Page 77 of Joker

Emma’s mouth twitches. Raven looks like she’s trying not to smile and failing just enough to make it worse for me.

I leave before the atmosphere gets any stranger than it already is. But the day doesn’t let me off easy.

By evening, the whole clubhouse has settled into the kind of warm chaos that happens when dinner’s over, nobody’s in a rush, and the kids are all starting to burn through the last of their energy before the inevitable crashes. Raven is on the couch with Lexi tucked against her side, reading one of the picture books somebody unearthed from the toy pile. The kid is fighting sleep with every ounce of stubbornness in her tiny body.

I tell myself I’m just passing through.

Then Lexi sees me. Her face lights up. “Joker!”

I pause. Because apparently I have learned nothing. “What?”

She holds up the book. “We reading.”

“That sounds like a personal choice.”

She frowns like I’m being difficult on purpose. “Come here.”

Raven makes a soft sound that might’ve been a laugh if she weren’t trying to hide it. “You don’t have to—”

I’m already moving before she finishes the sentence. I stop near the couch. “What’s the emergency?”

Lexi flips the book around and points at a page with three badly drawn farm animals. “This one ugly.”

I look at the pig in question. “Yeah. Real rough.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Understandable.”

That seems to satisfy her. She settles back against Raven and turns the page. I should go. There is no reason for me to still be standing here in the middle of a children’s book review session.

Then Lexi’s head starts to droop. Once. Twice. By the third time she’s fighting it so hard she’s blinking with her whole face, Raven reaches to smooth her hair back. “Come on, baby. Bed.”

Lexi makes a sad little sound of protest and, before either of us can react, reaches one hand toward me instead of her mother. “Carry.”

The word lands somewhere low and mean in my chest.

Raven goes very still.

I do too.

Then Raven, because she’s a better parent than I would be, says gently, “You want Mama?”

Lexi shakes her head once, already half-asleep. “Joker.”

And there it is.

The thing I have been willfully ignoring since the truck.

She’s attaching. Not huge. Not all at once. Just enough.

Enough to ask where I am when I leave a room. Enough to hand me broken toys and sticky drawings and impossible questions. Enough to reach for me when she’s tired. Enough that something in me responds every damn time.

I bend before I can think too hard about it and pick her up off the couch. She folds into me instantly, warm and heavy with sleep, Bunny trapped between us, face tucked against my shoulder.

That gets me again too. The weight of a sleepy child in my arms shouldn’t feel this familiar. Shouldn’t trip over memory this hard.

My little sister used to fall asleep on me in front of the TV if I stayed still long enough. Tiny body, warm cheek, total trust. Like big brothers were walls and the world couldn’t touch her if she was tucked in close enough.