POV: Ivory
The cottage door opened to exactly what I'd described in Diana's office — clean, staged, dead. The bed was made with hotel corners, a single mug rinsed in the sink, Kameron's shirts hung at even intervals in the closet.
I stood in the doorway and saw it for the first time — not as strategy, but as the room I'd sentenced the man I loved to every night for weeks. The pillow held no dent because nobody's head had actually rested on it.
"I'm sorry I put you here." My voice came out rough and I didn't try to smooth it, just let the words stand in the doorway between us the way the truth had been standing for weeks.
Kameron's footsteps were quiet behind me — he moved without sound when he wanted to, which was rare because he generally believed the world should hear him coming. "You kept our kids," he said from my shoulder. "That's what this was for, and it worked."
"It worked and it cost us something we shouldn't have had to pay." I turned to face him, and his eyes caught the porch light. "Every single night I sent you out that door and lay in a bed that was wrong because you weren't in it."
"I know what it cost," he said. "I was the one walking across that yard at five every morning, Ivory — you think I didn't count the steps? Forty-seven, every morning, between where I was supposed to be and where I actually was."
"Forty-seven steps." My fingers tightened around his hand. "And now that file is closed and this cottage is done, and I'm not walking them again," he said. "So let's go home."
We walked back across the yard and through the back door, down the hallway where the children's breathing filtered through closed doors. Colt was in bed with his eyes open, waiting.
"Done?" he said, and Kameron pulled off his boots and climbed in on my left without answering.
"Yeah, we're done," Kameron said, settling his weight into the mattress. "That cottage can sit empty until it rots — I don't care what anyone writes in any file."
Colt shifted on my right and the mattress found its correct weight — three people instead of two, the balance so immediate it felt like the bed had been holding wrong for weeks and had just corrected itself.
Kameron's arm wrapped around my waist and Colt's hand settled on my hip, and the baby kicked once against Kameron's forearm.
"She's got opinions about the arrangement too," Kameron said against my shoulder, and I felt Colt's quiet laugh against my back.
"She kicks harder when both of you are close — I've been keeping track," Colt said, his voice low and warm against my neck.
"You've been keeping track of the baby's kick patterns," Kameron said, and Colt's hand tightened on my hip. "Someone has to document the data — go to sleep."
First real sleep in weeks — the kind where your body surrenders because it trusts the warmth on both sides and no alarm is set for five.
The next day I came home early from a barn call, and the house was quiet with the kids at school. From Hank's room I heard Jolene's voice — not the nursing tone she used for medications and schedules, but something warmer and unlocked.
"He used to line them up by size, every morning — those little plastic horses, maybe fifteen of them, and he'd arrange them smallest to largest across the kitchen floor. If you moved one, he'd know, and he'd just put it back without saying anything about it."
I stopped in the hallway and pressed my back against the wall, holding my breath so the floorboards wouldn't give me away.
"And the barn cats — he'd sit out there for hours talking to them, full conversations, telling them about his day." Her voice caught on something she was trying to hold steady.
"He was four years old, sitting on a hay bale, explaining to a tabby cat why Tuesday was better than Monday."
"Sounds like a boy who needed someone to listen," Hank said — thin, half-lucid, but present enough to respond. "Did he ever get that?"
"Not from me." Jolene's voice thickened and she paused before continuing. "He was exactly that kind of boy, Hank, and I should have been the one listening, and I wasn't — and every story I tell about him now is a story I'm trying to give back."
I stood in the hallway and understood what I was hearing — a mother giving back the childhood she'd walked away from, one story at a time.
My mother died when I was seventeen, and every story she carried about me as a baby, a toddler, died with her.
I walked away before they heard me, out the back door, breathing February air sharp enough to cut through the thickness in my chest.
That evening Levi sat across from me at the kitchen table with his hands flat on the surface. "She knows things about Daddy that we don't," he said — not a question, an observation delivered with the precision of a boy who'd been watching Jolene for weeks.
"She knew him when he was little," I said, and Levi's head tilted. "Before she left."
"I know — she told me one yesterday about Daddy trying to teach a rooster to sit." He said it without accusation, factual and precise, assembled from fragments and silences and the careful way adults talked around Jolene's absence without naming it.
"Did she?" I kept my voice easy, letting him lead. "What did you think of it?"
"I think roosters don't sit," he said, and the corner of his mouth moved in the closest thing to a smile Levi allowed himself. "But I think he was the kind of kid who would try anyway."
"She tells good stories about him," he said, and he looked at me with the steady certainty of a child who spent words carefully. "I don't think she should stop."
My throat tightened and I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine. "I don't think she should stop either, Levi."
He nodded once and picked up his pencil, and the conversation was over. My phone rang from the counter, Dr. Chen's name on the screen, and my shoulders tightened before I'd even answered.
"Ivory, I have your latest blood work." Dr. Chen's voice was measured in the way that meant she'd chosen her words before dialing. "Your blood pressure isn't responding to the medication the way I'd like, and the protein levels are concerning — I want to talk about scheduling the delivery."
"How soon?" My hand pressed flat against my belly, and across the table Levi's eyes tracked the change in my face.
"Soon, Ivory. I'd like you in my office tomorrow morning so we can discuss the timeline." She paused, and I could hear her exhaling deeply.
“It’s necessary.”