15. Ava’s Trust
AVA’S TRUST
RILEY
Ava's spoon clattered against the table hard enough to splash milk across the blue placemat.
"It's gone."
I froze beside the refrigerator, one hand wrapped around my coffee, the other still gripping the door handle. Behind me, Luca abandoned his search through the cabinets, and the kitchen fell painfully quiet.
"What's gone, sweetheart?" I asked, though I already knew.
"The jar." Ava stared at the empty square on the windowsill where her sea glass lived, arranged from pale green to deep cobalt. Her breathing turned quick and shallow. "My ocean jar is not there."
Luca crossed the room in three strides. "I'll find it."
His voice was too sharp. Not angry at her, but Ava didn't always have room to separate one kind of sharpness from another.
She pressed both palms over her ears. "It belongs there."
"I know, princesa." He yanked open the junk drawer, sending batteries and pens rattling. "Maybe Maria moved it when she cleaned."
"Maria knows the jar stays there."
Ava's voice climbed with every word. Luca's search accelerated with it. Cabinet. Drawer. Pantry. Each door slammed harder than the last.
The tension between us had been prowling through the house since before sunrise.
Luca had spent the night behind his locked bedroom door.
I'd spent it staring at my ceiling, replaying shattered glass, the bruising pressure of his hands on my hips, and the way he'd looked through me after using my body like an argument neither of us had won.
Now every clipped breath between us seemed to bounce off Ava.
I set my coffee down carefully. "Luca, slower."
His head snapped toward me. Exhaustion hollowed the skin beneath his eyes. "I said I'll fix it."
Ava shoved back from the table. The chair legs shrieked against tile.
"No!" She folded forward, fists pressed to her temples. "No fixing. Put it back."
The blender timer beeped from the counter. Ava cried out.
Luca lunged for it, knocking a metal measuring cup to the floor. The clang cracked through the kitchen, and Ava dropped beside her chair, knees pulled tight to her chest.
"Everybody stop," I said.
Luca went still, one hand braced on the counter.
I crouched several feet from Ava, keeping my body low and my voice softer than the hum of the refrigerator. "The jar is missing. Breakfast is different. The sounds are too big."
Her fingers dug into her hair.
"Yes," she gasped. "Everything is wrong."
My chest tightened because she was right.
I looked up at Luca. His face had gone stricken, as if he'd finally understood what the missing jar had exposed. Everything in this house felt wrong.
"Luca," I said again, quieter. "Get her blanket."
For half a second, he looked like he might argue. Then his shoulders dropped.
"Blue or gray?" he asked Ava.
She didn't answer.
"Blue," I chose. "The one from the sunroom."
He moved carefully this time, though urgency still pulled at every step. I stayed where I was, resisting the instinct to touch Ava before she invited it.
"The kitchen is loud," I said. "Your jar is missing. Daddy and I were using big voices."
"No big voices," she whispered.
"You're right. No big voices."
Luca returned with the navy weighted blanket folded across his forearms. He stopped beside me instead of rushing forward.
"May I put it over your shoulders, piccola?"
Ava gave one tight nod.
Together, we unfolded it without snapping the fabric. Luca lowered it over her back while I tucked the edge loosely around her knees. The familiar pressure grounded her before our words could. Her rocking slowed, though each breath still caught high in her chest.
I picked up the scallop shell she'd abandoned beside her cereal bowl and held it where she could see.
"Can you show me how the ocean breathes?"
Her eyes flicked toward it.
I traced one ridged line with my thumb. "Up the shell, we breathe in. Down the shell, we breathe out."
I inhaled slowly as my thumb climbed.
Ava's first attempt broke halfway through. "I can't."
"You don't have to do it perfectly."
Luca lowered himself onto the tile opposite us. His injured hand rested against his thigh, the cuts across his knuckles stark in the morning light.
"I'll do it with you," he said.
We breathed together. Up the shell. Down the shell.
By the fourth round, Ava's fists loosened. By the sixth, she let her forehead rest against my shoulder. I stayed still beneath the warm weight of her trust, painfully aware of Luca watching us.
"The jar was blue and green," she murmured.
"And clear," Luca added.
Ava looked at him.
He swallowed. "I remember."
The blender timer beeped again, softer now from beneath the dish towel Luca had thrown over it. Ava flinched, but she didn't fold in on herself.
"Can we turn breakfast off?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Breakfast can wait."
Luca reached over and silenced the timer with one controlled tap. Then he slid the fallen measuring cup away without letting it scrape.
In the quiet that followed, his gaze met mine over Ava's curls. Gratitude was there, but so was something rougher.
Shame. The kind that came when loving someone hadn't been enough to keep your damage from reaching them. This time, at least, he didn't hide from it.
Ava stayed wrapped in the blanket until her breathing settled into something steady.
Luca found the missing jar ten minutes later behind the coffee can, exactly where he'd moved it the night before after noticing a crack near the base. He set it back on the windowsill with both hands, then crouched beside Ava and explained why he'd taken it.
No excuses. No rushing.
She accepted the answer after inspecting the crack herself, though she made him promise they would choose a new jar together.
Once she disappeared upstairs to get dressed, the kitchen changed.
Not quieter. Heavier.
Luca remained by the table, staring at the milk drying across the placemat. I gathered the bowls because standing still felt too much like waiting for another explosion.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I carried the dishes to the sink. "For which part?"
The question tore from my throat, raw and demanding. I wouldn't, couldn't, call it back.
His jaw flexed. "All of it."
"That's not specific enough."
He nodded once, accepting the correction. "For locking my door. For shutting you out after..." His gaze dropped to my mouth before he forced it away. "After pulling you in."
Heat stirred beneath my skin, unwanted and immediate.
"For pulling you close one second and treating you like I regretted it the next," he continued. "For letting Ava feel any of it."
I turned off the faucet. "She did feel it."
"I know."
"No, Luca. I don't think you do." I faced him, gripping the edge of the counter. "She doesn't need to understand what happened between us to know the house changed. She notices every door that closes too hard. Every conversation that stops when she walks in."
His expression tightened.
"I thought distance would keep me from making it worse."
"Distance isn't the same as control."
"I know that now."
The roughness in his voice pulled at something in me, but I refused to let sympathy erase the damage. He looked toward the hallway, making sure Ava was still upstairs.
"I'm scared I'll fail her," he said. "That I'll miss something she needs because I'm too busy fighting whatever is wrong with me."
I waited.
"And I'm scared I'll fail you differently." His eyes found mine. "That I'll ask you to stay, then punish you for mattering."
The truth of it stole my next breath.
Luca rubbed his uninjured hand over his face. "Losing control with you feels dangerous. Losing you feels worse."
I wanted to believe confession counted as change. But I'd learned the hard way that people could name their damage beautifully and still hand it to you.
"I hear you," I said.
His face fell slightly. It wasn't forgiveness. But it wasn't a door closing, either.
"I don't want her living inside our moods," I said.
"I don't either."
"She's made progress because this house has felt predictable." I looked back at him. "And now there are locked doors, broken glass, and people pretending nothing happened."
"I'm not pretending."
"You were."
His eyes dropped.
I turned toward the water again. Sunlight flashed across it so brightly it hurt to look at.
"Secrecy doesn't protect her," I continued. "Neither does volatility. She doesn't need every adult detail, but she needs to know the people in this house are safe with each other."
Luca stepped beside me, leaving a careful stretch of space between our arms. "Then I'll stop hiding."
I gave him a tired look. "That sounds good."
"It's not just words."
"Right now, it is."
His mouth tightened, but he nodded. "Then tell me what behavior looks like."
The question disarmed me more than defensiveness would have.
"Calm communication. No disappearing when things get hard. No shutting me out and then dragging me close because you're angry or scared."
His gaze darkened at the memory between us.
"And no acting like affection is something shameful," I said. "Ava watches the way we move around each other. If we care about each other, she shouldn't have to guess whether that's allowed."
Luca rested both forearms on the counter. "Open affection."
"Appropriate affection."
One corner of his mouth lifted. "I know what you meant."
Heat climbed my neck despite everything.
Then his expression sobered. "I can do that. Honesty. No locked doors. No making you pay for what I'm afraid of."
"You can promise it."
"I can prove it."
The certainty in his voice pulled at the softest part of me.
I forced myself to hold his gaze. "Promises only matter when the behavior survives the next bad day."
He went still.
Then he reached for my hand slowly enough that I could refuse.
I didn't.
His fingers closed around mine, warm and careful.
"Then watch me on the bad days," he said.
Hope moved through me before I could stop it.
And that frightened me more than his anger ever had.
By the time Ava and I returned from her afternoon activities, Luca had turned the dining table into the aftermath of an office-supply-store robbery. Poster board. Markers. Three rulers, because apparently household accountability required engineering-grade precision.
"What is this?" she asked, climbing onto her chair.
"A family meeting," Luca said.
Her face tightened.
I caught it before he did. "Not a bad one."
Luca pulled out the chair beside her. "We're making rules for the house so everyone knows what happens when things feel hard."
Ava studied the blank poster board. "Rules are supposed to already exist."
"They do," I said. "We're writing them down so we remember."
That answer satisfied her enough to reach for the purple marker.
Luca uncapped a black one. "First rule: No slamming doors."
I looked at him.
He met my gaze without flinching, then wrote it in careful block letters.
Ava shook her head. "Too negative."
"What?" he asked.
"Ms. Pearson says rules should tell you what to do. Not what not to do."
I hid a smile behind my hand.
Luca sighed. "Of course she does."
"Try 'Use doors gently,'" I suggested.
Ava nodded decisively. "Better."
We divided the poster into sections using colors Ava selected herself. Blue for calm voices. Green for clear plans. Yellow for asking before changing routines. Red for emergencies only, which required a ten-minute debate about what counted as an emergency.
"Fire," Ava said.
"Definitely," I agreed.
"Blood," Luca added.
"How much blood?"
He glanced at his healing knuckles. "More than a paper cut."
She considered that, then wrote BIG BLOOD beneath the red heading.
The phrase made me laugh before I could stop myself. Luca's eyes lifted to mine, and for one suspended second, the room felt easy again.
Ava peeled a dolphin sticker from the sheet and pressed it beside DAILY CHECK-IN.
"What happens in the check-in?" she asked.
"We say how we're feeling," I told her. "And if anything is changing tomorrow."
"Even grown-ups?"
"Especially grown-ups," Luca said.
She handed him a blue dolphin. "Then you need this one."
His throat moved as he accepted it.
When the poster was finished, we taped it beside the refrigerator. Ava stood back with her hands on her hips, evaluating our work.
"It needs one more rule."
I picked up the marker. "What should it say?"
She looked from Luca to me.
"People have to tell the truth when they're sad."
The room went quiet.
Luca crouched until they were eye level. "That's a good rule, piccola."
Ava pressed the final dolphin beneath it. This time, none of us looked away.
Night settled over the house in layers. First, the kitchen lights dimmed. Then the dishwasher began its low, steady hum. By the time Ava came downstairs in pink pajamas, the balcony doors reflected more room than ocean.
She carried a sheet of construction paper against her chest.
"I made something," she announced.
Luca looked up from the counter where he was cutting strawberries for tomorrow's breakfast. I was drying the last mug beside him.
"For your room?" he asked.
"No. For here."
Ava crossed to the refrigerator and reached for a magnet shaped like a starfish. The paper slipped sideways before she caught it, and I saw the drawing.
Three people stood beneath a yellow sun. Luca was the tallest, all black crayon hair and broad shoulders. Ava stood in the middle wearing a purple dress. I was beside her with orange hair that fell almost to my knees. Above us, in uneven green letters, she had written OUR FAMILY.
My hand stopped inside the dish towel. Luca didn't move at all.
Ava pressed the starfish magnet onto one corner, then added a dolphin to the other. "It needs two because the paper curls."
"Good thinking," I managed.
She stepped back and examined it. "Riley's arm is too long."
The arm in question stretched across Ava's shoulders and reached Luca's hand.
"I like it," he said.
His voice broke on the final word.
Ava turned toward him. "Are you sad?"
Luca set down the knife. For one breath, I watched the old instinct cross his face: the urge to smile, deflect, make the feeling disappear before anyone could touch it.
Then his gaze flicked to the House Rules poster.
"Yeah, piccola," he said. "But it's a good kind of sad."
She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It means I love the picture so much it hurts a little."
Ava considered that. "Because you're dramatic?"
A laugh escaped me. Luca huffed one too, wiping quickly beneath one eye.
"Apparently."
She hugged him around the waist, then reached for me without hesitation. I stepped into them, and Luca's arm came around my back, warm and careful.
No secrecy. No flinch. No pretending. Just the three of us beneath Ava's crooked paper sun.
Later, after she was asleep, I returned to the kitchen alone. The drawing still hung there, impossibly bright against the stainless steel. OUR FAMILY.
I traced the air beneath the words without touching them.
Heartbreak was brutal, but at least it taught you to expect pain. Hope asked you to believe there might finally be something worth keeping.
Which meant there was finally something worth losing.