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She watches him with careful assessment, before eventually reaching one hand toward him in what can only be described as extremely conditional approval. Daniel crosses to us with care, already reaching for her.

“Can I?” he asks, his voice low enough that only I can hear it.

I nod, already shifting Maisie’s weight. “She likes to be facing out at the moment,” I tell him. “And she’ll fall asleep if you bounce slightly. Not too much. Just enough that she thinks she’s on a boat.”

He takes her, one hand supporting her back, the other cradling her head, and for a moment, just a moment, we are what we used to be, two parents handling a transfer with ease. Then the moment breaks, and we’re back in the hallway with its collection of evidence: the twins’ coats on the hooks, the double pram folded against the wall, the framed photo of us with Maisie and Milo at two months old that I haven’t moved yet.

Daniel notices it immediately, his eyes landing on the photo.

“You kept it,” he says, the words coming out slightly uneven.

“It’s a good photo,” I tell him simply.

It is. The four of us, sitting on the living room floor with the twins balanced carefully on our laps. Daniel’s arm around my shoulders, my head tilted slightly toward his, both of us looking at the camera with the exhaustion that comes with new parenthood. We look happy. Tired, obviously, but happy in a way that feels genuine. A kind of happiness that happens when you’re too exhausted to pretend.

“They look like you,” Daniel says, already turning back toward the door. “Especially Maisie. She has your eyes.”

“Everyone says that,” I tell him. “Though Luca insists she has his ‘emotional intensity’ and Liv says she has her ‘resting existential crisis face.’”

He laughs, and something complicated moves through my chest, not quite nostalgia, just an ache that comes from watching someone become a stranger right in front of you.

Before he leaves, Daniel pauses with Milo on his hip and Maisie on the other. “I’m glad you got the house,” he says, the words coming out slightly uneven.

I look at him, surprised. “What?”

He shrugs slightly, already adjusting Maisie’s position against his chest. “You made it a home,” he says simply. “I just lived in it.”

Then he goes, the door closing softly behind him, and the silence that follows is enormous, not hostile or grief-stricken, just a strange stillness of a house that has never been this empty before. No Milo launching dramatic monologues. No Maisie watching the proceedings with the careful assessment that makes me wonder if she’s actually forty-seven. Just quiet, complete in a way that feels almost physical.

I walk through each room slowly, trailing one hand along the wall for balance. The kitchen with the plant on the windowsill I put there myself, a small cactus that Daniel once called “difficult to kill” with the warmth that appears when he’s amused. The living room with the artwork above the fireplace, an abstract print in blues and greens that Daniel once called “a bit much” but hung anyway because I loved it. The nursery with both cots made up and waiting, the mobile above Milo’s bed still turning slightly in the draft from the vent.

I don’t cry or break down. I just sit quietly. Just the house, and me in it, and the realization that it is mine now in a way it never quite was before.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out without looking, already knowing it’s Luca based on the rhythm of the vibration.

“Get dressed,” the message reads. “We’re throwing you a legally blonde emotional support party.”

I laugh, the sound bright in the quiet house, and type back: “I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t make it weird.”

His response is immediate: “I make no promises except excellent champagne and at least one speech that will make you want to die of second-hand embarrassment.”

I set the phone down on the counter and stand in the centre of the kitchen, taking in the house with my full attention. The divorce is final. The house is mine. The twins are with their father for the night. And somehow, against all odds, I’m still standing.

Page & Grounds after closing looks like Luca has been given unsupervised access to some fairy light store that I wasn’t aware of. Strings of warm lights loop along the bookshelves. Takeaway containers cover the big central table, spring rolls and dumplings and the garlic bread that makes your entire house smell like an Italian restaurant for three days. Cheap champagne waits in mismatched glasses, a bottle already half-empty beside the register. A handwritten sign on the chalkboard reads “SURVIVAL PARTY (dress code: alive)” in Luca’s most swooping script, the letters slightly smudged at the edges as if he wrote it while moving.

I stand in the doorway for a moment, taking in the transformation. The café has always been beautiful, all our mismatched furniture and overflowing bookshelves give off the feel of lived-in comfort that makes it feel like someone’s actual home, but there’s something about the warm lights and the quiet music and the complete absence of customers that makes it feel like it’s entirely ours tonight. Just us. No one is watching. Just the ordinary miracle of people who chose each other through everything.

“You’re late,” Luca announces, already crossing the room with a champagne flute. “I’ve been preparing for this toast since approximately 4 o’clock, and the artistic integrity is suffering.”

“Sorry,” I tell him, already accepting the glass. “I had to change twice because I forgot what clothes without visible stains looked like.”

He nods with seriousness. “Valid,” he says. “The structural collapse of your wardrobe is a direct result of systemic oppression. Probably the patriarchy. Or capitalism. Possibly both.”

From her position at the table, Harper raises her glass. “To Elsie,” she says, her voice carrying the warmth that appears when she’s genuinely pleased. “Who is officially, legally, and completely free of the man who did not deserve her.”

We drink, Harper, like someone who’s been waiting for this moment, Luca with an elaborate gesture that involves at least three separate arm movements, and me, like someone who’s still not entirely sure this is happening. The champagne is better than expected, crisp and slightly sweet, and I take another careful sip while Luca launches into what appears to be a complete recounting of everything that’s happened since that Sunday morning all those months ago.

“…and then,” he continues, his voice rising slightly with each word, “she tells Diane Quinn, to her face, in front of the entire family, that her son has been messaging other women while his children were in the NICU. And Diane’s face…“ He makes a complicated expression that somehow contains at least seven distinct emotional states. “It was like watching someone realize they’d accidentally raised an actual demon.”