8. Harper
HARPER
My apartment looks smaller when empty than it ever did when it was full, boxes stacked by the door, the outline of a couch that lived against that wall for three years leaving a paler patch on the paint.
Ginger’s drawings are still on the fridge when I go to grab the last box from the kitchen. I peel them off one at a time, careful with the tape, and my throat does the tight thing it’s been doing on and off for days now.
I fold them flat and slide them into a folder instead of a box, somewhere I won’t accidentally crush them under something heavier.
Ginger sits on the bare floor of her old room while I finish, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the movers Viktor sent carry out the last of our things.
“We’re really going,” she says.
“We are.” I crouch down next to her. “You can bring anything you want in the car with us. Doesn’t have to go in a box.”
She thinks about it, then goes and gets the stuffed rabbit off her stripped bed, the one Mia gave her the Christmas before she died, and holds it the entire drive without saying much else.
“Last load,” Viktor says from the doorway, two boxes stacked in his arms like they weigh nothing. He’s traded the suit for jeans and a plain shirt, sleeves pushed up, and it’s strange seeing him like this, in my kitchen, doing something as ordinary as carrying boxes down two flights of stairs.
“You didn’t have to come do this yourself.”
“I have people who could have. I wanted to.”
His house sits behind a gate that opens on its own when we pull up, with a long driveway, more windows than any house needs, and a quiet so complete it feels engineered rather than accidental.
There’s a man near the garage who nods at Viktor and doesn’t ask a single question about the boxes or the six-year-old climbing out of the back seat, which strikes me as slightly odd before I decide it’s just how rich people’s staff behave, invisible and unbothered by anything.
Another man I haven’t seen before is doing something at the far end of the driveway that looks less like landscaping and more like checking the tree line.
“This is it,” Viktor says, watching my face for a reaction as we step inside a few minutes later.
I do my best to take it all in. “It’s… a lot of house.”
“It’ll feel smaller once you’re both actually living in it.”
I doubt that, standing in a foyer with ceilings twice as tall as any room I’ve ever slept in, but I don’t say so.
Ginger doesn’t say much of anything. She’s been quiet the whole drive over, quieter than usual even for her, and she stays close to my leg while Viktor shows us the rooms, her hand fisted in the hem of my shirt like she’s worried letting go might mean losing me somewhere in the house.
She still has the rabbit tucked under one arm, and every so often her fingers find its ear and worry the fabric there, an old habit I remember from right after Mia died, one I hoped we’d left behind for good.
Her new room is bigger than our old living room, a bed already made up in soft yellow sheets someone clearly picked with a six-year-old in mind, and she stands in the doorway looking at it like it belongs to somebody else.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
She shrugs, small, noncommittal, the same shrug she’s given every question for three days now.
“You can pick different sheets if you want. These don’t have to be permanent.”
“It’s fine,” she says, which is what she’s said about everything since Tuesday.
That night, after most of the boxes are unpacked and the yellow sheets are still untouched because Ginger insisted on sleeping in her clothes on top of the covers, I find her sitting on the floor of her new room instead of the bed, back against the wall, knees pulled up.
“Hey,” I say, sitting down next to her. “You okay down here?”
“I don’t know where anything is.”
“That’s okay. It’s new. Nobody knows where anything is on the first night.”
“What if I need you and I can’t find your room?”
My heart breaks a little. “My room’s right down the hall. Second door. I’ll show you again before bed, as many times as you need.”
She nods, but she doesn’t move off the floor, and I sit with her there instead of pushing.
Viktor appears in the doorway a few minutes later, a glass of water in each hand, and he doesn’t ask why we’re on the floor.
He just crouches down to Ginger’s level, sets one glass beside her, and stays there.
“First night in a new house is the strangest one,” he says. “After that it gets easier. I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve done it. More than once.” He says it simply.
“Did you get scared?”
“Every time.” He doesn’t make it sound braver than it was. “Being scared in a new place doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you. It just means you haven’t learned the layout yet.”
Ginger considers that for a long moment, longer than she’s considered anything all week, and something in her shoulders loosens, just slightly.
“Okay,” she says, and reaches for the water he brought her.
She drinks half of it in one go like she’s been thirsty the whole time and hadn’t noticed until now.
Viktor doesn’t push for more than that. He stands, tells her goodnight, and leaves the door open exactly the width he met it.
I stay a while longer after he’s gone. Eventually Ginger climbs up onto the bed on her own, no argument, and lies down on top of the yellow sheets without complaint this time.
“Mrs. Bennett will drive far to get here now,” she says out of nowhere, staring at the ceiling. “Is she still going to pick me up?”
“We’ll figure that part out. I promise you’re not losing anyone else, Ginger. Not Marisol, not Mrs. Bennett, not anyone.”
“Okay,” she says again, and this time it sounds a little more like she believes it.
I turn off the big overhead light and leave the small lamp on instead, the way she likes it, and sit on the edge of the bed until her breathing evens out.
Downstairs, Viktor’s in the kitchen when I come down, two mugs of tea already made like he somehow knew I’d need one.
“She talked to you,” I say, taking the mug he offers. “More than she’s talked to anyone in days.”
“She’s testing whether I’ll listen.” He leans against the counter, watching me over the rim of his own mug. “Kids that age can always tell the difference between someone answering them and someone humoring them.”
“You’re good with her.”
“I’m trying.” His jaw tightens, just slightly, there and gone fast. “I don’t have much practice. But I’d like to get better at it, if she’ll let me.”
“You didn’t have to bring her water yourself either. That’s what I keep noticing tonight. You didn’t have to carry boxes, you didn’t have to crouch down on her level, you didn’t have to sit with her instead of just telling her to get into bed.”
“I know.” He looks at me steadily over the mug. “But I wanted to do those things, too.”