever think,” she says, quietly, “about leaving again?”
I shake my head. “Not since you told me to come home.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She turns her glass slowly. “You don’t ask much, do you?”
“I ask about work.”
