A Glimpse of Something Wondrous

The elevator doors parted directly onto the front hallway, and the smell hit Andy first—a draft of yeasty bread, the afterglow of sunlight through a clean kitchen, and underneath both, the base note of lemon from the polish Laura always insisted on. It was the scent of a home he’d never actually lived in, but now well remembered from the memories he and Laura shared. He stepped forward, not out of habit but from gravity, and both of Laura’s bodies came after, side by side, their movement so cleanly mirrored it was almost unsettling if you didn’t know her.

The foyer was bigger than he remembered—pale walls, walnut floor, a runner rug with navy diamonds running the length of it. The glass on the front door made the January light even sharper, and in that hard clarity, Andy was aware of both Lauras at once: one with her hand braced lightly on the doorframe, the other with her arms folded loose across her chest, both of her standing so still it made the air in the room feel paused.

Andy didn’t speak. Neither did Laura. For a moment, both just stood in the hum of the morning, letting the house do its thing.

He couldn’t help looking at her, at both of her, just to see how she reacted—if she’d flinch at being back here, or if she’d do the thing where she pretended it was all a setup, a piece of theater that the Hotel or the Dream Date had staged for their benefit. But she didn’t. Both of her went quiet, softer than he’d ever seen, and her eyes—both sets—moved slowly across the wainscoting, up to the light fixture, then down to the boot tray by the door as if checking every detail against some old ledger of memory.

After a while, Andy found his voice. “It’s all exactly the same,” he said, more observation than anything else.

Laura blinked, slowly, in stereo, then shrugged. She said, “I keep expecting it to glitch. Like, maybe the house would be backwards, or the kitchen would be on the wrong side. But it’s not. It’s right.” She pressed her hand harder to the wood, as if confirming the realness of it.

He tried to laugh. “We could go look for the TV remote, see if it’s still in the same drawer.”

Laura made a face. “You’re not funny before 10am,” she said, but her voices were warm.

He took a step into the hall, letting his hand drift across the long table against the wall. There were only a few things on it—a shallow glass bowl, a stack of mail that looked convincingly random, and a vase holding a spray of winterberry stems, the berries bright red against the starkness of the rest. Laura’s two bodies fell into step beside him, one on each side, and together they drifted deeper into the front rooms.

“Welcome home, darling,” Laura said with a smirk. Andy smiled back and hugged her, both bodies.

The whole place felt lived in, as if someone had pressed the “play” button on a real family’s life and then stepped out to give them a moment alone.

They passed the powder room, the glass-paned doors to the den, and then paused at the edge of the living room. The sunlight in here was brighter—north-facing windows catching the reflection off a bank of new snow outside. In the corner, beside the stairs, was a hall tree with a jumble of scarves and winter hats, some clearly hand-knit, a couple labeled with names or years in thick Sharpie on the inside.

He saw Laura’s gaze catch on a royal blue beanie near the top of the hall tree’s hooks—small, pom-pommed, unmistakably hers. She went still for a moment, then one of her lifted it down with both hands, the way you’d handle something you’d given up on finding.

She put it on without ceremony.

Andy looked at her and felt the smile happen before he could decide anything about it.

“There it is.”

“What,” Laura said flatly.

“Nothing.”

“Andy.”

“You look like you’re planning something,” he said. “Like, specifically. Like you’ve already cased the place.”

Both of her turned to look at him with identical expressions of profound, withering patience. But neither of her took the hat off. She reached up and pressed the pom-pom down, then let it spring back, while her other body crossed her arms, and Andy thought, not for the first time, that he could probably stand here for the rest of his life and not get tired of watching her be herself.

They made it two steps into the living room before Andy looked at the photos.

They still lined the wall above the staircase—maybe two dozen, in mismatched frames, starting with a sepia-toned portrait at the bottom and working up to digital prints at the top. Each was a moment, paused and curated: an elementary school Christmas, a beach day, some kind of science fair, a high school play with the aftermath of pancake makeup and stage fright still visible.

But the one that stopped Andy this time was the photo right at eye level when you entered, which he had somehow missed last time: two kids, maybe nine, in fleece pajamas, sprawled on a blanket fort in the living room. There was a flashlight between them, propped up by a stack of books, and both were caught mid-laugh, hair wild and faces shiny with delight.

“That one,” Andy said, pointing. “I remember that night. We convinced my mom we were doing a science project. We just wanted to stay up and tell ghost stories.”

Both of Laura’s faces went soft at the edges, the kind of smile that belonged to a version of her he’d rarely seen. “You wanted to record EVPs. You brought the tape recorder. But you forgot batteries, so we used the flashlight to ‘signal’ the ghosts.”

He grinned. “It worked, though. We saw the flash on the wall and convinced ourselves it was real.”

She nodded, looking at the photo with a seriousness that was almost reverent. “We were such idiots,” she said, but it was the kind of insult that meant the opposite.

They stood like that, just looking, for longer than Andy would have expected. He kept waiting for Laura to make a joke, to downplay the sweetness, but she didn’t. She just let the moment happen.

He reached out, half to steady himself and half to point at the frame. “This is one of the real ones. I mean, an actual memory, not something we were given.”

The Laura nearest him leaned in, so close he could smell the shampoo in her hair. “That’s from four years before,” she said. “Before the footbridge. Before—” She didn’t finish. Just let it hang. “Yes. This was real.”

He wanted to say something profound, something that would make it clear how much it mattered to him that the house hadn’t cheated this. But the words stuck, so he settled for, “You look happy in it.”

“I was,” she said. Both bodies at once, same tone.

They moved on, but not in a hurry. Andy let Laura set the pace, which was slower than usual; she stopped at each photo, pointing out details he would have missed. A spaghetti-stained shirt, a bandaid on an arm, the time his family tried and failed to keep a goldfish alive for more than a month.

He tried to match her for memory, and found that he could.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Andy looked up, then at both of Laura’s faces. “I know you said last night you were going to bore me, but so far you’re two for two on making me weirdly emotional.”

Both of Laura’s faces broke into matching smiles. “Good,” the leftmost said. “I’m pacing myself. If I did all the heavy stuff first, you’d probably try to run for it.”

“Not a chance,” Andy said.

The other Laura elbowed him in the ribs. “Boring part is just until lunch. Then there’s a surprise.” She made a face. “If you behave.”

He made a show of looking skeptical, but he kind of loved it.

Instead of letting her tease more, Andy put a hand on the nearest Laura’s lower back and nudged both of her bodies toward the staircase. “We should do the rest,” he said. “And you haven’t shown me the secret attic last time.”

Both Lauras made a face at him, but they climbed together, one just a step behind the other.

Halfway up, Andy paused at a photograph he hadn’t noticed before. It was Laura, in her early twenties, standing in a white coat on a college campus quad, a real stethoscope draped around her neck, a huge, bright smile on her face. He pointed at it. “That was—” He remembered the day, of course.

The Laura at the front of the line turned to look, and her expression flickered through three shades of meaning in a single second. “That was me,” she said, quiet but sure. “Med school orientation. I remember because it was the first time I ever put one of those things on and believed it could actually be real.”

Andy smiled, feeling the wash of pride as if it was his own. “You look so happy.”

Laura’s faces broke into twin grins. “I was so convinced I was going to fail out in the first month. I spent every night after class just reading and panicking.” She looked at him, eyes bright. “I’m surprised you remember it. You said you didn’t care about that kind of stuff.”

He shrugged. “I care about your stuff.”

Both Lauras blinked at him, as if unsure how to process it, but they didn’t say anything else.

Two steps further, she paused, her attention snared by a photo she’d clearly skipped past the last time they were here. It was a dusk shot, a campsite somewhere in the middle of nowhere, both of them in their early twenties, Andy trying and failing to light a campfire while Laura made a face at the camera.

“I forgot about this,” she said, her tone more wonder than nostalgia. “We didn’t get the fire going until like midnight. You had to use the owner’s manual from your car as kindling.”

He grinned. “Somewhere in the basement, we still have the copy with half the last chapter burned off.”

She shook her head, laughing. “We slept in the back seat and ate half-crumbled granola bars for breakfast.” She looked at him, her face softening. “That was a really good night.”

Andy let himself linger on it, too, remembering how wide and perfect the sky looked above them, how Laura had insisted on reading the constellations even though neither of them could actually find Orion.

Then, quieter, Laura said, “I keep wishing it was the real life. Not—” She stopped, started again. “Not the way I used to mean that. Not because I wanted you to myself or whatever. Just because—” She looked at the photo of their camping trip, when they were twenty-six. “I want to have actually been there. I want the granola bars to have actually happened. The campfire. The ghost stories. I want to have been the one who was actually there for all of it. I want to have actually been cold that night. I want to have actually been the one who fell asleep first and made you turn the flashlight off.” A pause. “I want to have earned all the ones on this wall.”

Andy looked at her for a moment. “You remember it,” he said.

She frowned slightly. “That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?” He turned back to the photo. “You remember the flashlight. You remembered the ghost stories. I didn’t even remember the ghost stories.” He shook his head. “If you can remember it that well, it’s real. It happened. It’s yours.”

Both of Laura’s faces were still, the way they got when she was deciding whether to believe something.

“And besides,” he said, “we get both. We get all of that—” he gestured at the wall, the whole length of it— “and we still get what comes next. Most people only get one life with someone. We got two.”

Laura was quiet for a long moment. Then the one on his left reached up and pressed the pom-pom on her hat down, let it spring back. “That’s annoyingly well-reasoned,” she said.

“I have my moments.”

She looked at him sideways. “Before 10am, even.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

They stood there, side by side, for a long moment before moving up.

On the next landing, a New Year’s photo: party hats on crooked, confetti in the air, a clock in the background frozen at 11:59. Laura pointed. “You got so drunk that night you swore you’d invent a machine that could make us live forever.”

He remembered the headache, but not the promise. “Did I?”

She nodded, both faces at once. “You said it would be your wedding present to me.”

He almost asked if it was, but stopped. Some things were better left to the timeline they happened in.

A few more steps, and the photo of their wedding came up. Laura in white, hair up, a veil tucked with a tiny blue comb. Andy wore a suit that actually fit him, and the two of them looked straight at the camera, the kind of look that said they were about to break into laughter if anyone waited a second longer.

Andy touched the frame. “You look beautiful,” he said, and meant it.

Her mouth tightened for a second, then softened. “I’m glad we got this one.”

He didn’t hurry them past it. For a second, both just looked at the photo, as if daring the future to turn out any other way.

The last photo was near the top of the stairs. It was newer than the others—crisper color, different frame. Laura in a hospital gown, sitting up in a hospital bed, Andy in blue scrubs beside her, both of them looking down at a swaddled newborn. The baby had dark reddish brown hair, a full head of it, and green eyes that seemed to shine even in the print. Laura’s face was raw with joy, but also with terror, and Andy’s had the kind of dazed relief of a man who had just survived a world-ending ordeal.

He stopped. “I still don’t remember this,” he said, voice catching on the edge.

Neither did Laura, but both bodies went very still. “Maybe it’s for later,” she said. She sounded uncertain, but there was a warmth in it.

They clocked the photo in passing, and kept going.

At the top, both of Laura reached for him, arms going around his shoulders from each side, and hugged him in at once. It wasn’t the hug of a woman who needed to be held; it was the grip of someone who’d promised not to ever let go.

“I’m never going to let you go,” he started to say, but before the last word left his mouth, a sound cut through the house: not the sharp wail of crying, but the slow, rising fuss of a baby just starting to build up momentum.

Andy and Laura froze, the word “never” still hanging in the air.

Down the hall, from the direction of the nursery, the sound repeated—a small, insistent, working-up-to-it whine, muffled by a wall and a closed door.

Andy turned to Laura, half expecting her to say it was a trick, a prank, that the house was playing games again.

The baby’s sound was louder now—insistent, a half-whimper that hadn’t made up its mind whether it was going to escalate. Andy’s whole body froze, his hand tightening where it had been braced against Laura’s back. He looked toward the sound, then at Laura, his mouth working but unable to land on a single word. Whatever he’d meant to say at the top of the stairs was gone.

Both Lauras went stock still. The shock on one face landed first, the other followed a split second later, a mirrored echo, their mouths slack, eyes wide. One of her hands crept unconsciously to her stomach, fingers pressing in as if to reassure herself she was still solid, still there.

The sound came again. Andy found his voice, but it was barely a voice at all—just a scraped-out, “Is that…?”

He didn’t finish. Laura didn’t wait for him to. Instead, both of her bodies surged forward, hand catching his in a grip so tight it burned. She pulled, not in panic but with an urgency that brooked no argument, and over her shoulder, she managed, “I didn’t—” but the words broke on the last syllable.

He let her lead. They crossed the landing together, his feet barely registering the runner rug, her double stride making it impossible to keep up and impossible to fall behind. At the nursery door, Laura’s hand shook as she wrapped it around the knob. She didn’t turn to him, didn’t offer a plan or a guess or any of her usual “here’s how we’re going to handle it” bravado. She just opened the door.

The room was exactly as they’d left it. Walls the color of old cream, gold light from the window falling in slats across the floor. The crib stood against the far wall, rocker in the corner, quilt still draped over one arm, shelf lined with a precise row of plush animals and bright board books, none of them ever opened. The only difference was the air—warmer, charged, like the heat you felt when someone else’s breathing filled the space just before a storm.

Above the crib, the mobile turned slowly on its own clockwork, the plush elephants and giraffes and horses drifting in an endless circle. Andy couldn’t stop watching the animals, as if they might break formation and fly off at any moment.

But it wasn’t the animals that mattered.

The baby stood in the crib, both hands gripping the rail, already pulled up on unsteady legs by the time the door swung open. Her hair—dark reddish brown, a little wild, just like in the photo—stood out in soft tufts. Her eyes were green, but not just green: a peculiar, refracted brightness, the kind of color that was never quite the same twice. She watched Andy and both of Laura in the doorway with the open, slow calculation of a one-year-old, eyes flicking from Laura to Andy to Laura again, working out whether this situation was going to be good, bad, or just interesting.

For a second, no one moved.

Then the baby’s face broke, slow and certain, into a wide, gummy grin. The kind of smile that split her whole face and showed all of her, the kind that babies made when they had just decided that life was a series of delights. She bounced, twice, the movement so sudden and violent it made the crib rail rattle, then let out a squeal that was pure, delighted animal. “Ma-ma-ma!”

The noise unfroze Laura. Both bodies shot forward, arms open. Andy followed, or maybe just got pulled along in the gravity of it.

He barely noticed the way the mobile kept spinning, or the dust motes dancing in the light, or even the way the quilt on the rocker looked rumpled now, as if someone had actually sat in it. He saw only Laura—both of her—leaning over the rail, hands reaching, the air between them and the baby thick enough to slow time.

The baby let go of the rail and toppled forward, arms out. Laura caught her, one hand under the armpit, the other at the belly, lifting her up and out like it was the most natural movement in the world.

And in a way, it was.

Andy heard his own breathing, a wild, disordered thing. The baby was making a chuffing sound, not quite laughter, not quite breathing, just a running commentary of her own amazement. Andy could see the fine tremble in Laura’s hands, the way she held the baby like she was made of glass, the way her face changed as she took in every tiny feature.

He watched both of Laura hold her at once, four hands gentle on the soft bundle of kid. One hand pressed to the baby’s back, the other to her head, thumb smoothing down a cowlick that seemed already destined to be unmanageable. The baby’s legs kicked, frantic, as if she meant to keep running even now that she was airborne. Her eyes never left Laura’s face.

“I didn’t do this,” Laura said, and this time her voices braided together in a trembling unison, two throats, one confession. Both faces looked down at the baby, then at Andy, as though seeking confirmation that none of this was another trick, a mirage, or a cruel echo of something they’d never have.

Andy, too, could barely trust any of his senses. He groped for a handhold in reality, his mind racing to catch up with the room, the way the new presence had reshaped not just the scene but the very molecules of the air. The baby’s cry was already giving way to her quiet, curious breathing, all hiccup and bright alertness, and in the stillness something shifted in Andy—something that had been coiled so long he’d forgotten what it was like to feel it unspool.

He reached out, uncertain whether he was allowed to touch—would the child vanish, would Laura shatter, would he shatter?—but Laura, meeting his gaze, nodded, both sets of eyes soft and unguarded. He let his hand fall onto the baby’s foot. It was smaller than he could have imagined, barely the length of his thumb, toes splayed, the skin warm and impossibly soft. He traced the arch with an absent-minded gentleness, surprised at his own reverence.

The baby shrieked, not from fear but delight, and jerked so hard Laura had to readjust both arms. “Da-da-da!” she announced, flailing a small fist toward Andy’s face. For an instant, her fingers found his nose, and the shock of contact—so immediate, so tactile—sent a current through him that left him blinking.

He looked back at Laura, both versions, and found her grinning, eyes puddled with the beginnings of tears.

“I think she likes you,” he managed, the words so thin and insufficient he almost laughed at himself. They didn’t even scratch the surface.

“She doesn’t even know me,” Laura answered, the voice closer to a sob than she’d let herself have in years.

But the baby disagreed. She latched onto a fistful of Laura’s hair and yanked, all muscle and willpower. Laura’s head jerked but she never let go, not of the baby or her own composure. “Ma-ma!” the baby crowed, as proud as if she’d invented the word.

“She knows you,” Andy said, surprised to find that he meant it absolutely, with a conviction that felt like it had been waiting its whole life to be voiced.

They stood in the nursery together, gold light fanning through the blinds, the ordinary world erased and remade by the presence of this child. It was as if the room had always been waiting for the scene to complete itself, for the last figure to arrive on stage. Laura held the baby as though she were an anchor in a rising wind, gripping her so tightly that letting go would’ve sent them both into orbit.

The baby’s eyes roamed—Andy, Laura, Andy, Laura—a circuit that seemed to amuse her each time she completed it. After a while, the motion slowed, and then the baby grinned, showing all gums and a single, comically out-of-place tooth.

Andy watched as she started to wriggle, one foot braced against Laura’s sternum, pushing as if she couldn’t bear to miss out on whatever was next. Laura, unthinking, just switched the baby to one hip, her second self catching a flailing ankle with practiced ease. The movement was so fluid, it felt like muscle memory from a life neither of them had lived yet.

The baby fixed Andy with a look so intense and unblinking that for a second he was convinced she was reading his mind. She unclamped from Laura’s hair, reached out, and caught Andy’s thumb with a grip that was both desperate and deliberate. He allowed his hand to be reeled in, feeling the squeeze, the sticky warmth, the pulse of brand new life. He made a show of wincing, wrinkling his nose, and the baby rewarded him with what could only be described as a smirk.

“Is it always this easy?” he asked, glancing at Laura.

Her laugh was nothing like he remembered from the real world—it came from somewhere less defended, less bitter. “She’s not buying your pain routine, Andy.”

He feigned insult, raising his free hand in mock-surrender. “You’re raising a monster. It’s all your fault.”

“Yours, too,” Laura answered, and then something passed between them, a moment so full and sharp that Andy wondered if this was the real reason for everything that had happened to them. The baby, unbothered, went back to chewing on his thumb.

He let her, letting the pain ground him in the moment, letting the ache in his hand remind him this was all, impossibly, real. Laura’s gaze flickered from the baby to Andy and back, as if she was trying to memorize every permutation. They stood there, a triangle of tangled longing and joy, until the baby let go and began lunging forward, arms outstretched toward Andy, as if only now realizing she had other options for locomotion.

“Da-da-da!” she commanded, voice reaching a new octave. Laura glanced up, catching Andy’s eye, and for once in their long, fractal history, there was no hesitation, no checking for permission or consensus. She simply placed the baby in Andy’s arms.

Andy was awkward for exactly one second, his arms stiff with uncertainty, and then the baby just folded into the crook of his elbow like she belonged there. Her head wobbled on his arm, a weight he hadn’t prepared for, but he adjusted, cupping her back with one palm and supporting her legs with the other. The warmth of her was surprising—she radiated heat and contentment, and, for a moment, she simply observed him, deciding whether he was up to the task.

She reached up, patted his cheek, twice, businesslike, then abandoned his face for the button at his collar. She worked at it, first with one finger, then two, utterly focused, oblivious to the fact that she had an audience.

Andy looked down at her, and something in his chest let go. He could feel it—how the newness of her, the absolute present-ness, erased everything else for the span of a heartbeat. It was a kind of awe, the kind he hadn’t felt since the last time he’d been allowed to see a sunrise before anyone else was awake. He could smell her scent, and it opened cracks in him he had not realized were there. She was achingly familiar.

He looked up to find Laura watching him, both bodies standing a little back, arms crossed, now that her own were empty. She looked more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her, less an agent of chaos and more like a girl who had just witnessed a miracle and didn’t know what to do with it.

For a long minute, nobody said anything. The baby worked the button, determined.

Finally, Laura spoke. It was a small voice, nothing like her usual. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to want this,” she said, her eyes locked on the baby but not really seeing her. “Not after… everything. I keep thinking it’s going to cost us something.”

Andy looked up from the baby and fixed both of Laura’s faces with the full intensity of himself. “You’re allowed to want anything,” he said. “You’re allowed to want all of it.”

She blinked, and her mouth went tight, then softened. She looked away first, gaze dropping to the window, then the floor, then back to the baby.

“That’s not always true,” she said, even quieter. “Not for me. Not lately.”

Andy wanted to reach out, to touch her hand, but both of his were occupied. Instead, he stepped closer, close enough that the three of them—him, Laura, and the baby—made a neat triangle in the space near the window.

The baby stopped working the button, shifted her attention, and made a little wordless noise—somewhere between a sigh and a song. Laura reached out, her hand tentative at first, then bold, and smoothed down the baby’s wild hair.

She left her hand there, just resting, as if the connection alone might keep the world from breaking apart.

The baby wriggled against Andy’s hold, twisting with an impatience that was both brand new and instantly recognizable. He lowered her onto the rug, half-worried she’d just collapse, but as soon as her feet hit the floor she was up, both hands shot out, and she staggered toward the leg of the crib with all the purpose of someone who’d been walking for months instead of days.

Laura’s two bodies folded down onto the rug, one near the rocker, the other a little off to the side by the window. Andy settled between them, close enough to catch the baby if she bolted in his direction.

For a moment, the baby just stood there, a fist white-knuckled on the crib, the other waving at the air to keep her upright. She looked around the room, a queen surveying her new domain, and then—like she’d caught some invisible cue—she turned toward Laura and Andy.

Laura reached out with both hands, palms up, coaxing. “Come on,” she said, voice warm and open. “You can do it.”

The baby hesitated, considering the physics. For a heartbeat, she clung tighter, then—sudden and reckless—let go. She teetered forward, arms out, feet slapping the carpet, and managed a single step, then another. On the third, her legs gave out and she landed on her bottom with a thud that sounded worse than it must have felt.

There was a pause. The kind where, in a different house, a child might decide whether to laugh or cry. In this house, the baby chose laughter: a wild, bright giggle that shook her whole body and made Laura’s hands fly to her mouth in surprise.

Andy laughed too, not just at the spectacle but at the pure, contagious joy of it.

“Champion,” he said, clapping softly.

The baby, emboldened, tried again. This time, she made it three steps in a row, right toward Andy. She overbalanced, but he was ready; he caught her under the arms and swung her up in a wide arc, making her shriek in delight.

Both of Laura’s faces were lit up, eyes bright and shiny, mouths wide with the kind of smile that didn’t need to choose between happiness and awe. She scooted closer, and the next time the baby tried, it was toward her.

They kept at it, passing her back and forth, cheering every tiny accomplishment. For a while, there was nothing else in the room except a baby learning to walk, and two people learning how to love her without reservation.

When the baby tired of walking, she switched to crawling, which she did with the purposefulness of a dogged old man. She made straight for the shelf of books, ignored every toy and animal along the way, and reached up with both hands for a board book with a bright yellow cover.

Laura grabbed it for her, checked the title—“Big Bear, Little Chair”—and then sat, tucking the baby into her lap. She opened the book and started pointing at the pictures on each spread, but the baby wasn’t interested in the art. She gnawed the corner, jaw working, oblivious to everything else.

Andy leaned in over Laura’s shoulder, pointing at a cartoon bear. “That’s you,” he said, nudging the baby’s arm. “Big bear.” He tapped the next page. “And that’s you, too.”

Laura rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “What about little chair?”

He shrugged. “That’s you, apparently.”

For a beat, all four heads were bent over the book, none of them looking at the pictures, just the baby chewing with increasing determination. Laura’s faces, inches from Andy’s, shifted in a way he recognized: something had caught her attention, something deeper than a page or a smile.

She glanced up at him over the baby’s head. He met her gaze, held it.

Neither looked away.

The baby’s chewing grew more intense, little fist pressed to her own gums, a low whine starting to build in her throat. Andy noticed it first—how the baby’s focus on the book had shifted, how her body tensed a little more, her breathing hitching.

Laura felt it too, went very still, then gently worked the book free before the baby could put a full bite through the cover.

“Hang on,” she said, voice soft, both bodies moving at once. “I know what would help more than a bit of cardboard.”

Andy, still holding the baby’s leg to steady her, looked up. “What?”

But Laura was already getting to her feet, both bodies rising together, eyes bright with certainty. She reached for the baby, but instead of cradling her, she just scooped her up and handed her right off to Andy, as if he was the one who ought to be holding her for this part.

“Come with me,” she said, and took his free hand, fingers twining tight, like she was anchoring herself for what came next.

They crossed the hall, the three of them: Laura’s two bodies leading, Andy in the middle with the baby perched on his hip, the baby herself gripping Andy’s shirt with one hand and working her gums on the other. Down the hallway, past the open door of the study, past the bathroom with its cloud of lemon-scented steam from someone’s earlier shower, and into the second guest room.

This was the room with the window seat—the one where, years ago, they’d sat and watched a thunderstorm roll in over the frozen pond, arguing about whether it was better to die of lightning or boredom.

Laura stopped at the closet. She didn’t say anything, just stood there for a moment, both hands on the knob, as if she was arguing with herself. Then she opened it.

Inside, on the top shelf, exactly where she’d left him, last time, stood Floppy. Blue, one ear partly torn, the fur grayed and patchy in places from years of love and a few more of neglect. For a second, Laura just stared up at him, her face caught between pain and something like relief.

Andy watched her, watched the way both her bodies tensed and then went loose, watched the way her jaw worked.

He said, soft, “You okay?”

Laura nodded, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she reached up, took Floppy down, and held him to her chest for a beat, like she was listening for something only the two of them could hear.

She turned him over, thumb tracing the frayed edge of the torn ear. Then she knelt and offered him to the baby, who took him with both hands, no hesitation, no sense of the moment’s gravity—just the hunger to chew and the need to hold.

The baby shoved Floppy’s ear right into her mouth and bit down, hard, unbothered by the way the stuffing bulged at the seam.

Laura made a sound, part laugh, part sob, and put a hand to her mouth.

Andy said, “She likes him.”

Laura shook her head, smile twisted. “It’s poetic justice, isn’t it? He sat up there for sixteen years waiting for a kid who never came back. And now, the second he gets the chance, he’s on the clock.”

Andy asked, quiet, “Does that bother you?”

Laura considered the question, longer than the moment probably needed. She watched the baby gnaw on the rabbit with total, single-minded focus. Then she said, “No. I think it’s what he was always supposed to do. Like—he finally gets to be what he’s for.”

Andy nodded, pulled her a little closer with the hand that wasn’t holding the baby.

The baby chewed the ear with grim determination for a good five minutes. Every so often she would shake Floppy, as if trying to find his secret center, and then return to gnawing with renewed focus. For a while it seemed like this might last forever—a perpetual motion machine powered entirely by teething and pure spite.

But it didn’t. After a few minutes, the baby’s arms began to slow. Her grip on Floppy grew slack, and she started rubbing at her eyes with the same hand that still clung to the rabbit. The whine that followed was low at first, then scaled upward, turning into a restless, wordless protest. She squirmed in Andy’s lap, head butting against his chest, then turned her face into his arm and made a sound that was unmistakably the beginning of a real, world-ending cry.

Andy looked at Laura, panic flickering in his eyes. “What do we do?”

Laura, for once, didn’t have an immediate answer. She reached for the baby, cradled her against her shoulder, and patted her back in a slow, gentle rhythm. For a few seconds, the baby settled. Then she started rubbing her face against Laura’s shirt, pushing at the fabric, mouth open, still working the ear but now with far less interest.

“Is she… hungry?” Andy ventured.

“Maybe,” Laura said, bouncing the baby a little. “But we just had breakfast, so it’s probably not that.” She checked the baby’s diaper, made a face, and shook her head. “Dry. So not that, either.”

The baby’s face went red. Her fists balled up tight, Floppy nearly forgotten, and the whine escalated.

Andy’s own panic ticked up a notch. “Do you think…?”

Laura shook her head, laughing even as she looked like she might also join in the crying. “You don’t have to fix it, Andy. Sometimes babies just do this. They’re tired, but they don’t know how to quit.”

He exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “That checks out.”

Laura stood, shifting the baby from one side to the other. She started humming, just a little, a song Andy remembered from somewhere in the past—something simple and old, the kind of tune that would have echoed in a kitchen a hundred years ago. The baby’s fists loosened. Her eyes fluttered, just a bit. She kept up the protest, but the volume dropped, and the space between the cries stretched out, thinning like a radio signal in the far country.

For a minute, the only sound was Laura’s humming and the baby’s half-hearted attempts to stay mad at the world.

Eventually, Andy leaned in. “Want me to take her?”

Laura smiled, and both of her bodies nodded at once. “Try,” she said.

He took the baby, gentle, careful. She grumped at the transition, but then burrowed into his shoulder and went still.

Laura sat next to him on the window seat, close enough that her thigh pressed against his. She watched the baby’s face, the way her eyelids drooped, the way she gripped Andy’s shirt and refused to let go.

Andy whispered, “She’s out, isn’t she?”

Laura nodded, softly. “For now.”

They sat that way for a long time, just watching the baby sleep. The sunlight had shifted, edging across the floor toward the door. Outside, the snow shone so bright it almost hurt to look at, but inside, the room was all hush and peace.

Andy closed his eyes, letting himself drift with the warm weight of the baby, with the nearness of Laura, with the sense of a world where—for a little while—everything was simple, and right, and home.

He felt Laura’s hand on his, not grabbing but just resting, and he turned his head to see both of her faces—one smiling, the other serene.

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