Chapter Seventeen #3
The request hit harder than it should have. For one stupid second, I just stood there. Helena had no idea what she was offering. Some part of her had decided I belonged in the room enough to stay, and fuck, I did not know what to do with that.
Edwina saw it hit me. I caught the change in her face from the corner of my eye, that quiet understanding that made me want to resent her and lean into it at the same time.
So I crossed the room and sat on the carpet.
I felt ridiculous at once, too large for the space and surrounded by dolls, ribbons, and tiny tea things.
Helena did not care. She accepted me there with the quick logic of a child who had decided a new fact belonged. Then she placed Snowy in my lap.
I looked down at the rabbit, then back at her. “This is a serious responsibility.”
“It is,” Helena said. “She’s shy.”
“I see.”
“She doesn’t like loud people.”
Behind us, Edwina made a sound suspiciously close to amusement, and I knew without turning that she was enjoying this far too much.
“I can be quiet,” I told Helena.
She studied me for a second, then looked at Edwina. “Can he?”
Edwina pressed her lips together, badly hiding a smile. “Sometimes.”
I looked up at her. “Traitor.”
Helena giggled and reached for Snowy’s tiny coat. “Mommy knows.”
The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it. “You sound exactly like your mother.”
Helena looked pleased by that, as if being compared to Edwina was an obvious compliment.
For the next several minutes, Helena instructed me in the politics of her dolls with the seriousness of a tiny dictator.She told me which ones were nice, which ones were “not behaving,” which ones had to share tea even when they did not want to, and why Snowy deserved special treatment because she was new and had “come from outside.” I listened harder than I had listened to most grown adults in years.
I nodded when required, answered when summoned, and accepted corrections without arguing, because apparently my first lesson in fatherhood involved being judged by a four-year-old over imaginary tea.
Slowly, the awkwardness in me shifted. It remained there, but the edges stopped cutting quite so sharply.
By the time Helena pressed a tiny toy cup into my hand and announced that I was invited to the tea party because I was “being better than Uncle Daniel,” I nearly choked.
Behind me, Edwina coughed into her hand. I turned and found her trying very badly not to smile, which, naturally, made the darker part of me stir.
“Careful,” I said, quiet enough that Helena would not catch all of it.
Edwina met my eyes over the toy shelf. “Careful of what?”
The way she said it was too soft for her own good.
I let my gaze rest on her a moment longer than necessary. “You already know.”
Color touched her cheeks, and I knew damn well I had not imagined it.
Helena, completely uninterested in adult warfare unless it involved dolls, pushed another toy cup toward me. “No fighting.”
I looked down at her, then at the little cup in my hand, then back at Edwina.
“Your daughter is very bossy,” I said.
“Our daughter,” Edwina corrected quietly.
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then Helena clapped once, delighted by nothing except the fact that her tea party had not resumed quickly enough. “Tea.”
I stayed longer than I meant to. The room stopped feeling so foreign after a while, and Helena slowly forgot she was supposed to be cautious around me.
She began speaking as if I had always been there to answer.
Twice, she leaned against my arm without thinking, and both times I had to keep my face under control because the urge to put my hand on her back hit me so hard it almost hurt.
The second time it happened, Edwina noticed.
Our eyes met across the room while Helena arranged Snowy beside one of the dolls. Too much sat in that look to name cleanly. Gratitude, guilt, grief, and history all moved between us, along with the old hurt neither of us had figured out how to put down.
A few minutes later, Helena became distracted by the Christmas tree and ran off to show Snowy a glass ornament she had decided was “for fancy people.” Edwina came closer and stopped beside me, her voice lowered.
“She likes you.”
I kept my gaze on Helena because looking directly at Edwina while she said that might have done something stupid to me.
“She likes the gift I bought.”
Edwina was quiet for a beat. “You know that’s not all.”
That made me look at her. She stood close enough that I could have reached for her wrist if I wanted to, touched the inside of it, felt her pulse, and reminded both of us in one reckless second that the softness between us had not died.
I stayed where I was. “I don’t know what to do with that yet,” I said.
Her face changed a little. “You don’t have to know everything today.”
“No?” My voice came out darker than I meant it to. “That would be a new fucking experience.”
Pain moved through her eyes. Regret hit me at once. I left the words where they were anyway, and the silence between us carried the weight of them.
“We’re both trying,” she said.
I let out a breath without humor. “Aren’t we always?”
Her gaze dropped, then lifted again. “Hayden…”
Before she could say more, Helena turned toward us and announced, “Mommy, Uncle Hayden is good at tea.”
Edwina smiled. A real smile this time.
By evening, the city beyond the windows had gone dark, and the lights in the room glowed brighter around the tree. Helena dragged Snowy from one adventure to another while Edwina and I moved around each other with the careful unease of two people trying not to step on the same wound twice.