2. Ryan #6
By nine, Ally’s done. I know it before she says a word — her answers get shorter, and her head drops onto Cat’s shoulder for a second before she catches herself and pulls it back up.
Mom catches it. So does Darla. So does Saoirse.
Apparently having this many mothers in one room means exhaustion gets detected like smoke through a vent.
“Enough,” Mom says.
Arthur looks up from the table. “We’re almost—“
“No,” Darla says.
“She’s exhausted,” Saoirse says.
“I’m fine,” Ally says, and every mother in the room turns to look at her at once. She blinks under the weight of it, then turns to me. “Help.”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not. I’m not getting between you and that.”
“Traitor.”
“I enjoy being alive.”
Louise comes over with a container. “For tomorrow.”
Ally takes it. “What’s in it?”
“Crackers, fruit, little sandwiches. Bland things. If anything makes you sick, you text me, and I’ll make something else.”
Ally’s face softens. “Okay.”
“I make soup,” Katya announces immediately. “Soup is good. I'll bring tomorrow.”
I stand, and Ally looks at the clock. “I have to go home.” The room changes — there it is, the part none of us can fix tonight. “Yeah,” I say.
She stands, and Becca gets to her first. “Text us.”
Ally smiles. “Us?”
Cat holds up her phone. “You’ve been added to a group chat.”
“When?”
“Sixteen minutes ago.”
Penny grins. “It’s called Operation Frog Rescue.”
Ally’s eyes fill. “Tobias.”
“Obviously,” Penny says.
Becca hugs her. “No disappearing. That’s the one rule.”
Danny comes over after, and Ally looks at him. “Can I hug you?”
His eyes close for half a second, then open. “Yeah.” She wraps her arms around him, and he freezes for one beat before he hugs her back. When they separate, his hands stay on her shoulders. “No apologizing,” he says.
“I remember.”
“Good.” His gaze drops briefly toward her stomach, then comes back to her face. “Take care of both of you.”
Becca takes his hand. Louise hugs Ally next, then Alice, and Saoirse holds her longer than any of them, cupping her face when she pulls back. “You call me if you need me. I mean it — any hour.”
Katya kisses Ally’s forehead. “Be brave only when it is needed.” Ally looks at her. “Other times,” Katya says, smiling, “you let people help you. This is also brave. Harder, even.”
Theodore waits until Katya steps back, then holds out his hand, and Ally takes it. “Your father is not the only man in Massachusetts with resources,” he says.
Mom looks at Ally. “If anything feels different tonight — anything at all — you call. Even if you think it’s nothing.”
“I will.”
“Even if—“
“Mom,” I say. She looks at me. “She understands.”
“I’m making sure.”
Ally smiles. “I understand.”
We make it to the door, and Dad says her name. “Ally. You’re not alone.”
Outside, the March air bites the second the door closes behind us. Ally tucks herself against my side on the walk to the car, and I open her door — but she doesn’t get in. “What?” I ask.
She’s looking back at the house, where light spills through the front windows. Through the glass I can see them all still moving. A whole house full of people who did not know this baby existed three hours ago, and are now planning for it. Protecting it. Protecting her. Protecting Tobias.
“That’s a lot of people,” Ally whispers.
“For us.” Her hand moves to her stomach. “For all three of us,” she says.
“I love you, Ally."
“Love you too.” She kisses me, slow, and then rests her forehead against mine. “Do you think we can get Tobias?”
There it is — the question underneath everything.
I could tell her yes. I could point her back at that window, at Arthur and Callum and my father and every person in that house who has learned, over the last brutal year, exactly what happens when somebody comes for one of ours.
But she doesn’t need swagger from me. She needs the truth.
“I think we have a lot more people looking for the answer than we did this morning,” I say.
She exhales. “That’s such a Ryan answer.”
“Yeah.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.” I touch her cheek. “We’re not leaving him. I don’t know how we get him yet. But we are not leaving him. Both of those are true at once. You’re going to have to get used to living inside that, same as the rest of us.”
Her eyes close. “Okay.” She gets into the car, and I close her door and stand there one more second.
Yesterday this secret belonged to two people.
Tonight it belongs to a family that has already survived Pennington, and Lucian, and Hartley, and a warehouse, and a trial, and a crash — more funerals and courtrooms and hospital rooms than any of us should know the inside of before graduation.
They’ve learned how to do this. How to close ranks around a person without suffocating them.
How to carry something heavy without taking it away from the person it belongs to.
Roman still has Tobias. Tremblay still thinks he’s getting Ally. Ally still has to walk back into that house tonight, and tomorrow morning I still have to pass her in an Edgewood hallway like she means nothing to me. Nothing is fixed. We don’t have enough. Not yet.
But for the first time since Valentine’s Day, the baby doesn’t feel like a secret we’re straining to keep alive.
It feels like ours. All of ours.