Chapter 6
Lauren didn't put the grocery bags down right away. She stood with them hooked over her wrists, looking at me holding Sophie, and I realized she was waiting to see if I would let go.
I didn't. Sophie had her head on my shoulder and her legs locked around my hips, and that light patterned blanket was trailing from her foot. Lauren nodded once, like that settled something, and carried the bags past us toward the kitchen.
"Bedtime," she said over her shoulder. "Come on, bug. You've been up way past."
Sophie lifted her head. "Daddy do it?"
Lauren looked at me. I felt the question underneath it.
"Together," I said. "We can do it together."
Sophie's room was the same but not the same. The walls were still that pale gray Lauren and I had picked before I left, but the crib was gone and there was a low toddler bed with rail bumpers, and a little plastic kitchen set in the corner I didn't recognize. The blanket from the doorway was supposed to be on this bed. I knew that now. Sophie squirmed to get down and I set her on the rug. She immediately dragged the blanket to the bed and climbed in.
Lauren moved on autopilot. She pulled the curtains closed, turned on the small lamp on the dresser, got the toothbrush. I stood there feeling too big for the room in my uniform.
"Can you get her water?" Lauren asked me quietly. "Little pink cup in the bathroom."
I found it on the sink, rinsed it, filled it halfway. When I came back Sophie was already in bed with the blanket pulled to her chin, watching us both.
Lauren sat on one side of the bed and I sat on the other, my knees up because there wasn't space. Sophie looked from her mom to me like she was checking we were both still there.
"You want your song?" Lauren asked.
Sophie shook her head. Her eyes were on me. "Daddy stay?"
My throat did something I had to breathe through. I put my hand on the blanket near her shoulder, not quite touching her, giving her room to decide.
"I'm here," I said. "I'm not going anywhere tonight."
She reached out and her small hand found two fingers of mine and held them. She didn't ask again. Lauren started humming under her breath, that same off-key lullaby she'd hummed when Sophie was a newborn and wouldn't sleep unless someone was holding her. I didn't sing. I just sat there and let Sophie hold my fingers and watched her eyelids get heavy.
It took twenty minutes. She'd open her eyes every few minutes to check, and each time she'd squeeze my fingers before letting go again. The last time her hand relaxed and slipped off. Her breathing evened out.
Lauren and I stayed another minute, neither of us moving. Then she stood carefully, tucked the blanket around Sophie's shoulders, and motioned toward the door. I followed her out. She pulled the door until it was open just a crack, the way we'd always done.
In the kitchen, the grocery bags were still on the counter where she'd left them. She started unpacking them quickly, putting milk in the fridge, bread on the counter. I leaned against the table and watched her hands move.
"You lost your job," I said. It wasn't a question. I'd seen the letter on the fridge when I came in, half-covered by a magnet, with the county school district letterhead.
She stopped with her hand on a carton of eggs. "They cut the aide positions in October. Right after they told you about the extension."
I remembered that call. Two minutes on a bad connection at the base, her voice thin, me saying it would just be a few more weeks.
"I didn't want to tell you over the phone," she said. "You had enough on your plate over there."
"So you covered everything."
"I tried." She closed the fridge and faced me. She looked tired in a way I hadn't seen before, even in the warm kitchen light. "Mortgage is current. Barely. But Sophie's preschool paperwork for next year is due Friday and they need proof of address and income. And the county sent that pre-K eligibility thing. And my mom called."
I waited.
"She offered us her place," Lauren said. Her voice was even, like she'd rehearsed it. "Not forever. Just until we get steady again. She has the back room made up for Sophie, and the elementary school is right there. She'd watch Sophie while I find something else. It's forty minutes from here. Forty-three if you hit the light on 29."
Forty minutes. I did the math without meaning to. Forty minutes from this house, from the siding and the doorway and the duffel I still hadn't moved from the entry.
"She said we need to decide by Sunday," Lauren said. "End of the week. She has someone else who wants the room if we don't take it, and the school needs the address."
I looked at the table between us. There were two chairs pulled out, bills in a stack, a county envelope with Sophie's name on it in block letters.
"We don't have to decide tonight," she said, but it sounded like she wanted me to say something definitive.
I thought about Sophie's fingers around mine, the blanket tucked around her, the duffel by the wall. I thought about saying we should stay, or saying we should go, and how either one would be a lie right then because I didn't know what staying would cost her.
"I don't want to move her again," I said finally. "Not this week. Not while she's still figuring out I'm back."
Lauren nodded, but her eyes stayed on the paperwork.
May you like
"We'll figure it out," I said. "We have until Sunday."
She didn't answer right away. She pulled out a chair and sat down, and after a second I sat across from her. The kitchen was quiet except for the fridge humming. Down the hall, Sophie breathed in her sleep behind that cracked door, her blanket around her, and we sat at the table with the bills between us and the decision hanging there until Sunday, neither of us reaching to unpack anything else.
