She looked at him with an expression. He was beginning to be able to read that mixture of gratitude and something more complicated. Something that was close to relief and close to grief at the same time. The feeling of someone who has been holding their breath for so long that breathing again feels dangerous. I'll take it, she said.
Good. They were quiet for a moment. Then Ava's voice came from the hallway. She had come home from Destiny's. The front door had opened and closed, and neither of them had heard it, and she appeared in the kitchen doorway in her purple jacket with her overnight bag over one shoulder and her eyes going immediately to the bouncy seat where Noah was sitting contentedly examining his own hands.
"He's awake," she announced. This was her greeting. "Not hello, not I'm home, he's awake. Hi, baby." James said, "Hi, Daddy."
She dropped the bag, washed her hands unprompted, automatic, and went to Noah. Sophia and James looked at each other across the kitchen. In the eye contact, in the silence, in the space between what had been said and what had not yet been said, was an entire conversation they were not ready to have out loud. James looked away first. "I'll make breakfast," he said.
Sophia said, "I'll help." And they moved around his kitchen with the careful choreography of two people who were still figuring out how close to stand. And Ava sat on the floor talking to Noah like he was her equal and her responsibility and and the most interesting person she had met in a long time. And the kitchen filled with the ordinary noise of a Saturday morning. And James made pancakes because Ava had asked for pancakes and he had said no through his mother last week and some promises needed to be kept.
He stood at the stove and flipped pancakes and felt the morning settle into something he couldn't name yet. Not peace, not resolution, but something solid, something that was beginning to have a shape, even if the shape was still incomplete. Three weeks had passed since that knock on his door. Three weeks that had taken him through more emotional territory than the three years before them combined. And he understood, standing at his stove on a Saturday morning, with Ava's voice in the background and Sophia at the counter cutting strawberries and Noah's feet kicking the air, that he was in a different place than he had been at the beginning.
He had started this thing in survival mode, taking it one day at a time, one decision at a time, keeping his heart at a careful arm's length from what was happening in his house. He was not in survival mode anymore. He wasn't sure exactly when that had changed, but he could feel the difference. The way you feel when a room you've been in for a long time gets more light in it. Not a sudden change, just a gradual shift that you don't notice until you look up and realize you can see more clearly than you could before.
Sophia put a handful of strawberries on the plate beside him. Their hands were close on the counter for one second. Neither of them moved away. Then the moment passed and they were just two people making breakfast. And then the morning went on.
But that afternoon, something happened that James had not seen coming, which was ironic given how carefully he had been watching everything. It was just after 2:00. Noah was down for his afternoon nap. Ava was in her room doing homework, or what she claimed was homework, with the music on low. James and Sophia were in the living room, sitting across from each other, going through the logistics of her Monday meeting with Sandra, what documents she had, what she needed to organize, what she remembered about the specific dates of Dave's visits to the apartment.