We played three games. Jack won two. I won one on a technicality involving a foot-fault that Lily disputed with the fervor of a high-court judge all the way to the exit.
The night air hit us like a cold sheet when we pushed through the double doors. Lily walked between us, and without asking or even looking up, she reached out and took both our hands. It was a reflexive, easy gesture, as if the three of us walking linked through a dark parking lot was just how Friday nights were supposed to end.
Jack looked at me over her head. His expression was unreadable, but his hand didn't pull away from hers. I looked back, my lungs feeling the bite of the April air.
Lily stopped walking abruptly. She looked up at me with those serious, dark Henley eyes, her small hand still tucked firmly in mine.
"Come home for dinner," she said. It wasn't a request; it was a directive.
I opened my mouth to offer one of the many rational, adult excuses I’d been rehearsing in my head since the second game.
"We have leftovers," she added, sensing a hesitation she wasn't prepared to accept. "From yesterday. Uncle Jack made too much. It’s good."
Jack remained silent. He was looking somewhere slightly to the left of me, a tell I’d come to recognize as his way of staying out of the blast zone. He wasn't pushing, and he wasn't pulling. He was just leaving the door unlatched and letting me decide if I wanted to walk through it.
I looked down at Lily. I looked at her hand in mine
"Okay," I said.
Lily nodded, satisfied, and started walking again, pulling us both along behind her like she'd known all along how this was going to go.
Which, knowing Lily, she almost certainly had.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jack
Lily had taken Maddie upstairs to show her something—Gerald's house, she’d called it, which was an elaborate arrangement of a shoebox and some fabric scraps she’d been engineering for the past week. I’d heard about Gerald’s floor plan in grueling detail over breakfast. I hadn’t been invited to the viewing.
I did the dishes.
The house had a different quality when Maddie was in it. I’d noticed it that first night, and I noticed it now—something about the air, the way the rooms felt occupied in a different way. Less like a house I was managing and more like a place where things happened. I wasn't sure what to do with that observation, so I just kept my head down and scrubbed.
They came back down after twenty minutes. Lily appeared first, satisfied in the way of someone who had successfully completed a presentation, and announced she was going to watch television for exactly twenty minutes before bed. It wasn't a thing we'd agreed on, but I let go because I was watching Maddie come down the stairs and doing a poor job of pretending I wasn't.
Lily disappeared into the living room. The television hummed to life, low and steady.
Maddie came into the kitchen and stood beside me, exactly where she’d stood that first time. Without a word, she found the dish towel and started drying.
"This is becoming a habit," I said.
"Guess so," she said.
We worked through the last of it. The noise from the television in the other room, the water, the quiet of a house at the end of an evening. I was very aware of her standing there. I'd been very aware of her standing there for weeks and I was running out of ways to file it under something else.
"Listen," I said.
"Listen," she said, at exactly the same moment.
We both stopped.
She looked at me. I looked at her. Something moved between us that I wasn't going to name.
"Go ahead," I said.
"No, you."
I set the last bowl on the rack and dried my hands on the front of my jeans. I turned and leaned against the counter, needing the solid weight behind me.