“Uncle Seth, can we catch fireflies after my show?”
He looked down at the tiny person who had no idea she was reordering the furniture in two adult hearts. “We can try.”
We stepped outside when the sky went navy and the first pinpricks of light appeared in the grass. The air smelled like cut lawn and warm dirt and the faint sweetness of the basil I had snipped. Olive shrieked when a firefly drifted near her hands. She cupped it and squealed when it blinked, then opened her palms so it could float away.
Seth stood beside me with his hands in his pockets. I could feel the tiredness in him, but not the kind that pulled a person down. The kind that comes after a day of doing something that matters. He watched Olive run a lopsided path between the porch steps and the edge of the lawn. His mouth was soft. It was not a look that matched the rumors about him, the ones that said he was made of stone and schedules.
“You were good with her today,” I said before caution could catch up to my tongue. “At the shop. You didn’t correct her when she called you uncle.”
He took a breath, then let it out slowly. “I didn’t want to take something away that made her feel safe.”
I had not expected that answer. It landed clean and heavy in the center of me. “Thank you,” I said again, quieter this time.
“You say that like it is hard,” he said, not unkindly.
“Maybe I am out of practice.”
He looked at me for a long second. “You have been busy surviving.”
There it was. Not pity. Not judgment. Just a simple read of my life. I wanted to argue. I also wanted to sit down on the steps and tell him how many nights I had measured our safety by how quickly I could get to Olive’s bed from the kitchen if the smoke detector went off. I wanted to say that single mothers do not often get a chance to relax. We are always on high alert. The words stayed put. It was not time for them yet.
Olive caught another firefly, then ran back to us with her hands cupped like she was holding treasure. “Make a wish,” she whispered, and squeezed her eyes shut. “I wish our house was all better.”
Seth cleared his throat and looked out at the dark yard. I watched his hand curl and uncurl once at his side, like he needed to put it somewhere and could not decide where it belonged. “We will make it better,” he said. He did not add anything else.He just said it, and the certainty lit something warm beneath my ribs.
Bedtime stretched late. Olive needed three stories, a glass of water, and her blanket turned the other way because the corners were not right. By the time I tucked her in for the final time, the house had settled into that soft quiet that only comes when a child finally goes to sleep.
I found Seth at the island again, flipping through a thin folder. He had printed photos of my roof and annotated them in sharp lettering that made his notes look like a blueprint. He had put sticky flags where the water tracked down interior walls. He had drafted a timeline of the next forty-eight hours of work with boxes to check.
“You do not need me for the meeting,” I said, coming around to stand beside him. “But I will be there.”
“I want you there,” he said. His voice had lost the hard edges it had earlier in town. “You should be the one asking the questions. I know what I want done. You know what Olive needs.”
A quiet bloomed between us. It did not feel like a cliff anymore. It felt like a footbridge that might hold.
He closed the folder and rested his fingers on the cover. “Make a list of anything you miss. The small things. The stupid ones. Nightlight bulbs. Extra towels. The color crayons she likes. Leave it on the counter.”
“I do not want to be a problem you have to solve,” I said.
His eyes lifted. “You are not a problem. You are a person who had a tree come through her roof.”
“Same thing lately.”
“Not to me.”
The room shifted then, almost imperceptibly. He was not teasing me. He was not trying to win. He was just standing in my kitchen, tired and steady, telling me the thing I had not known I needed to hear.
It shouldn’t have sounded like anything more than an observation, but something about the way he said it, soft, rough at the edges, made my pulse stumble. He was close enough now that I could smell sawdust and soap, that clean mix that had started to feel like comfort and danger all at once.
He looked down at me then, really intensely. Not the polite glance he used to give, but something steady, searching. The air shifted.
I swallowed hard. “Seth…”
“Yeah?”
“I—” I didn’t finish, because words weren’t what mattered anymore. The moment stretched between us, taut and fragile. Every heartbeat felt like a choice. His hand brushed mine where it rested on the counter, a fleeting touch, light as air. My breath caught, and I hated that he could hear it.
He didn’t move closer, but he didn’t pull away either. Just held my gaze like he was daring me to decide what happened next.
