Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
The living room looks like someone filled a cannon with board books, stuffed animals, and the remnants of breakfast, then fired it directly into the wall.
I stand in the doorway for a moment, coffee mug clutched in both hands and try to decide whether this is salvageable or if I should just call for a bulldozer and start over.
It’s been twelve months since the twins’ first birthday, and if anything, they’ve only gotten more effective at creating mayhem.
Milo is attempting to climb the bookshelf in the living room with the determination of a boy who has never once learned from consequences.
He’s made it approximately sixteen inches off the ground, one small foot wedged into the second shelf, both hands gripping the wood above his head, his entire face set in an expression of absolute, unwavering commitment.
I’ve told him approximately one hundred and forty-seven times that the bookshelf is not for climbing.
He has nodded solemnly and then attempted it again fourteen seconds later, without even the decency to look sheepish.
“You’re going to fall,” I tell him, setting my coffee down on the side table. “And when you do, the floor is going to win. It always does.”
He turns to look at me, clearly unimpressed by my assessment of his climbing abilities. “I good,” he announces, with the absolute confidence of a two-year-old who believes gravity is a concept that applies exclusively to other people.
“Are you though?” I ask.
Beside him, Maisie stands with her arms crossed and an expression that says she has already filed a formal complaint with management.
Her hair is in what can only be described as “controlled chaos,” several strands standing straight up from her scalp, and she’s wearing one sock, the other currently serving as cargo inside one of Noah’s trainers by the front door, an arrangement she clearly considers both necessary and elegant.
She glances at me, then back at Milo, raises one eyebrow in an expression so precisely like Luca’s that I nearly laugh, and says, very clearly: “Miles fall.”
“Maisie’s right,” I tell him. “Miles fall.”
“No,” he insists, already turning back to his climb. “I good.”
I let my eyes move around the room; really look at it in a way I don’t usually have time for.
There’s evidence of Noah everywhere, not just in his things but in the way they’ve settled into the ecosystem of the house.
His worn paperback translations, Italian mostly, though there’s a small stack of Dutch on the bottom shelf, lined up beside my romance novels with their garish covers and earnest declarations.
His oversized grey mug sitting next to my smaller one on the drying rack, the chipped handle facing out, the way I always turn it.
A pair of men’s trainers by the front door that Maisie has placed one of her socks inside, the tiny purple polka dots visible against the dark interior like an intentional contrast.
And in the kitchen, an entire cupboard quietly colonised by his collection of loose-leaf teas, about thirty different varieties, each one labelled in his careful handwriting, that I find both baffling and endearing.
I don’t understand tea people. I never have.
But Noah with his earl grey and his lapsang souchong and his insistence that yes, they really do taste different, and no, I can’t just add honey and milk and call it done, makes me smile every time I open that cupboard.
He’s been here for three months. Three months of his socks mixed with mine in the laundry basket.
Three months of his alarm going off five minutes before mine.
Three months of bedtime negotiations that involve one more chapter for Milo and one more sip of water for Maisie and then one more for each of them again just to be sure.
Three months of coming home to dinner already started, of stepping into the bathroom to find the shower already running, of falling asleep with his weight against my back and waking to find his arm across my waist like he’s making sure I’m still there.
The house has absorbed him the way it absorbs everything. I don’t even notice it most days, the way things have changed. The arrangement of the coat hooks. The location of the remote control. The way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when he makes coffee before anyone else is awake.
I’m halfway across the room when I notice Milo has achieved a new altitude, both feet now wedged into the third shelf, his small body angled dangerously away from the wall. “Milo,” I say, already moving toward him. “Milo, down, please.”
He turns, apparently to assess my level of sincerity, and his foot slips slightly.
I reach him just as he begins to fall, one hand already extended, and catch him by the waistband of his pyjamas, a manoeuvre that only works because I’ve been catching falling children for two full years now, my reflexes permanently recalibrated to account for the tiny humans who treat gravity as a personal challenge.
“No fall,” he says, apparently pleased by this outcome.
“You definitely fell,” I tell him, already setting him on the floor. “I caught you. That’s different.”
At the exact same moment, Maisie decides that now would be an excellent time to “help” with the recycling.
She’s reached the kitchen and has the recycling bin in both hands, tipping it forward with the absolute conviction of a child who has no idea what recycling actually is but is fairly certain it involves rearrangement of its contents.
I make a sound deep in my throat, already extending my free arm.
“Maisie, no. Maisie, no, no, no.”
She pauses, bin halfway to horizontal, and gives me a look of such profound disappointment that I nearly laugh despite myself. “Help,” she says, the word weighted with the particular emphasis of someone who feels they are being unfairly prevented from fulfilling their purpose.
“You are not helping the recycling,” I tell her, already reaching for it. “The recycling is already in the bin. That is the whole point of the bin.”
In the midst of all this, Milo firmly redirected to his blocks, Maisie reluctantly surrendering the recycling bin, me trying to remember if I’ve eaten anything since that half a piece of toast at six-thirty, I notice something that makes me pause.
My shoulders are relaxed. It’s such a small thing, so completely ordinary, that for a moment I don’t even understand why I’m noticing it.
Then I do. I’m not acting calm in this house anymore. I just am calm.
The realization sits there for a moment, simple and enormous, like something you’ve been looking at for so long you stopped seeing it.
And then Noah appears from the hallway still half-asleep, hair wrecked, wearing a faded university hoodie with a hole in one sleeve, and automatically takes Milo off the bookshelf without breaking stride, handing him a banana from the counter like a man who has done this exact thing forty times before, because he has.
“No climbing,” he tells Milo, his voice still rough from sleep. “Climbing is for outside. Inside is for bananas.”
Milo takes the banana already beginning to peel it with the focus he brings to all food-related activities. “No fall,” he tells Noah, apparently wanting this on the record.
“Because you’re smart,” Noah says, setting him on the floor. “Smart boys know the difference between climbing things and things that are not for climbing.”
I watch them from across the kitchen, my heart full in a way that still surprises me sometimes.
Not the explosive, all-consuming feeling of new love, but something steadier, deeper, like warm certainty.
Noah catches me looking and his face softens in the way it does when he’s just happy to see me, no agenda or expectation, just the simple pleasure of my existence.
“Morning,” he says, already crossing to press a soft kiss to the top of my head. “You’ve been up a while.”
“I have,” I tell him. “The tiny dictators don’t believe in sleep.”
“They’re morally opposed to it,” he agrees. “I’m making pancakes. The kind with the blueberries. Want some?”
“Yes please,” Maisie says immediately, already climbing onto her step stool. “Blue ones.”
“No green ones,” Milo adds, apparently having strong feelings about the colour distribution of his breakfast.
“No green ones,” Noah promises. “Just blue. Unless you’ve changed your mind about green being worse than all other colours, in which case we can discuss it like reasonable people.”
Milo considers this with the gravity of someone receiving an important diplomatic communication, then shakes his head once. “Blue,” he says firmly. “Green tomorrow.”
“Green tomorrow,” Noah agrees, and reaches for the flour.
I stand in the middle of my kitchen and feel the full, warm weight of what we’ve built together. Not perfect. Never that. But ours, completely and entirely, in all its messy, chaotic, wonderful glory.
And I think, watching Noah measure flour with careful attention while simultaneously redirecting Milo away from the electrical socket, that sometimes the universe gives you what you need, even if it takes the scenic route to get there.
***
Page & Grounds looks like Luca has been redesigning again.
The front windows are covered in what appears to be a complex geometric pattern made from coloured tissue paper, and the “closed” sign on the door has been replaced with one that reads “UNOFFICIAL SOCIETY MEETING IN PROGRESS (NO OUTSIDERS ALLOWED)” in Luca’s most impressive handwriting, each letter a different size as if the concept itself was too exciting to contain.
I stand on the sidewalk for a moment, one twin balanced on each hip, and try to decide whether this is the sort of situation where it’s better to just turn around and go home.