I let him have it. He looked at me again—the top, the mascara, the fact that I'd clearly tried—and whatever he was keeping to himself stayed there, warm behind his eyes.
"Ready?" he said.
I picked up Nova in the carrier. He took it from my hand without being asked, his fingers replacing mine on the handle, and we left.
The Rhodes house was small. Two stories, white siding, a porch with a railing that needed paint. The late-afternoon sun was coming sideways through the trees on Cedar Lane, throwing long shadows across the lawn, and the front door was already open before Duke cut the engine.
Diane was on the porch. Apron still on, hands wiping on a dish towel. "Audrey, honey, finally."
The “finally” was warm. A woman who had been wanting me in her house for two months and waited for me to be ready.
She hugged me first, her arms going around my shoulders, firm and brief. She smelled like vanilla and something savory. Then she reached for the carrier, held Nova against her shoulder with the ease of a woman who'd done this three times, and hugged Duke last. The order mattered. I clocked it.
Inside, the house hit me in layers. The roast, heavy and warm from a kitchen that had been going since the afternoon. A football game on the television nobody was watching. A radio in the kitchen tuned to a different station nobody was listening to. Ray Rhodes in his armchair with the Sunday paper on his knee, narrating the game to no one.
"Defense was bad on that one." Nobody responded. Nobody was supposed to.
Reese was already in the kitchen with a wineglass in each hand. She held one out to me before I'd said hello. "I poured before you said anything. You're going to need it."
I laughed and took it.
Caroline was on the couch with Henry, who was standing at the coffee table holding himself upright with both fists on the wood, wobbling with the determined fury of a toddler who had decided that walking was a thing he was going to do today. He saw Duke and his whole face changed. He let go of the table, took three lurching steps, and grabbed Duke's leg with both hands.
Duke hoisted him. Henry went from the floor to Duke's shoulders in two seconds, his hands fisting in Duke's hair, both of them laughing. Caroline didn't try to stop it. She picked up her coffee and watched.
I watched it, too. Duke with a toddler on his shoulders looked like a father. He'd looked like one with Nova for two months. But Duke with someone else's child on his shoulders looked like something I hadn't seen before. A man whose body defaulted to this, who had been doing it with Henry for two years, long before Nova existed, because this was who he was in this house.
Diane had Nova in the kitchen before I'd finished my first sip of wine. She was sitting in the chair by the window with Nova against her shoulder, one hand on Nova's back, looking at Nova's face with an expression I recognized instantly.
Her eyes tracked from Nova's cheek to the left side of her mouth, where the dimple sat, and then her gaze lifted, just for a second, across the kitchen to Duke, whose dimple had been out since Henry grabbed his leg. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She'd been looking at her son's face for thirty-two years, and she knew exactly what she was seeing on her granddaughter's.
I watched her hold my daughter with no instruction and get it right. The hand on Nova's back in the exact position Nova slept best, palm flat between the shoulder blades, steady pressure. I hadn't told her. She just knew.
We ate at the kitchen table because there was no dining room. Six chairs around a table built for four, elbows touching, serving dishes passed hand to hand because there was nowhere to set them down. Reese poured more wine. Ray carved the roast standing up because his chair was pinned against the wall. Diane held Nova on her shoulder with one hand and served herself salad with the other. The noise was constant—three conversations at once, none of them waiting for the others to finish.
Reese dropped it midway through the first course. She set her fork down, looked at me across the table, and delivered it flat. "So you're the reason he's been buying diapers."
"I've also been buying wipes," Duke said, not missing a beat. "And a brand of formula I can't pronounce. My browser history is a nightmare."
I laughed. The real one. The full-body one that tipped my head back and took my whole chest with it. It had been gone for the entire postpartum stretch, buried under the fog and the exhaustion, and it came back in the Rhodes kitchen at a joke at my expense. Reese clocked it across the table with the satisfied look of a youngest sister who knew exactly what she'd done.
"So, Audrey." Ray leaned back in his chair with his elbows wide. "How long have you been on the L&D floor?"
"Six years."
"Six years. And how many deliveries is that, roughly? Ballpark."
"I stopped counting around three hundred."
He whistled through his teeth. "Three hundred. You missing it?"
"Every day." It came out before I'd thought about it. "It won’t be long until I’m back."
"Mhm." He pointed his fork at Duke. "She sounds like you."
My mother asked about my work because she worried I was working too much. Ray asked because he was interested in the work. The difference landed somewhere in my chest and stayed.
Caroline caught me at the counter, refilling my water glass while the table argued about pie.
