Page 80 of Omega’s Fold

I put my forehead back against his.

“Wyatt.”

“Yeah.”

“There is a thing I need you to do for me. Tomorrow. The next few days.”

“Mm.”

“Linden’s lawyers are going to come back inside the week. Possibly inside forty-eight hours. The affidavit will land in the morning. They will know by lunchtime. Their first move will be a settlement offer to anyone they think might have legal standing, and you have legal standing because your well went dry. The first offer they make you will look generous and will be a quarter of what they will eventually pay. Don’t take it. Don’t take the second one either.”

“Julian, I can’t take a chance on this. If I get an offer that will bail me out, I’ll have to take it.”

“I know. I know what it sounds like. Promise me. Don’t take the first. Don’t take the second. Wait for the third. We get a lawyer to look at the third before you sign anything.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

He almost smiles. It crosses his mouth and goes again.

“Donna says the realtor has an offer already,” he says. “It’s a low one but it’s an offer.”

“Don’t take that one either.”

He almost laughs.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

We stand there in the kitchen with our foreheads together. I don’t want to move. I am terrified that if I move he will move, and if he moves the moment ends.

“Bed,” he says, finally. He holds out his hand and I take it.

We go up the stairs together, past the door of his mother’s room which is not where I am sleeping tonight, past Matthew’s door which is shut with a strip of light still showing under it. Wyatt’s door is open. He pulls me through it and shuts it behind us.

I have not slept in this room since August.

I sleep in it now, with my arm over the small almost-curve of his belly and my face in the back of his neck, and I do not let go of him once.

21. Wyatt

I wake before the alarm, the way I always do.

The difference is what I wake to. Julian is on his stomach with his face turned toward me and his hand under my shoulder, fingers curled. His mouth is open against the pillow. There is a faint shine of saliva at the corner of it. His hair is on end. He is breathing slow and deep.

I lie still and look at him.

From the light, I think it is past eight o’clock, near as I can tell without turning my head to the clock. I can’t remember the last time that I slept this late. The room smells of him and of me and of the two of us together.

His hand on my shoulder twitches. He makes a small sound. He does not wake.

I get out from under his arm slowly. He resettles. I pull the quilt up to his shoulder the way he did to me on the morning the heat broke, and I get my jeans off the floor and I go down the stairs in my socks.

The kitchen is cold. The picture of our daughter is on the fridge where I put it last night, held up by the tractor magnet that has been on the door since I was Matthew’s age. I stop at the fridge and I look at her. The light in the kitchen is bad enough that I have to lean in a little.

She has not changed since last night. She is still curled. Her hand is still by her face.