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Kell smiles into his coffee, clearly satisfied with both his beverage and himself.

That may be what strikes me most as the morning keeps unfolding. Not how quickly he learns words. Not how much steadier he is on his feet. Not even the fact that he seems determined to try on every shirt Shannon brought because clothing is apparently another thing requiring complete investigation.

It’s how much of himself he puts into the room. Locke had been quiet in those first days. Gentle. Careful. He watched before moving and considered before speaking.

Kell asks. Kell touches. Kell disagrees.

He wants to know how Janet’s wooden puzzle comes apart, why Blair’s phone keeps making a different sound from mine, and why Shannon puts her feet under herself when she sits on the sofa. He informs Rachel that her coffee smells better than Janet’s because Janet chose French vanilla and this is already a meaningful distinction.

He changes shirts twice more before settling on the dark green one. Shannon holds up the beige one. “What’s wrong with this one?”

Kell studies it. “Boring.”

Shannon recoils. “That is Tom’s favorite T-shirt.”

He looks at her. “Tom boring?” I laugh into my coffee while Shannon puts one hand dramatically over her heart.

“Do not answer that until you meet him.”

Kell looks entirely too pleased with himself, then returns to Janet’s supplies. Rachel has moved to the arm of my sofa, where she watches him return to the paint-by-number kit. There is something almost disorienting about seeing her here. A year ago, Rachel was the woman standing beside an impossible man while the rest of us tried to understand what had happened.

Now she’s watching me do it. Except nothing about Kell feels like a repeat.

He carries the paint-by-number kit to the dining table. Everything else remains scattered across the coffee table, temporarily forgotten.

“Paint.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You can use it today if you want.”

He turns toward me. “Work?”

It takes me a second to understand what he’s asking. Janet explained that she brought things for him to do when I go back to work.

“Not tomorrow. Monday.”

“Monday.”

“Today is Saturday. I’m home tomorrow too.”

Kell nods, fitting the new information into whatever sense of time he’s building.

Yesterday, my condo was exactly the way I arranged it. Quiet. Ordered. Predictable. This morning there are four women in my living room, several open coffee creamers on my counter, Tom’s clothes spread across the sofa and two dining room chairs, Janet’s emergency recreation center covering the coffee table, and a living Wicker Man standing at my dining table with a paintbrush he hasn’t yet used. I wished for what I had again. Someone in the kitchen. Someone whose presence becomes part of the ordinary shape of a day. I thought I understood what that meant.

Kell picks up the beige shirt Shannon abandoned beside him, gives it one more considering look, and says, “Still boring.” Shannon throws a sofa pillow at him. He catches it against his chest and laughs, and mine joins his before I can think about it.

The whole condo is full of voices and laughter, Kell’s running through all of it. Yesterday this place was quiet enough that I knew every sound it made. Today there’s a Wicker Man arguing about shirts at my dining table while four women occupy every available surface.

This is nothing like what I had before. The realization should frighten me more than it does.

Chapter Six

Kell

Sunday is different from Saturday because Laura says it is. I understand the words now. Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Work happens Monday, and Laura is home today. None of that tells me what Sunday is supposed to feel like. So far, it means fewer people in the house, laundry, and Laura wearing soft gray pants while she moves between floors carrying baskets of clothes.