Epilogue
Winnie
Three Months Later
Archer shows up at nine-fifteen with a diaper bag the size of a carry-on, circles under his eyes that tell me he was up before six, and his twins, who are three years old.
“I owe you both,” he says, transferring Lily to my arms. She immediately grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls, completely unapologetic about it.
Luke is on his hip, still in his pajamas, clutching a stuffed elephant like it’s the only stable thing in his world right now.
“You don’t owe us anything,” I tell him, which I mean, mostly.
“Two hours, max.” He’s already glancing at his phone, then back at Luke, running through whatever internal checklist dads go through before leaving their kids somewhere. “He had breakfast. Lily will want a snack around ten; she’ll tell you what she wants, just give her a minute to—”
“Arch.” Banks puts a hand on his shoulder. “Go.”
Archer looks at Luke one more time. Luke looks back at him with his father’s dark eyes, the elephant pressed to his chest. “Love you, bud. Back soon, okay? Two hours.”
Luke nods like he understands, and it’s genuinely sweet. Then Archer walks out the door, and it clicks shut behind him. Luke watches it for one long second before his face just falls apart.
I set him down and crouch to his level. I use my calm voice, the one that works on anxious students five minutes before a hard class. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay; your daddy’s coming back. He just had to go to his—do you want a snack? We have Goldfish; do you like Goldfish?”
Luke does not care about Goldfish. He cries harder.
“We could watch something? Bluey? Do you like Bluey?” I look up at Banks, who is leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching this unfold. “Banks, do we have Bluey?”
“I don’t know what Bluey is.”
“It’s a cartoon; can you just—never mind.” I turn back to Luke. “We have other shows; we can find Bluey; I just need to—”
Luke sits down on the floor in the middle of the living room and cries with his entire body, elephant dangling from one fist, and I have officially run out of ideas.
Lily pats my cheek from her spot on my hip. One small hand, matter-of-fact about it, like she’s consoling me, which is fair.
Banks pushes off the doorframe and sits down on the floor next to Luke. Not across from him, not crouching—just sits cross-legged right there on the hardwood like he’s got nowhere else to be.
“Hey, man,” he says.
Luke looks at him through his tears.
“Your dad’ll be back.” He says it plainly, no sing-song, no performance. Just a fact. “He always comes back.”
Luke pulls in a shaky breath. He’s still crying, but he’s listening.
“You know what I do when I miss someone?” Banks asks.
Luke wipes his nose on the elephant. “What?”
“I think about the last funny thing they did.” Banks leans back on his hands. “Your dad tripped over your shoe last week, right? At the rink. Totally wiped out.”
Luke’s mouth wobbles toward something. “He fell down.”
“All the way down. In front of everybody.” Banks shakes his head gravely. “It was rough.”
A hiccup. The beginning of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “He said a bad word.”
“I bet he did. What word?”
Luke whispers it, and Banks laughs—a real one, surprised out of him—and Luke laughs too, a wet, delighted laugh, and just like that, the crisis is over.
I’m standing here holding Lily, watching my fiancé talk a toddler off a ledge by getting him to rat out his father’s profanity, and I don’t have words for what’s moving through me right now.
I just know I want to remember it.
Banks
I don’t know why I’m good at this.
I have no younger siblings, I never babysat, and I have no normal pipeline through which a person learns what to do with a crying toddler.
But Luke’s face when that door clicked shut—watching it and knowing he couldn’t follow—I recognized it before I even thought about it.
I was sitting on the floor next to him before I’d made a decision to move.
I know what it is to watch a door close and not know what comes after. It’s hard. And scary. Terrifying, actually.
The difference is Archer always comes back. Luke just doesn’t have enough history yet to trust that.
He’s fine now. He’s sitting between my knees, eating Goldfish out of the bag, telling me about a cartoon dinosaur with the urgency of someone delivering breaking news. “And then the big one—not the little one, the big one—he goes raahh and everyone runs.” His eyes go wide. “It’s really scary.”
“That’s terrifying,” I say.
He nods, very serious. “Yeah.”
Lily abandoned Winnie about twenty minutes ago and has since installed herself in my lap next to her brother, claimed the territory, and started reorganizing the Goldfish bag to her satisfaction.
Winnie is on the couch with her legs tucked under her, watching us, and I can feel her eyes even when I’m not looking at her.
“You’re really good with them,” she says.
“I just sat down.”
“Banks.”
“I bribed him with his dad’s dignity. It’s not a transferable skill.”
She laughs, and Luke looks up at the sound of it, then looks at me with an expression I can only describe as reconsidering Winnie, which, yeah, fair. She grows on you. I know firsthand. I didn’t even want a girlfriend; now I have a fiancé.
Winnie
Two hours turn into two and a half, and by the end of it, Lily has decided I’m acceptable and is methodically showing me every item in the diaper bag like she’s conducting a tour, while Luke has fallen asleep on Banks’s chest with the elephant tucked under his chin and one fist curled in Banks’s shirt.
Banks hasn’t moved in forty minutes. He’s got one hand spread across Luke’s small back, and he’s watching something on his phone with the volume off, completely still.
I keep looking over and having to look away because it’s too much—this image of this giant man sitting absolutely motionless so he doesn’t wake a sleeping toddler who grabbed onto him and decided to stay.
When Archer texts that he’s ten minutes out, I reply no rush, they’re great and mean it entirely this time.
He knocks quietly when he arrives, and Banks opens the door. Luke stirs, sees his dad, and reaches for him immediately with both arms, elephant and all. Archer takes him and pulls him in close, exhaling long and slow, and I watch the sweetest little reunion.
“Thank you,” he says, over Luke’s head.
He gets Lily, grabs the bag, and gets himself organized. He’s almost out the door when his phone buzzes. He glances at it, and his jaw tightens before he gets it back under control and slides the phone into his pocket.
Banks sees it. I see Banks see it.
“Arch,” Banks says.
“I’m good.” He adjusts Lily on his hip and gives Banks the nod—the one that means I hear you and I’m not doing this right now. “See you at practice.”
And then he’s gone and Banks closes the door, and the house goes quiet.
There are Goldfish crackers on the coffee table, a small indentation in the couch cushion where Banks sat for forty minutes without moving, and Goldfish crackers ground into my area rug that I’m choosing not to think about right now.
“He’s not okay,” I say.
“No.” Banks starts collecting crackers off the table. “He’s not.”
I watch him for a second—this man who sat on the floor without hesitating, who found the exact right words, who held a sleeping kid for forty minutes because moving would have woken him. “You were really good with them.”
He glances up. “They’re good kids.”
“Banks.” I wait until he looks at me. “You’re going to be a great dad.”
He holds my gaze, and I watch it move across his face—not surprise, more like a door opening onto a room he’s been standing outside of for a long time. He sets the Goldfish bag down, crosses to me, puts his hands on my face, and kisses me, warm and unhurried.
“Yeah?” he says against my mouth.
“Yeah.” I pull back just enough to look at him. “Four or five, remember?”
He smiles—the full one, the real one—and kisses me again.
“Four or five,” he says. “Yeah.”
* * *
Thank you so much for reading!