“I am,” she calls back, which in her world means within ten feet instead of right next to me.
Close enough, for now.
The porch feels different at night, quieter, the wood still holding heat from the day but the air shifting cooler around it, carrying the kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty so much as watchful.
Hadley runs into Jace's arms.
He welcomes us and just steps back to let us into his new home, his eyes moving over me first, then Hadley, then back again like he’s checking something he already knows the answer to.
“We’re good,” I say, because I know what he’s asking without him having to.
His gaze lingers a second longer before he nods. “Alright.”
Hadley slips past both of us, already halfway into the house again, her voice echoing down the hall as she calls out something about the big room and the windows.
I step inside slower.
The space opens up around me the second I cross the threshold, the big room stretching out with wide floors. The stone fireplace anchoring one wall. The kitchen off to the side with a long island that looks like it was built for more than one person to lean against at the end of the day.
The space feels different now that it’s finished, less like a project and more like something real, something meant to be lived in instead of built.
That should make it easier, but it doesn’t, it makes it feel like a very hard decision. I can see us living here. I just don't want to get ahead of myself.
“You can take the room on the left,” Jace says, his voice low, steady, like he’s keeping everything calm on purpose. “It’s closest to mine.”
I glance at him.
“Convenient,” I say.
“Intentional,” he answers.
There’s no edge in it.
That should irritate me.
It doesn’t.
It settles something instead, and I don’t like how easily that happens.
“I’ll take it,” I say, because arguing about it would be pointless, and because some part of me already decided that before I walked in.
Hadley comes running back then, grabbing my hand and tugging me down the hall. “Mom, you have to see this, there’s a window that looks all the way outside and—”
“I’m coming,” I say, letting her pull me with her.
The room is simple, clean, finished but not filled yet, the bed set up, dresser against the wall, everything in place without feeling lived in.
It feels like a fresh start or a temporary stop, and I haven’t decided which one this is yet.
Hadley climbs up onto the bed without hesitation, bouncing once before settling cross-legged in the middle like she’s already claimed it.
“I like it,” she says.
Of course she does.
Kids don’t see complication.
They see space and light and something new.
