36. Jake
JAKE
Nothing in the contractor handbook prepares you for building a treehouse to your own worst fear's exact specifications while the woman you love hands you nails and hums off-key.
Noah had drawn the plans himself, three sheets of notebook paper taped together, a ladder on one side and a rope swing on the other and a window facing the exact oak tree it was supposed to be built inside of. He'd handed them to me over breakfast like a foreman presenting a bid.
"It needs a window," he said, tapping the paper with total seriousness. "For watching the goose."
"The goose doesn't come over here."
"It might. You never know." He said it with the flat certainty of a man who had clearly already thought this through and did not appreciate being second-guessed on the finer engineering points.
"You have to plan for the goose, Dad."
"Noted. I'll plan accordingly."
"Also it needs a rope for climbing down fast. In case of emergencies."
"What kind of emergencies are we expecting up there?"
"Dragon emergencies," he said, entirely serious, and went back to studying his own blueprint like the matter had already been thoroughly settled between us.
I studied the drawing longer than it strictly required, because somewhere in the careful, crooked lines I recognized the same instinct that had put four bedrooms on a different piece of paper months ago, my son quietly building the life he wanted one drawing at a time and waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
Something in my chest pulled tight for a second, the same old familiar ache that showed up whenever I caught Noah wanting something this openly, this fearlessly, the way only a kid who hadn't yet learned to brace for loss could want a thing.
I pushed the feeling down where I usually kept it and folded the drawing into my back pocket instead of answering it out loud.
"We'll need better lumber than what's in the shed," I told him. "And a whole free day with nothing else on it."
"Today's free."
"Today's free," I agreed, and that was apparently all the negotiation Noah required.
Aria showed up an hour later with a thermos of coffee and Lily trailing behind her already narrating an elaborate backstory for the treehouse involving a queen, a dragon, and an unspecified number of geese.
"You're actually doing this," she said, surveying the lumber stacked neatly against the fence like a small, hopeful pile of promises.
"Man makes a promise, man keeps it, no matter how it inconveniences him. Even to a five-year-old with very strong opinions about windows."
"Six-year-old."
"Six-year-old. I keep losing track. He's growing too fast."
She handed me the thermos and climbed up onto the lowest fork of the oak to inspect the branch we'd picked, testing its weight with more confidence than the situation probably called for.
"This one's solid," she said, testing it once more for good measure. "You could probably build an entire second story on this thing."
"We are building exactly one story. I have a very specific, carefully considered list of things Noah is allowed to fall from, and a second story isn't on it."
"Coward."
"Careful parent."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive either."
Lily appointed herself supply manager somewhere around the second hour, marching back and forth from the porch with exactly one nail at a time, delivering each one with the solemnity of a courier carrying state secrets.
"That's very efficient," I told her.
"I know. I'm very good at my job."
"You could probably carry more than one nail."
"I could." She considered this seriously, weighing the philosophical implications. "But then it wouldn't take as long, and I like the walking part."
Aria laughed hard enough she had to sit down on the closest sawhorse, and Lily accepted the reaction as confirmation of her own genius and marched off for nail number four.
We spent the morning measuring and cutting, Noah handing me boards with the gravity of a man assisting in surgery, Lily narrating a running commentary that had nothing to do with construction and everything to do with the dragon's tragic backstory.
Aria worked beside me steady and unhurried, holding boards level while I drove screws, passing tools before I asked for them like she'd been doing this her whole life instead of two hours.
"You're good at this," I told her.
"I'm good at handing a man things. It's a specialized skill."
"You're good at more than that."
"Careful. I might start believing you."
"Believe me. I really don't say things I don't mean."
She looked at me a second longer than the joke required, something soft moving behind her eyes, and I wondered, not for the first time that morning, whether she was thinking about something she hadn't said yet, the way I'd caught her doing more than once these past few days.
"You okay?" I asked.
"I'm great." She smiled, quick and easy, and handed me another screw before I could ask anything else. "Hand me that level."
I let it go, the way I'd been letting it go more times than I could count lately, telling myself it was nothing, telling myself everyone carried a little static some days that had nothing to do with anybody else.
Deacon showed up around noon uninvited, the way he always did, carrying a cooler of sandwiches and immediately appointing himself head of quality control.
"That joint's crooked," he announced, squinting up at the platform.
"It's not crooked."
"It's a little crooked."
"It's structurally sound."
"Structurally sound and crooked can both be true at once, apparently, given the theme of today." He handed sandwiches to both kids first, professional priorities intact, before turning back to me.
"You're building a treehouse. On your one day off. For fun."
"I'm building a treehouse because my son asked."
"You're building a treehouse because you're happy, and happy men build treehouses." He said it like a diagnosis, matter of fact, and bit into his own sandwich before I could argue the point.
"It's a good look on you, Hartley. Wear it."
"You've got opinions on everything today."
"I've got opinions on everything every day. Today you're just standing still long enough for me to share them." He wandered over to inspect the ladder rungs, testing each one with his full weight like he didn't trust my measurements even a little.
"You seem lighter lately. Been meaning to say something."
"Lighter how?"
"Like a man who finally set something down he'd been carrying too long." He shrugged, already moving on before I could figure out how to answer that.
"Anyway. Pass the mustard."
Aria laughed at that, low and real, and something in my chest went warm and a little dangerous, the particular warmth I'd learned not to fully trust because it usually came right before something found a way to take it back.
We worked through the afternoon in the easy rhythm of people who had built plenty of things together by now, walls and fences and, apparently, entire treehouses, Noah climbing the ladder every twenty minutes to check our progress with the exacting standards of a man who had drawn the blueprints himself.
"The window needs to be bigger," he announced from the platform. "For the goose."
"The window is the correct size for a window, buddy."
"The goose has a big head."
"I have never once measured that goose's head, and I intend to keep it that way."
Lily climbed up after him, deposited a small plastic crown on the platform floor with great ceremony, and announced the treehouse officially a castle, a designation Noah accepted without argument, apparently satisfied that a castle with a goose-sized window was an acceptable compromise.
I nearly put a screw through my own thumb twice trying to hang the little door on its hinges while half listening to the ongoing kingdom negotiations happening above me, Lily insisting the dragon needed diplomatic immunity and Noah countering that dragons did not get special treatment just because they could breathe fire.
"That seems like exactly when they should get special treatment," Aria called up, handing me a fresh screw without looking away from the plans spread across her knees.
"Don't encourage the dragon lobby," I told her.
"The dragon lobby has some fair points."
"The dragon lobby burned down a sandwich once. I don't trust it."
She laughed at that, the real kind, head tipped back and everything, and I found myself watching her longer than the joke deserved, cataloging the sound of it the way a man catalogs things he's afraid might someday stop being guaranteed.
By the time the light started slanting gold and low through the branches, we had four solid walls, a floor that didn't creak even under Noah's full-speed testing, and a window exactly the size I'd told him it would be, which he'd already forgiven me for entirely.
"It's perfect," he said, standing in the doorway of his own tiny kingdom, hands on his hips in an exact, unconscious echo of the way I stood when I finished a job I was proud of.
"It's not bad," I agreed. "For a first attempt."
"It's the best treehouse in the world."
"I'll allow that."
Aria sat beside me on the porch steps once the kids had disappeared inside their new fortress, both of us sawdust-covered and sunburned and thoroughly worn out in the particular way that only felt earned instead of tired.
"Today was good," she said, leaning her head against my shoulder, tired in the good way, the earned way.
"Today was really, genuinely good."
"We should do this more. Build things. Just us and them, no big occasions, no reason at all needed."
"I'd build you a hundred treehouses if you asked me to."
"I'm going to hold you to that."
She went quiet after that, watching the kids' shadows move behind the little window, and I watched her watching them, something working behind her face I couldn't quite name, the same something I'd been catching glimpses of again and again lately without ever managing to pin it down, no matter how closely I looked.
"Aria."
"Hmm?"
"You've had a look lately. On and off. What's going on with you?"
She was quiet a beat too long before she answered, and I felt something small and cold move through me even in the middle of all that gold afternoon light.
"It's nothing important," she said finally. "Just work stuff. I'll tell you about it soon, I promise."
"Okay." I didn't push, the way I hadn't pushed in all this time, telling myself it was respect and not just cowardice wearing a nicer coat. "Whenever you're ready."
"Thank you."
I thought, not for the first time, about the conversation I still owed her too, the one from the cemetery, the fear I'd said out loud to a headstone and nowhere else since.
Deacon's comment from earlier sat in the back of my mind, needling at me.
Lighter, he'd said, like a man who finally set something down.
He wasn't entirely wrong. Saying it out loud once, even to a piece of granite, had loosened something that had been sitting on my chest for two straight years.
It hadn't loosened all the way, though. Not even close. We were apparently both carrying something we hadn't found the nerve to hand the other person yet, sitting close enough to share body heat and still somehow keeping separate weather.
Noah's laugh rang out from inside the treehouse, delighted and unguarded, and Lily's voice rose right behind it announcing some new development in the dragon's ongoing saga, and for a while I let myself just sit there in the noise of it, sawdust in my hair and Aria's shoulder warm against mine and nothing on my mind but how good the light looked coming through the leaves.
It was, without question, the best afternoon I had had in years. I should have known by now what that kind of afternoon usually means is coming.