Chapter 48
Claire
It only took a few days for me to go back to the house, and the shift inside it was impossible to ignore.
When I walked in after school, I expected Lily to barrel into me the way she always did. Instead, she veered left, straight into Ethan’s arms, waving something clutched in her tiny hand.
“Look! Uncle Ethan made me a smiley face!”
Ethan scooped her up effortlessly, and Lily beamed up at him, proud of the little note he had drawn inside her lunchbox.
I stopped in the doorway, watching them.
It didn’t surprise me. I had known this caring side of him when we were kids. It still… gave me pause.
He set Lily down gently, ruffling her hair, and she skipped off toward her room. For a moment, I stood there, trying to figure out when exactly this version of him had appeared, mature and patient.
Later, I was rinsing a bowl at the sink while Ethan wiped down the counter. We worked in a quiet, almost domestic rhythm that I didn’t know what to do with. It felt familiar but not. Safe but not.
The not made my stomach tighten for reasons I didn’t want to examine.
I risked a sideways glance at him. “You’ve been doing… a lot.”
It came out more judgmental than I had intended.
He didn’t get defensive.
He just shrugged, eyes still on the counter. “I’m trying. I don’t want to be a burden on Mom.”
The vindictive part of me wanted to ask since when.
I looked at him a little longer than I meant to, long enough that he finally glanced up, meeting my eyes for a second before looking away again.
There was an apologetic air between us.
Something was different.
A quiet acknowledgment. A shift I hadn’t expected.
A tiny crack in walls I had held up for years.
I could admit that he was trying.
◆◆◆
I was running late.
I had meant to leave half an hour ago. I’d already said goodnight, picked up my bag, and grabbed my keys. But Lily had insisted on “one more picture,” and then Emma needed help with her tea, and then I couldn’t find my phone, and somehow the minutes slipped past me.
By the time I finally headed toward the door, the house had gone strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
I paused.
That was when I heard it, a soft, shaky sound that wasn’t quite crying but close. Little breaths caught in a struggle.
I followed the sound back into the living room, expecting maybe Emma or Bill, or that the TV had been left on low.
Instead, I stopped completely.
Lily was curled against Ethan’s chest, her small body trembling, fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt like she was holding on for dear life. She was half-asleep, half-sobbing, probably from a nightmare.
Ethan sat absolutely still, one hand stroking her back in slow, steady lines. His eyes were soft, unfocused, as if the pain in her was echoing somewhere inside him too.
Her pain echoed somewhere deep within me too.
“Ethan?” I whispered.
He looked up briefly, just long enough for me to see the emotion flicker across his face, worry, guilt, fear, before he returned his attention back to her.
“She woke up from a nightmare,” he murmured. “About Matt and Jenny.”
My heart sank. Of course she did.
The things she had lost in the real world followed her in her dreams too. Not even in sleep was she at peace.
I stepped closer, easing down to sit on the couch beside them. I smoothed Lily’s curls away from her forehead, and she whimpered but didn’t let go of Ethan.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said softly. “It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re right here.”
She clung harder to him, tiny fingers fisting into his shirt, and he adjusted his hold instinctively, patient and protective, careful not to jostle her.
This was too much for me to take.
I watched the tension in his jaw, the way he breathed a little unevenly, trying to keep himself steady so she wouldn’t feel his worry.
It echoed the sentiment in me, that this wasn’t the same boy I had dated in high school, who ran from anything too complicated.
This was a man who loved his family, and his steady presence acted as a comfort to the bravest little girl I knew.
Soft in the ways that mattered.
Lily sobbed, a deep, broken sound that punched a hole straight through our chest, and Ethan tightened his arm around her, whispering, “It’s okay, bug. I’ve got you.”
And suddenly, I was the one struggling for breath.
Watching him be this person for her, this anchor, this safe place, removed a resentment from inside me that I had thought was part of myself for a decade.
Lily eventually quieted, breathing deep and uneven against both of us. I slipped an arm around her too, and for a moment, without planning it, the three of us sat together in this quiet little circle of shared sadness and safety.
Ethan glanced at me then, brief, tired, full of something I was too tired to guess.
The tenderness of the moment bound us.
I looked away quickly because the truth of it was too much.
He murmured another soothing word into Lily’s hair, and she finally settled completely. Her grip loosened, though she kept one of Ethan’s fingers curled in her palm even in sleep.
I stood slowly. “I’ll… head home now. Text me if she needs anything.”
He nodded. “I will.”
I grabbed my keys, heart heavy from seeing the aching way he took care of my favorite person. And tonight, watching Ethan take charge with the kind of love that could steady a storm…
A crack opened in me I couldn’t ignore.
It was the first, fragile return of trust.