Page 79 of The Last Five Yards

Just quiet.

She shifts under the blankets and listens to the house settling around her. The faint hum of the heater. The muted winter light presses at the edges of the curtains. Somewhere down the hall, Rowan’s fan whirs its constant little drone, the same one she has insisted on since she was nine.

Reese smiles to herself. She still has time before she needs to get them moving, but her body is awake, steady, calm. Maren always teased that she’d become a morning person eventually. Reese used to swear there wasn’t a chance in the world.

But here she is. Up first.

She slips out of bed quietly. Maren barely stirs, just rolls toward the warm spot Reese leaves behind. Reese takes a moment to look at her, at the soft fall of her hair across the pillow, at the faint crease in her cheek from the blanket. Her wedding ring glints in the dim light.

Reese pads down the hall and into the kitchen. The early light through the window hits the far counter, illuminating the mug waiting beside the coffee maker. Maren’s mug. The white ceramic one with her name written in a looping script across the side and the tiny heart next to it—the one Rowan made her for Christmas three years ago at one of those paint-your-own pottery places.

Maren insists it is the only mug she can drink from.

Reese reaches for it first, setting it gently under the machine, before grabbing her own. She moves with a rhythm she never used to have in the mornings, like her body learned this routine without asking permission.

The first cup drips steadily into Maren’s mug, steam curling upward. Reese rests her hands on the counter, letting the warmth bloom across her skin.

It’s going to be a big day. Rowan’s first high school swim meet.

But the house is still quiet right now.

She likes it this way.

Reese lets the coffee finish brewing and turns to lean against the counter. The kitchen looks different than it did five years ago, but in a way that makes her chest warm. Not dramatic changes. Just small ones. The kind that happens when people settle into life instead of passing through it.

The cork-board is on the wall now, covered in overlapping schedules. Maren’s neat handwriting fills most of the pages with meet lineups, practice plans, morning dry land checklists, and one sheet titled “Holiday Swim Clinic” with doodled stars around the edges. Reese’s scrawled notes sit between them, reminders about school events or Rowan’s orthodontist appointments. At the very corner, she can see an aged, curled page peeking out, covered in glitter. The ‘V’ from Rowan’s ‘Victory Picnic’ all those years ago. The sight makes her heart smile every time she notices it.

A magnet on the fridge holds up a photo of the three of them at Rowan’s last age group state meet. Reese has sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, Maren’s hair is wind-tangled, and Rowan is grinning with her medal between her teeth. Reese still doesn’t know who took that picture, but she never took it down.

On the table sits Rowan’s meet bag, half open, spilling evidence of her life across the wood. A pair of goggles, three mismatched hair ties, a crumpled granola bar wrapper she will swear she didn’t eat, and a deck of index cards she uses to memorize her warm-up routine. Her high school sweatshirt is draped over the back of the chair like it sleeps there.

Reese walks past it to the living room, mug in hand. The space is dim, the curtains are still drawn. A stack of blankets is piled on the couch. Maren will never watch a movie without at least two of them. Reese smiles at that. She used to tease her about it. Now she folds them neatly when she turns the TV off at night, because it feels right to leave them how Maren likes them.

Near the entryway sits Maren’s coaching backpack, already packed and zipped, the team logo bright against the navy fabric. Of course she had it ready last night. Of course, Reese still hasn’t checked if Rowan packed her own gear.

Reese sips her coffee and looks around the quiet house.

It isn’t the house itself that feels different.

It’s the life inside of it.

The settled feeling of it.

The belonging.

Reese never used to understand how people built something steady without losing pieces of themselves in the process. But here, in the soft stillness of her morning, she feels it press warm and certain against her soul.

This is theirs.

All of it.

Reese moves toward the hallway, sipping slowly, letting herself enjoy the moment before the house wakes up all the way. On the wall beside the entryway is a framed collage Rowan made last year for a school project titled “What Makes Me, Me.”

Reese pauses the way she always does.

There’s a photo of Rowan mid-breakout, dolphin kick long and powerful, not just enthusiastic anymore. A snapshot of her and Maren laughing on the pool deck during summer training. A cut-out of a diving platform, still part of her, even if she chose the water differently. A corner filled with her team’s colors in marker streaks. And in the center, a sentence in Rowan’s handwriting:

“I am strong when I love things.”