Page 68 of Single Pucking Orc

She knew this because Brogan had said so, on arriving, in four words—”Twenty minutes. I ate”—and had then stayed for the better part of an hour. He’d spent most of it in the armchair in the corner, with Charlie asleep against his chest, one small fist buried in the heavy silver-shot beard, and his back half-turned to the room so that no one could see his face. No one even mentioned it, because it was Brogan.

He handed her over now, transferring her sleeping weight to Rognar like something breakable and expensive. He collected his coat, and then he stopped at the door.

He looked at Rognar for a moment. Then he looked at the wreckage of the room behind him—the glasses on the mantel, the jersey drying over a chair, the baby, and the woman. The life that had not existed eight weeks ago.

“You were always like this,” Brogan said. “Nobody looked.”

Seven words, and then he was out the door and gone. Rognar stood holding his daughter with his mouth slightly open and watched him go. She watched him try to find a joke and fail, which meant that Brogan’s words mattered to him.

“He likes babies,” he said finally, to the closed door.

“He does not like babies. He’s extremely clear about that.”

“He held her for an hour.”

“He’d tell you that it was a hostage situation.” She took the empty glasses off the mantel because her hands wanted something to do. “You should sit down before you fall down. You’ve been vibrating since George’s office.”

“I don’t vibrate.”

“You’ve been vibrating like the second dryer at the laundromat. The one with the note on it.”

The last of them went. Fen went loudly, calling something back about the newsletter. Korvash went quietly, pausing only to grip Rognar’s shoulder and look at him a moment too long. It was the way a married male of seven years looks at a male who has recently been diagnosed with the same condition. Then the house was just theirs again, warm and disordered and smelling faintly of chili. Charlie went down in the crib Rognar had built in a panic eight weeks ago. The monitor was on the windowsill with the volume up. There was nothing left to clean that couldn’t wait.

Rognar was on the back step when she found him.

The two houses stood dark against the night, hers and his, eight feet of grass between them gone silver with frost. He sat on the step in the cold with his elbows on his knees. She came out with two mugs and sat close beside him, hip to hip, because the step was narrow and because she wanted to.

“You’ll freeze,” she said.

“I run hot. You’ve mentioned it. Several times. You keep records.”

“I do keep records.”

He took the mug and held it. He didn’t drink it, just stared down into it for a long moment.

“Nora,” he said.

“Rognar.”

“You’re my mate.”

He said it quietly, into the cold, looking out at the frost between the houses. It hit her with a weight even the stamp on that page hadn’t managed.

“What does that mean?” she made herself ask.

“It means permanence.” He took a breath, and she felt it, shoulder to shoulder. “It means I’m not sitting here waiting to see how it goes, or hedging, or… It’s not a human thing. My mother tried to explain it to me once when I was thirteen and I wasn’t listening. In human words it means I’m done. It means you’re it. It’s a promise, and I won’t take it back. I’ve known since the truck outside George’s office last week, or at least that’s when I admitted it. I haven’t told you because you needed to be able to leave.”

“You took me off Deb’s schedule,” she said slowly. “The emergency contact.”

“I did.”

“That was you making sure I could leave.”

“That was me making sure that if you stayed, it was because you wanted to stay. Not because there was a schedule with your name on it and nobody else to call.” He started to take a sip but his hands were shaking, and he carefully placed the mug on the ground. “Worst two weeks of my life. I’d fixed your porch light. I knew the state of your tires. I wanted to… There’s something inside me that just wants to close a hand around you, to make you safe, and make you provided for, and make it so you couldn’t go if you tried. And that’s exactly what you’ve spent your whole life being on the wrong end of. So I sat on my hands and I un-obliged you and I waited.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re still here.”