Epilogue—Riley
Afew months later, the yellow nursery is still aggressively bright, and none of us have touched it.
The house is never quiet anymore. Bottles drying on the rack. Tiny socks on the couch because Andrew folds them and someone immediately unfolds them.
He usually is.
It’s 2:17am and I’m in the nursery doorway with our daughter against my chest. She’s down—her fist curled into my shirt, her face doing the thing newborns do where they look ancient and very new at the same time.
The kitchen still smells like the garlic bread Liam burned forty minutes ago.
He offered to clean it up and fell asleep in the rocking chair.
He’s still there. Mouth slightly open. Completely useless.
I love him so much it’s embarrassing.
Andrew is on the floor behind me with the laundry basket, going through it in the methodical way that means it’ll actually get sorted instead of just relocated to a different pile. He’s been at it for fifteen minutes without a word.
Ethan gave up the feeding-time spreadsheet three weeks ago. He said he was letting go of the system. He now has a notes app with color-coded entries for every feeding. I haven't said anything. Some people need the data.
The front door opens downstairs. A key, not a knock—Connor has a key now. Sarah’s voice, and then his, low. The sound of the coat closet.
We do this every week. It wasn’t decided. It just started.
I come downstairs with the baby and Connor is already in the entryway, and the thing that happens to his face when he sees her—every time, still, like it gets him every time—is something I think about when everything feels like too much.
He holds out his hands before I ask. He’s still a little tentative, still holds her with his arms slightly away from his body like he’s afraid of something, but he takes her.
“Hey, you,” he says to her. Just that.
She makes a sound—some small noise that means nothing and everything—and his whole posture shifts.
“She remembers me,” he says.
“She’s eight weeks old,” I say. “She doesn’t remember anything.”
“She remembered me,” he says again, not looking up.
Sarah puts her hand over her mouth and looks at me. I look back at her. We have a whole conversation without saying a word.
Liam appears at the bottom of the stairs with his hair doing something architectural and a pillow crease on one cheek. “Connor. Sarah. You’re early.”
“We’re on time,” Sarah says.
“I’m early,” Liam says, pointing at his own face. “Look at the evidence.”
“You look fine.”
“You’re a kind person.” He hugs her. “What did you bring?”
“Wine and my grandmother’s chicken.”
“Sarah.” He puts both hands on her shoulders. “You’re my favorite person. Don’t tell Riley.”
“I can hear you,” I say.
“She’s fine,” Liam says.
In the kitchen, Ethan is already examining the chicken dish with attention. Andrew sets the table without being asked, the way he does everything. Connor has drifted into the living room, still holding Olivia, still talking to her in that low murmur I’m not sure he knows he’s doing.
I go and stand beside him.
“She likes you,” I say.
He doesn’t look up. “She likes movement. I’m just useful.”
“She likes you.”
His thumb traces a small circle on her hand—that reflex babies have of grabbing on tight. She’s got his finger.
“She’s got your eyes,” he says.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“It’s true.” He glances at me sideways. “That’s either very good or a warning sign, I haven’t decided.”
“Liam says both.”
“For once,” Connor says, “Liam might be right.” A beat. “Don’t tell him.”
“Too late,” Liam calls from the kitchen.
Connor closes his eyes briefly. “He has the hearing of a large, annoying bat.”
“I heard that too,” Liam says.
I lean into Connor. He shifts his arm to make room without breaking his hold on the baby. Old reflex. He’s always known how I fit into his side.
“I’m glad you come,” I say.
He doesn’t answer right away. He watches the baby’s face, that ancient-and-new expression she makes when she’s deciding whether to sleep or complain.
“Sarah makes me,” he says.
“She doesn’t make you do anything.”
“She strongly suggests,” he says. “And then I come and it’s—” He stops.
“Yeah,” I say.
He nods once. Doesn’t finish the sentence. That’s Connor. That’s always been Connor—the feeling is there, the words don’t always follow, and I’ve learned to hear both.
He gives Olivia back eventually, when Andrew calls from the kitchen that dinner’s ready and Liam provides an extremely detailed play-by-play of the table arrangement as though this is new information anyone needed.
“We’ll come visit again next week,” Connor says.
“We’ll be here,” I say.
***
Later, after they’ve gone and the house has settled into its nighttime rhythm, I lie in the big bed with all of it around me. The bassinet beside us. Liam already half asleep, his arm thrown over my waist. Andrew behind me. Ethan on the other side, not asleep yet—I can tell by how he breathes.
“You’re still awake,” I say.
“Mm.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Whether the front gutter’s going to be a problem this winter. The Thursday schedule. Whether her latch is improving or if it just seemed like it was improving. Whether I’ll ever stop worrying about both.”
I turn my head to look at him in the dark.
He’s staring at the ceiling.
“I’m not very good at it,” he says. “Feeling lucky. I usually find the variable I can’t account for and focus on that.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight the variable I can’t account for is how good this is. And I can’t seem to make myself worry about it.”
I reach over and find his hand in the dark.
He turns it over and holds on.
Liam, from behind me, half-asleep: “Are you two having a feelings conversation at two in the morning?”
“Go back to sleep,” I say.
“I support feelings,” he says, not opening his eyes. “I just want it on record. I support them at all hours.”
“We know,” Andrew says.
“Good.” Liam pulls me closer without fully waking. “Good.”
The baby makes a sound from the bassinet—not crying, just existing. Ethan is already moving. He checks her, adjusts the swaddle with perfection. He’s watched seventeen instructional videos on swaddle technique by now.
“She’s fine,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
He lies back down. His hand finds mine again in the dark.
My hand rests on my stomach—the habit that stayed even after, months of muscle memory that didn’t get the memo. Flat now. Changed.
The house settles around us.
I stop waiting for something to go wrong.
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