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“And that’s how sea changes,” Chiara explains kindly and yet with such seriousness as if she was talking to her colleague, not a five-year old. “It is common to say that high tide and low tide shift after six hours, but due to cyclic rotation of Earth, it’s actually six hours, twelve minutes and thirty seconds.”
Ethan chuckles and the sound is meant to be amused, but turns out rather sentimental.
Sitting by the ocean, light summer breeze ruffling his hair - and Chiara’s and Matilda’s; he wonders how did he get here? What was the one moment, the one chance that he took and turned into his new reality?
“How do you know all of that, mom?” Matilda asks and her blue eyes (Ethan’s eyes) sparkle in a nightfall - even at such young age, she is hungry for knowledge, always learning, always exploring. A true Ramsey, Chiara often laughs.
“Your grandpa Dorian told me all about it when I was a little monkey, just like you are now.”
The new reality in which it’s not a rarity to feel happy. The one in which there are people who love him and never fail to let him know so.
So often he fears that this life is too good to be more than just an illusion.
“Grandpa Dorian was an amazing dad, right?” Matilda asks and there’s a sadness in Chiara’s soft smile, a sadness that will never truly go away, as she nods.
Too good to be more than just a dream, his most secret desire.
“It is so great that I have an amazing dad, too!” Matilda exclaims with the pure unadulterated joy as she turns to Ethan.
He smiles down at her warmly and keeps wondering, what are the chances that the life gifted the two most incredible women to him?