25. Nora
NORA
Harper wakes us at six-fourteen on Christmas morning.
Not crying. Babbling. The specific babbling she does when she's awake and content and waiting for someone to come get her, the sound that comes through the monitor like a tiny, cheerful summons.
I'm already awake. I've been awake since five, lying in my bed in the dim gray before dawn, listening to the house, thinking about the present for Tyler I tucked behind the tree last night.
I get up eventually and pull on the cardigan I keep on the chair before opening my door.
Tyler's bedroom door opens at the same time as mine.
He's in soft pants and a t-shirt, his hair doing something terrible, and his eyes still half-closed. He looks at me. I look at him. Harper babbles again from the next room. Neither of us moves for a second.
"Merry Christmas," he says. His voice is rough with sleep.
"Merry Christmas."
He smiles, slow and sleepy. “Let’s go give her the best Christmas ever.”
"Yeah." I smile back. “Let’s go.”
He goes to her first. I follow. Harper sees him and lights up the way she always does, her whole face transforming, both arms shooting up over her head in the universal demand for now. He scoops her out of the crib, and she immediately tries to put a fistful of his hair in her mouth.
"Happy first Christmas, baby girl," he says into her hair. "You have no idea what's about to happen to you."
Downstairs, the tree is the only light on in the room.
He turned the lamps off last night before bed and left just the tree lit, and I didn't notice until now. Soft white lights, the ornaments catching them, the Baby's First Christmas one front and center with Harper's photo inside. The room is warm in a way the house has never quite been before.
Tyler settles on the rug with Harper in his lap. I make coffee, two mugs, the way we've made it every morning for months, handing him his without asking and sitting down across from him on the rug.
Harper’s eyes are huge. She’s looking at the tree with the focused seriousness of someone who has just discovered that the world contains lights.
“She’s still obsessed with it,” Tyler says. “I think we broke her.”
"She's processing."
"Is that a developmental thing?"
"Everything's a developmental thing at this age."
He laughs softly, so as not to startle her, tilting his head down to look at her. "What do you think, Harp? Pretty good, huh?"
She points. Her tiny, deliberate point with one whole hand. At the tree.
Tyler makes a sound I haven't heard him make before, half-laugh, half-something else. He looks up at me.
"Did you see that?"
"I saw."
"She pointed."
"She did."
"That's new. Is that new? That has to be new."
"That's new."
He's grinning at me like Harper just scored her first NHL goal. I'm grinning back. The coffee is good. The tree is on. Harper is pointing at it. This is a good moment, and I want it to last, and I'm aware that wanting things to last has, historically, not gone well for me.
I press the feeling down and drink my coffee.
Presents are at seven-thirty, after a bottle and a diaper change.
I've put Harper's gifts under the tree, mine to her—a soft cloth book with crinkly pages, a stuffed rabbit with knotted ears for her to chew on, and a set of stacking cups, small things, nothing that says I’m trying too hard.
Tyler's apparently been hiding things for weeks. There's a small mountain.
"Tyler."
"What?"
"How much of that is for her?"
"Most of it."
"She's seven months old."
"And it's her first Christmas. Are we doing this, or are we relitigating my spending?"
"Both, probably."
He grins and lifts Harper out of her bouncer and sets her on the rug with one of the smaller boxes.
She immediately goes for the bow and tries to eat it.
Tyler intercepts, handing her the actual wrapping paper, which crinkles and delights her.
The wrapping paper is the gift. We knew this, and we bought presents anyway.
It takes us forty minutes to get through Harper's pile, mostly because she keeps getting distracted by paper.
There's a play mat with hanging toys. A wooden ring stacker.
A little fabric piano that lights up when you press the keys.
A board book about a duck. Three different teething things.
A onesie that says Daddy's First Round Pick.
He bought that one specifically so he could put it on her later and take a photo to send to everyone.
She's tired by the end of it. Tyler scoops her up, carries her to the crib in the living room, and she's asleep before he walks away.
The living room is a disaster of paper and ribbon. The tree lights are still on. The coffee is gone.
"Okay," Tyler says, sitting back down on the rug across from me. "Us."
My stomach flips.
"Us?"
"You first or me first?"
"You."
Instead of reaching for a present, he reaches for me. Just his hand on mine, fingers laced, like he's making sure I'm still here.
"Before I give you this," he says. "I want to say something."
"Tyler—"
"Just let me. Please."
I nod. The knot at the base of my throat gets tighter.
"I know what this is," he says. "I know what we are.
I know we're not—we're not the thing we'd both be if it were simpler.
I'm trying to respect that. I'm trying not to push.
" His thumb moves over my knuckles. "But Red.
The thing I got you, I want you to understand, it's not—it's not me asking for anything.
I'm not asking you to wear it. I'm not asking you to make it mean something it shouldn't.
I just wanted you to have something that wasn't from a job. "
"Tyler."
"That came out wrong. I just—" He stops.
Breathes. "I wanted to give you something that was just for you.
Not because you take care of Harper. Not because of the routine, or because of anything you do.
Just because you're you, and because it's Christmas, and because if I never get to give you anything else, I want you to have this. "
He reaches behind him for the small box before handing it to me.
My hands are not entirely steady.
He wrapped it himself; I can tell by the way the corners are slightly off. There's a little tag. To Red. From T.
I unwrap it slowly. Inside is a jewelry box from a store I don't recognize. I open it.
Inside is a silver bracelet. Delicate, the chain almost invisible, with one small charm in the center. A letter. N.
Not Nora. Not Red. Just N. The smallest possible claim a thing can make on a person.
I can't speak for a second.
"I know it's not much," Tyler says quietly, watching my face. "But I thought—"
"Tyler."
"Yeah."
"Stop talking."
He stops.
I lift it out of the box. The chain pools in my palm.
It's lighter than I expected. Cool. I look at the small N, and I think about the fact that he stood in a jewelry store and chose this.
Not a necklace, which would be too much.
Not earrings, which would be too generic.
A bracelet, which I can wear without anyone asking questions, which sits under my sleeve, which says I see you without saying anything anyone else can read.
He went to a jewelry store. For me.
I can feel my eyes filling. I look down at the bracelet so he can't see.
"Help me put it on," I say. My voice is not entirely steady either.
He takes the bracelet from my palm and reaches for my wrist. His fingers are warm, careful with the clasp.
He gets it on the first try—which means he practiced—which means at some point in the last week he sat alone in his room doing the clasp on a bracelet to make sure he could do it for me on Christmas morning without fumbling.
I have to close my eyes for a second, just as his thumb brushes the small N, just once.
"There," he says, quietly.
"Tyler."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
He doesn't move. I don't either. We're both very still in the warm, tree-lit living room with Harper asleep in her crib and the wreckage of wrapping paper around us. I can feel him breathing behind me, and I'm aware of every inch of skin where his hand is touching my wrist.
"I have something for you too," I say. Because if I don't break this, I'm going to do something I can't take back.
He moves back around to his side of the rug. I get up, get the bag from where I'd tucked it behind the tree last night, and bring it back before sitting down again.
"It's nothing like—"
"Red. Whatever it is, I'm going to love it."
I hand him the bag.
He pulls out the tissue paper carefully, the way someone unwraps something they've decided to take seriously, regardless of what's inside. There are two things in the bag. He pulls out the first one.
A photo frame. Wooden, simple. Inside it is the Santa photo from the mall.
The one where we're standing on either side of Santa, Harper on his lap, both of us leaning in.
The one where I'd looked at the preview and thought, we look like a family, and felt my chest do something I didn't know what to do with.
He doesn't say anything for a moment. Just looks at it.
"Red."
"There's another thing."
He sets the photo carefully on the rug beside him. Reaches back into the bag.
It's a tiny screwdriver set. The kind you use for ceiling fans.
He looks at it, then looks at me. The corner of his mouth twitches.
"You did not."
"You keep meaning to fix that fan."
"Well, yes, and I will fix it."
"Plus, I was tired of hearing about it."
He's laughing now, properly; his whole face is doing it. He sets the screwdriver set down next to the photo frame and reaches across the rug, and I think for one second he's going to kiss me, and I think I’m going to let him.
He kisses my temple instead. Slow. Lingering. His forehead rests against my hair for a second longer than it needs to.
"Best gift I've ever gotten," he says, into my hair. "Both of them. You. The whole thing."
"It's just a screwdriver set."
"It's not just a screwdriver set."
"It really is, Ty."
"You bought it because you live here. You bought it because the fan annoys you. You bought it because you've decided this is a place you're going to be in long enough for the fan to be a problem worth solving." He pulls back enough to look at me. "It's not just a screwdriver set, Red."
I don’t have a response for that.
"Okay," he says quietly. "Okay."
He moves away, just slightly, just enough. The space between us is back to where the space between us is supposed to be. The bracelet is on my wrist. The screwdriver set is on the rug. Harper is still asleep.
The tree lights are still on.
It’s perfect.
We make breakfast together at nine. Pancakes, because Tyler decided Harper's first Christmas needed pancakes even though she can't eat them, and there's bacon, and the kitchen smells like Christmas mornings I haven't had since I was twenty-three years old.
I don't think about that. I don't let myself think about that.
I think about the bracelet instead, the way the chain sits against my pulse, the small N, and the fact that he stood in a jewelry store and chose the smallest, quietest, most private claim a thing could make.
Tyler is making pancakes one-handed because Harper is on his hip. He’s telling her the entire history of pancakes as if she’s taking notes. I’m pouring orange juice into two glasses and wearing a silver bracelet a man bought me because I’m… me.
This is what people mean. When they say home, this is it.
And I'm going to lose it.
The thought arrives uninvited, the way worst thoughts do.
I’m going to lose this. Not maybe. Not eventually. Definitely.
Because nothing lasts. Because nothing has ever lasted. The last time I let myself stand in a kitchen and feel like this was at my aunt’s barbecue. My mom laughed at something my dad said. Someone took a photo.
Three hours later, we were on a bridge, and the railing was coming up too fast—
"Red?"
Tyler is looking at me. The pancake is going to burn.
"Flip it," I say. My voice sounds normal.
He flips it.
I drink the orange juice, and the bracelet catches the kitchen light when I lift the glass.
I am going to lose it. Maybe not today. Maybe not in a month. But all of this—the pancakes, the man, the baby, the small silver letter on my wrist—is borrowed time, and I know it.
I’m enjoying it anyway.
By the time Harper’s down for the night, the house is quiet in the way it gets after a long, good day.
Tyler insists on handling the last of the wrapping paper alone. He says I’ve done enough today; he can do this, and I don’t argue, because I need a minute.
I go up to my room, close my door, and sit on the edge of the bed.
I look down at my wrist and press my thumb against the small N, and cry.
Not because I’m sad—not exactly—but because something is happening to me that I don’t have the words for, and the only way I have to acknowledge it is to let it out where no one can see.
I cry for about three minutes, then I wipe my face, drink some water from the glass on my nightstand, and look at myself in the mirror.
I’m going to wear this bracelet every day.
I already know that. I knew it the moment he put it on me. The same way I know I’m going to take it off the day this ends, whatever this ending looks like, and put it in a box at the back of a drawer and never wear it again.
But that’s not today.
Tonight, the tree is on, Harper is asleep, and there’s a man downstairs tidying up and probably wondering if I’m coming back down. I tuck my hair behind my ears, touch the bracelet once more, and then I go downstairs to find him.
When I get back down, Tyler is sitting on the rug with the screwdriver set open on the floor in front of him, looking up at the ceiling fan.
“What are you doing?” I ask from the doorway.
“Thinking about fixing the fan.”
"Now?"
"Now."
He gets up and grabs a chair from the kitchen. He drags it under the fan, stands on it, and looks down at me.
"You can't reach," I say.
"I can reach."
"You really can't."
"I'm six-two, Red."
"It's a vaulted ceiling, Ty."
He looks up. Looks at the fan. Looks back down at me. The corner of his mouth twitches.
"Fine. We need a ladder."
"We don't have a ladder."
"Buy Buy Baby?"
"They don't sell ladders, Tyler."
"Home Depot?"
"It's Christmas Day."
"Right."
He steps off the chair. Stands in front of me. The screwdriver set is on the floor between us. The fan is still clicking.
"Next weekend," he says. "We’ll get a ladder and fix it together."
"Next weekend."
"Yeah."
"Deal."
He doesn’t move, but neither do I. The teasing is gone now, slipped out of the room while we weren’t looking, and what’s left is the two of us standing close enough that I can see his pulse at the base of his throat. His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there a beat too long.
He doesn't kiss me. I can see him deciding not to.
"Merry Christmas, Red," he says, quietly.
"Merry Christmas, Ty."
Upstairs, Harper sleeps.
Downstairs, we don't move.
The fan keeps clicking.
For now.