Page 90 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

The kumicho is seated in a place of honor, shaded and accompanied by a cool beverage, embodying the stillness associated with true authority.

He traveled across an ocean to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday, and we both know precisely what this visit signifies. Our mutual understanding requires no words. It’s a show of respect and the affirmation of bonds that preserved my family and have only intensified since then.

He raises his glass to me across the lawn, and I respond in kind. Everything that needs saying is said.

Lev should be here for this. He would be dry and unimpressed, telling me the lanterns are an extravagance and the band a waste and my daughter the finest thing this family has ever produced, all in the same flat voice. Or, he would delight in surprising me by saying the party is not big enough for her. That a garden party is beneath our princess.

Truly, I could see him taking either tactic to annoy me and make me smile at him.

It’s days like today that I miss him the most. We buried him in the plot with the old ones. I gave a eulogy he would have called sentimental. But I’ve not stopped talking to him since. He’ll live on in our memories, the most loyal sovetnik who ever lived. Thea calls him my best friend. A childish term, I tell her. But she is not wrong.

And I cannot stop watching her flow through the garden like wind.

Thea moves through the party like she was born to it, which she wasn’t. She was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, where most girls grew up to become teenage wives to men with name-tag jobs.

Where she was born and where she ended up could not be more different.

But she created a new life for us. Every table and every toast bears her signature. She did this the same way she once organized galas for a company that did not deserve her.

She tends the lawn in a blue dress the hue of deep water, with our daughter on her hip for half the afternoon, laughing, sharing stories, and recalling every name. Somehow, she avoids getting Valeria’s hair frosting on herself. Another miracle.

She guides the kumicho’s translator toward the fine whiskey, directs Klaus away from topics that still cause pain, and encourages Galina to sit down for a brief five minutes.

Even her sister Tiny came. It’s not the first time we’ve met, but she’s quite busy with her children, so she doesn’t travel much. She does live up to the name. Or rather, down to it.

Clementine was a premature baby, so she is smaller than Thea even now. Barely five feet tall and curvy, with the same coffee-brown locks as Thea, but curly instead of straight. We assume that’s where Valeria got her curls. All three have Thea’s minty green eyes, too.

The two of them together are a gas, constantly joking and teasing each other the way only sisters can. They have their own shorthand in conversation, and I don’t know how to keep up, but I will one day. I’m determined to know everything I can about the woman I intend to marry.

Thea is the sun this day orbiting, and she doesn’t appear to recognize it. She notices me watching, then approaches and hands me the baby without breaking her stride. “You’re brooding in the corner like a gargoyle. People are going to think you’re plotting, and with you, it could be true. So, stop scaring the guests.”

“I’m always plotting. They are wise to suspect it.” I settle Valeria against my chest, and she grabs my collar in one frosted fist, and somehow, I’ve failed in ten seconds at what Thea has managed for hours. “At the moment I’m plotting out how a man came to deserve any of this.”

“Don’t do that.” Thea’s voice becomes gentler as she gently raises her hand to touch the faint scar along my cheekbone. Anya’s scar. She was right—it does suit me. I prefer not to think about her. Especially now. Thea smiles up at me. “Today your job is to enjoy it. Not to brood. That’s an order from the event planner.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The afternoon fades gently, and Valeria casually demolishes her cake to loud applause. Klaus lifts his glass over the wreckage of frosting and declares, “To Valeria Rose,” which sixty voices echo back. My son and I exchange a long look over our glasses, feeling an entire hard year pass in that moment.

The kumicho, in surprisingly careful English, says, “She has a warrior’s grip. She will cause trouble for many.”

“Thank you for such a blessing, Sensei.”

The sun finally sinks behind the trees, and with it, the mood of the party shifts entirely.

Galina carries my exhausted, frosting-encrusted, triumphant daughter up to the nursery. To my surprise, Valeria goes without protest, asleep on Galina’s shoulder before they go inside. Something in me eases the way it always does when she is safe under my roof for the night.

The lanterns make the dance floor glow. The band shifts their set to something low and warm. The older guests drift home, and the rest drift closer together. They dance on the flagstones under the paper lanterns, couples turning slow in the amber light.

It’s beautiful.

My home is full of music, and my people, and no one is bleeding anywhere in it. Another miracle of joy.

I find my almost-wife by the roses, watching the dance, holding a mostly untouched glass of wine. I take her glass and place it on the wall, then gently pull her into the blue shadow of the arbor away from the light.

“Maxim.” She’s laughing. “We have guests.”

I back her gently into the cool stone, both hands framing her face, and I kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since she came down the stairs this morning in that blue dress, slow and deep and without any of the restraint the daylight required of me. She melts into it, her hands fisting in my shirt, and when I finally pull back, we are both breathing harder, and her eyes have gone dark.