Darius worked New Year's Eve the way he worked most holidays, not because he had to, but because the facility needed someone responsible on shift when half the crew called in, and the other half worked distracted, and he had long since made peace with being the person who stayed. He brought Amara to his mother's at 6:00, kissed her forehead while she complained that Marcus got to stay up until midnight, and she didn't. Drove to the facility and spent the first 3 hours of 2025 replacing a coolant line on a refrigerated storage unit with a flashlight and cold hands and the radio on low playing something from the '9s that he half remembered from childhood. He did not mind. There was something clarifying about physical work in the small hours.
Something honest about it. The problem in front of you was the only problem that mattered until it was solved. And when it was solved, you knew it immediately and completely. He was getting less certainty in other areas of his life. And he was trying to decide whether that was a problem or a sign of something alive.
Victoria had texted him at midnight. Not a holiday greeting. Exactly. More like something she'd been thinking. And finally said, "The last 12 months were the first time in 6 years I ended a year wanting the next one to start."
Then a minute later, I blamed the Stegosaurus granola bars. He had texted back, "Happy New Year, Victoria." She had sent back, "Happy New Year, Darius." And then a pause and then, "Go fix something. I know you're at work."
He had laughed in the empty facility corridor and gone back to the coolant line and thought, not for the first time, that she paid closer attention than almost anyone he had ever known. January ran fast and cold and busy. Three things happened in the first two weeks that and changed the shape of what they were. The first was that Amara met her not intentionally. Victoria had come by on a Tuesday evening early for her barely past 7 because she had a board meeting the following morning and had told Darius she needed to think out loud and his apartment was the only place she could do it without generating meeting minutes.
She had not known because Darius had not thought to mention it that Amara was home that night instead of at his mother's because Amara had a cold and his mother had a bad knee and the logistics had rearranged themselves at 4:00 in the afternoon. The door opened and Victoria walked in and Amara was right there in the living room, cross-legged on the couch, a blanket around her shoulders and a book on her knees and a look on her face that children deploy when they encounter an adult. They haven't been told about that specific radar calibrated assessment that misses nothing and forgives nothing and lands its conclusions with absolute speed. Victoria stopped. Amara looked at Victoria at the suit at the briefcase back at Victoria's face.
You're the girl, Amara said. Darius closed his eyes for approximately one second. Victoria looked at him. The girl? She has a category system, he said.
Don't read into it. Amara pulled her blanket tighter with the satisfied authority of someone who has just confirmed a hypothesis. Dad smiles at his phone. "When you text," she said to Victoria. Perfectly matter-of-fact.
"He thinks I don't notice, but I notice everything I've heard." Victoria said carefully. "Are you staying for dinner?" "I wasn't planning. We're having soup."
Amara said, "Dad's soup is really good. You should stay." Darius looked at his daughter. The expression in who is deciding whether to be proud or mortified and landing somewhere between both. Victoria looked at him.