7 - NO MORE GUILT
The August heat lay across Beckley like a damp wool blanket, thick enough to taste.
The window-unit air conditioner in the living room rattled and coughed, losing its battle against the humidity that crept through every crack and seam of the old Carter house.
Victoria didn't mind. She'd grown accustomed to the warmth—the way it wrapped around her shoulders, the way it made the hardwood floors creak and expand, the way it flushed her son's cheeks pink when he nursed.
Her son.
Brock Thomas Carter Jr.—BJ, from the moment they'd first seen his gray eyes squinting against the delivery room lights—lay swaddled in his crib in the former guest room now converted into a nursery.
Two months old now. Two months of cracked nipples and three AM feedings and the particular madness of watching another human breathe while he slept.
Victoria had become an expert in the minutiae of infant respiration.
The flutter of his tiny nostrils. The rise and fall of his chest beneath the cotton onesie.
The soft, hiccupping sighs he made when he dreamed.
She was exhausted. She was radiant. She'd never been happier in her life.
She was sitting in a rocking chair next to the crib.
The parenting book in her lap—The First Twelve Months: A Guide to Infant Development—had fallen open to a chapter on sleep training, but Victoria hadn't read a word in twenty minutes.
Her gaze kept drifting to the crib. To the swirl of dark hair on BJ's crown.
To the tiny fist that had escaped the swaddle and now rested against his cheek.
Brock's hair. Brock's jaw. Already, at eight weeks, the baby was a carbon copy of his father—the same gray eyes, the same serious brow, the same way of looking at the world like he was studying it, cataloging it, preparing for whatever came next.
"The Carter stare," Victoria murmured. The baby didn't stir.
—
Outside, the crunch of tires on gravel announced Brock's arrival.
Victoria’s watch read 4:37 PM—earlier than usual.
She marked her place in the book, listening to the familiar sequence of sounds: the truck door opening, the pause while he checked his phone, the heavy tread of boots on the front porch steps.
She walked downstairs into the living room to greet Brock.
The front door swung open.
The heat that rushed in was immediate, suffocating, but Victoria barely noticed.
She was too busy watching the man who filled the doorway—the broad shoulders, the dark buzzed hair that was finally showing threads of silver at the temples, the gray eyes that found her across the room and softened in a way they never softened for anyone else.
Brock was still in his uniform. The dark blue shirt stretched across his chest, the badge glinting above his left pocket, the utility belt heavy on his hips.
He'd been at FCI Beckley since six that morning.
Fourteen years he'd been working there now—fourteen years of metal detectors and inmate counts and the particular exhaustion that came from spending eight hours a day being vigilant.
But when he looked at her, all of that fell away.
"Hey," Victoria said. Her voice was quiet, mindful of the sleeping baby. "You're home early."
"Warden let me cut out after the four o'clock count." He crossed the room in four long strides. Leaned down to kiss her forehead. His lips were warm, his stubble rough against her skin. “Said I should go home and spend some time with my family.”
"BJ was up three times last night. Growth spurt, I think. He's been cluster-feeding."
"You should have woken me."
"You had work. And honestly? I didn't mind."
Victoria caught his hand before he could pull away.
Pressed her lips to his knuckles. "It's strange. I spent so many years wanting this—the late nights, the exhaustion, the baby who won't stop eating—and now that it's here, I can't bring myself to resent a second of it."
Brock's thumb traced her cheekbone. His eyes, those gray eyes that had seen so much and revealed so little, were wet at the corners. "You're a good mother, Victoria. The best."
"Dangerous thing to say to a woman who's been reading parenting books for six hours. I've got opinions now. Strong ones."
"About what?"
"Sleep training. Swaddling techniques. The optimal temperature for bath water." She smiled. "I've become insufferable."
"You've become a mother." He said it like a prayer. Like a benediction. Like the word itself was sacred.
Brock glanced at the baby monitor, a grainy image of BJ, sound asleep in his crib.
His expression shifted—the softness deepening, the exhaustion receding, replaced by something that looked almost like awe.
He still looked at BJ the same way he'd looked at him in the delivery room: like he couldn't quite believe the baby was real.
"How was he today?" Brock asked.
"Perfect. He smiled at me this morning. A real smile, not gas. Dr. Chen says it's early for social smiling, but I know what I saw."
"Of course you do."
"He's advanced. Obviously."
"Obviously." Brock's lips twitched. "He's a Carter."
Victoria laughed.
Brock straightened. Ran a hand over his buzzed hair.
His jaw was tight, and Victoria recognized the tension in his shoulders—the way he held himself when something was weighing on him.
She'd learned to read him in the year they'd been together.
The micro-expressions. The silences. The way he'd retreat into the correctional officer's mask when he was working through something difficult.
"What is it?" she asked.
"What's what?"
"You've got that look. The one you had before you told me Joey was contesting the divorce." She sat down on the couch. "Is it the prison? Did something happen?"
"No. Nothing like that." He hesitated. Glanced toward the hallway, toward the master bedroom, toward something Victoria couldn't see. "I need to ask you something. But first, I should—I need to change out of this uniform."
"Brock."
"Give me five minutes."
He was gone before she could argue.
—
Victoria stared at the empty doorway. Her heart was beating faster than it should have been—a rabbit pulse, quick and nervous.
The last time Brock had looked at her like that, he'd been about to tell her that Joey had been released on bail.
The time before that, he'd been about to tell her that the divorce was final, that she was legally free, that the paperwork she'd been dreading for months had finally come through.
But those conversations had happened months ago. Joey's trial was over. The restraining order was in place. The divorce was settled. There was nothing left to worry about, nothing left to fear, nothing left except the life they were building together.
Unless Brock had changed his mind.
The thought landed in Victoria's stomach like a stone.
She pressed her palm to her belly—still soft, still rounder than it had been before the pregnancy, a body she was still learning to love—and forced herself to breathe.
That was the old fear talking. The fear from before.
The fear that had whispered in her ear during those long months of secrets and lies: he'll leave you, you'll be alone, you don't deserve this happiness.
Brock wasn't going to leave her. Brock had proven, again and again, that he wasn't going anywhere.
He'd held her hand through seventeen hours of labor.
He'd changed more diapers than she could count.
He'd sat beside her in court while Joey's lawyer called her a whore, an adulteress, a woman who'd destroyed two men and felt no remorse.
He wasn't going anywhere.
The faucet ran in the bathroom. The pipes groaned—the old house's familiar protest—and then went silent. Victoria heard the bedroom door open. Footsteps in the hallway.
When Brock returned, he'd changed into jeans and a gray t-shirt that clung to his chest.
His feet were bare. His hair was damp. He'd washed his face—she could see the water droplets still clinging to his jaw—and the tension in his shoulders had shifted into something else.
Something that looked almost like nervousness.
Brock Carter didn't get nervous. Victoria had seen him disarm his own son without flinching.
He told her about how he’d talked down an inmate who was holding a shank.
She'd seen him face the neighbors' stares and the town's gossip and the whispers at the Piggly Wiggly with the same steady, unshakeable calm.
But right now, standing in the doorway of his own living room, he looked nervous.
"Brock," Victoria said. "You're scaring me."
"Don't be scared." He crossed the room. Stopped in front of the couch. Looked down at her with those gray eyes, and Victoria saw something in them she'd never seen before. "This isn't—it's not bad. I promise."
"Then what is it?"
He reached into his pocket.
The world went very still.
Victoria's hand flew to her mouth. Her heart—that rabbit pulse, that nervous flutter—stopped entirely.
The air conditioner rattled. And Brock Carter, fifty-one years old, correctional officer, father of her child, the man who had loved her through the worst year of her life, lowered himself onto one knee.
"Oh my god," Victoria whispered.
"Victoria." His voice was rough. "I've been trying to figure out how to do this for weeks. I had a whole speech planned. I was going to take you out to dinner, somewhere nice, somewhere that wasn't this house. But every time I tried to set it up, something got in the way. The baby. The trial. Life."
He took a breath. "And then I realized I didn't want to wait anymore. I didn't want to wait for the perfect moment. Because every moment with you has been perfect, even the terrible ones. Especially the terrible ones."
"Brock—"
"Let me finish. Please." He opened the box.
The ring inside was simple. Elegant. A solitaire diamond set in a white gold band that gleamed in the afternoon light. It wasn't flashy—it wasn't the kind of ring that screamed for attention—but it was exactly right. Exactly her.
"This was my mother's ring," Brock said. "She would have wanted you to have it. She would have loved you. She would have loved the way you love our son."
Tears were streaming down Victoria's face. She wasn't sure when they'd started. "Brock, I—"