13. Harper
HARPER
Ginger’s pushing peas around her plate in the pattern she uses when she’s building up to something, arranging them into a line before scattering them again.
I’ve learned to recognize it as thinking out loud without words yet, a habit that started right after Mia died and never fully went away.
“There’s a thing at school,” she says finally, not looking up. “In three weeks. Parents come, and you bring a project, and there’s a table with your name on it.”
“Sounds important,” Viktor says.
“It is. Ms. Alvarez said it’s a big deal.” She finally looks up, straight at him, not at me. “Are you gonna come to my school thing?”
The table goes quiet for a second. I keep my eyes on my own plate, giving them the space to have this.
“When exactly is it?”
“The nineteenth. It’s a Thursday. Mrs. Bennett said Thursdays are usually good for you.”
Viktor almost smiles at that, the fact that she’s clearly done her homework on his schedule before asking. “The nineteenth works. I’ll be there.”
“Promise?”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Ginger. If I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there.”
She studies him for a long moment, the same suspicious scrutiny she gave him the first week in this house.
Four months ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Four months ago, she’d have assumed the answer was no, because that’s what the last two years taught her: that adults leave, that promises about future dates aren’t reliable currency.
Now she’s asking Viktor to commit to a Thursday three weeks out like it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll say yes.
He did say yes, immediately, without hedging.
I don’t know when I stopped bracing for this to end. I only notice it now, watching her go back to her dinner completely unbothered, that the bracing has quietly stopped.
“What’s the project going to be about?” Viktor asks her, and she launches into a full debate with herself out loud, animals versus something about space, weighing the merits of each with total seriousness while he listens like the decision genuinely matters.
“Animals are easier to draw,” she reasons, mostly to herself. “But space has more colors. Ms. Alvarez likes colors.”
“You could do both. A space animal.”
Ginger stops mid-bite, considering this with the gravity of someone who’s just been handed the answer to a much larger question. “That’s actually really good.”
“I have my moments.”
After dinner, he helps her with homework at the kitchen table while I clean up.
I catch myself watching them more than I’m watching the dishes, the way he leans in to check her math, the way she leans into him without seeming to notice she’s doing it.
It’s comfortable in a way that used to take her weeks to reach with anyone new, and it took him a fraction of that time, patience doing what nothing else could.
He doesn’t rush her through the long division the way I would, tired and half distracted most nights. He lets her get it wrong twice before she gets it right, lets her feel the satisfaction of arriving there herself instead of just handing her the answer.
I wonder, not for the first time, what he’d have been like as a father if his life had gone differently, and then I catch myself wondering it and put the thought away before it can go anywhere I’m not ready to follow it.
My own guard’s been slipping too. I notice it in small ways, the way I don’t flinch anymore when he touches my back walking past me in the kitchen.
The way I’ve stopped mentally rehearsing an exit speech I used to keep ready in case any of this fell apart, the one where I’d explain calmly to Ginger why we were leaving, why this too hadn’t lasted.
I haven’t needed that speech in weeks. I didn’t notice I’d stopped keeping it ready until just now, standing at the sink with my hands in dishwater, watching a man who was never supposed to matter this much help my niece with long division like it’s the most important thing he’ll do all week.
I think about the version of myself who walked into that club four months ago, certain this whole thing would end the exact moment the court case did, certain I’d hand back the keys and go find us a smaller apartment somewhere and never think about Viktor Markov again beyond the occasional strange story I’d tell at parties someday.
That version of me had no idea what she was actually walking into. I’m not sure I’d trade what came after for anything, even the parts that scare me, even the parts I still don’t fully understand, like whatever happened in that courtroom that Viktor still won’t fully explain.
Somewhere in the last few weeks, I stopped treating this like a temporary arrangement and started treating it like my actual life, and I’m not sure exactly when that happened, only that it did.
Ginger goes down easier than usual that night, worn out from a full day and the weight of a homework packet she took very seriously.
By the time I come back downstairs, Viktor’s on the back porch again, same spot as always, a bottle of wine open on the small table between two glasses.
“You knew I’d come down here,” I say, taking the seat beside him.
“I hoped you would.”
He pours me a glass, and we sit for a while without talking, a quiet that used to feel awkward between us and now just feels like ours.
“Thank you,” I say eventually. “For tonight. For meaning it, about the school thing.”
“I did mean it.”
“I know. That’s what surprised me.” I turn my glass slowly, watching the wine catch the porch light. “I keep waiting for you to be a man who says the right thing and doesn’t follow through. You keep not being that man.”
“Disappointing, I know.”
“Very disappointing.” I’m smiling when I say it, and he’s watching my mouth do it.
The space between us closes by inches, quiet and immediate, the way it always seems to when we run out of safe things to talk about.
“Harper.”
“Yeah?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
My breath catches somewhere in my throat.
He’s close now, closer than the conversation requires, close enough that I can see exactly how careful he’s being not to close the last few inches without me meeting him there first.
I don’t move away.
I don’t move toward him either, not yet, caught somewhere in the space between wanting to and knowing exactly what it means if I do.
Both of us stay frozen there on the porch, wine going warm in our glasses, his hand still resting at the side of my jaw like he’s waiting for permission neither of us has said out loud.
Neither of us closes the distance. It would take one inch, less, and neither of us takes it, some last thread of restraint holding on longer than either of us seems to want it to.
Viktor pulls back first, like he’s making himself do it rather than actually wanting to.
“Goodnight, Harper,” he says, voice rougher than it was a minute ago.
“Goodnight,” I manage.
Neither of us moves for another few seconds.
Eventually I go inside. He stays out on the porch a while longer, and I don’t look back to see how long, because I’m not sure I trust myself with whatever I’d do if I did.