Page 131

So I text the group chat instead. The one that used to light up multiple times a day and now mostly holds pictures of Charlie in seasonal outfits.

Olivia

Are you two free for a video call? I have news…

Harper

NEWS??

Is it firefighter news????

Ivy

I’m free, Charlie’s finally down, do NOT make me scream and wake her.

Olivia

No promises.

We get on, and there they are, my two oldest people stacked in little boxes on my phone. Ivy in a rocking chair with the monitor glowing behind her. Harper too close to the camera, Micah’s voice somewhere off screen.

It hits me how long it’s been since we did this. There was a season we did it constantly, any time one of us had news or a bad day or a boy to dissect. Then Harper moved and Ivy had Charlie and the calls got rare, and I told myself that was just what happened to people. I feel the old ache of it for exactly one moment.

Then I remember I have good news, and the ache doesn’t get to have this.

Ivy goes first with her updates. Charlie’s grabbing at the hanging toys now. Charlie slept five hours and Ivy cried from joy and also grief because her baby’s growing up.

Then Harper. “Okay, I can’t wait anymore. Micah and I are coming to Dallas this weekend, it’s decided, and I am finally meeting the firefighter in person. Group dinner. All of us. No more excuses.”

“That’s actually perfect,” I say, “but that’s not even my news.”

They both go still. Two little boxes, waiting.

There’s no clever way, so I just say it. “I signed up to get baptized. First Sunday in March.”

For a second neither of them makes a sound, which for Harper is a medical event.

Then Ivy’s face crumples, the good way, both hands over her mouth, and Harper makes a noise that definitely wakes Charlie. Harper, an hour and a half away, starts yelling off screen, “Micah! We’re going to Dallas this weekend and in March!”

“Harper, breathe,” I say.

“I will not breathe. Olivia.” She pulls the phone right up to her face, eyes wet, not hiding it. “You went back. You actually went back. Do you know how long I’ve prayed for this? Since forever.”

“I know.”

“You went back.”

“I went back.”

Ivy can’t talk yet. She just nods and cries and holds the baby monitor to her chest for no reason, and Harper’s a mess. I sit in my apartment and I don’t feel a single exit in the room.

This is the thing I was afraid of. Being seen going in. Being loved out loud by people who watched me leave and never gave up on me coming back.

It doesn’t feel like a bill coming due. It feels like home.

I don’t tell them about Bo. Not tonight. Bo is the one piece I’m still holding close, and some things you say to a person’s face.

Luke comes over the next night, off shift, showered, still a little hollowed out the way he gets after a full twenty-four, but glad to be here, and I make pasta.