"Okay," I whispered. "I hear you."
From the end of the hall came the sudden, sharp clatter of a shelf being dropped, followed immediately by Lily's voice explaining, with great patience, exactly why it was Jack’s fault.
I pushed off from the wall and walked back toward the noise.
The corridor smelled of fresh plaster, sawdust, and the promise of a long, slow Sunday. I walked through the seam of it—the old life, the new life—and found Jack looking up as I entered the room. He gave me that unguarded smile that had been getting easier to find for a year now.
"Maddie, tell him B goes into C," Lily said, not looking up from the manual.
I sat down on the floor between them. "B goes into C," I confirmed.
Jack looked at me, his eyes dark and warm. Something in his face did that thing I’d stopped trying to define because it didn’t need a name anymore.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I know."
He reached over and took my hand, his fingers lacing through mine. The ring caught the morning sun. Lily looked up then, her gaze shifting from our joined hands to my stomach, her eyes narrowing with logistical focus.
"Is the baby going to need a shelf, too?" she asked.
Jack looked at me. I looked at Jack.
"Probably," I said.
Lily nodded, satisfied. "We should finish this one first," she said, tapping the instruction book. "Gerald’s been waiting long enough."
Jack’s hand tightened around mine. Something passed between us that was too full to be a smile and too quiet to be anything else. Outside, Clear Creek was waking up.
I was home at last.