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Riley came home from kindergarten with the soft, glassy sheen of a kid who’d lost a fight with a classroom of glue sticks and someone else’s sneeze.
Cate clocked it the moment she saw her—cheeks too pink beneath the freckles, sweater shrugged off one shoulder, a papery sound in the back of her throat when she said hi. Not a cough exactly, more like the rustle of tissue. Her little backpack thumped to the floor, and Riley trudged two steps into the kitchen before stopping as if she’d forgotten how to be upright.
Sydney nudged the door closed with her foot and murmured, “My tough girl,” in that low, bright voice she used for both post-concert crowds and daughters who suddenly weighed a hundred pounds more with fatigue. “Hey, Riley Riot. You look like you fought a really scary germ.”
“Ms. Elena says sharing is caring,” Riley said, voice stuffy with congestion. “Kevin shared his markers n’then his cough.”
Cate’s stomach dropped through the soles of her feet. She was already crossing the tile before she realized she was moving, one hand gentle on Riley’s forehead, the other smoothing back hair that smelled like crayons and kid-shampoo. Too warm. Not wildfire, but not nothing either. A small, reasonable fever. The kind that came with small, reasonable colds.
Cate’s chest didn’t care for reasonable.
“Baby,” she said, and the tenderness in her voice betrayed the steel she was trying to fashion around her worry. “You’re hot.”
“I’m cool,” Riley croaked, defiant, like a knight protesting a wound. Then she coughed—rough and wet—and sagged into Cate’s hip. “M’head hurts.”
Sydney was already turning on the kettle, already getting a mug and the honey bear and the lemon, all muscle memory. “We’re on it,” she said, catching Cate’s gaze over Riley’s head, steady as a lighthouse beam. No fear in her face, just competence. “It’s a cold.”
Cate flashed a smile that felt like paper held to a flame. “Mm.”
It was just a cold until it wasn’t—until the fever spiked and the cough got worse instead of better and the hours became dominos tipping toward catastrophe. Cate knew this. She’d catalogued every horror the body could surprise you with, a private encyclopedia she’d never show her children. She’d known this would happen when she surrendered Riley to the bright, sticky commons of kindergarten. The pipeline of strangers and their coughs, the arithmetic of shared pencils and communal bowls, the tiny disasters of other people’s households. She hated how right she’d been.
Sydney slid a bowl onto the counter. “Chicken noodle?”
Riley perked—then winced, because perking, evidently, used muscles that hurt. “With the long noodles. Not the silly little ones.”
“You heard the general,” Sydney said, reaching for the long pasta. “Long noodles or bust.”
Cate smoothed Riley’s hair again and then forced herself to step back, because handling anxiety looked eerily like defusing a bomb. She moved through the kitchen like a surgeon prepping a sterile field. Wipes. Hand sanitizer. Thermometer tucked under Riley’s tongue, then another one under her arm while the numbers ticked up.
Ellie, meanwhile, had discovered the magnets on the fridge. She was bottled delight in footie pajamas, a wild-haired dandelion toddling on sturdy legs, narrating to herself in vowel-heavy babble as she slapped alphabet letters into something approximating poetry. “Ah! Eh! Dee!” she chirped, then clapped because she was her own favorite audience.
Riley watched from her chair, chin heavy on her hands. “Ellie can’t come near me,” she announced, every inch the benevolent dictator. “M’contagious. Ms. Elena says that means no hugging.”
Ellie immediately tottered in, arms up. Hug. Of course.
“Ah-ah,” Cate said, scooping Ellie up to her hip in one smooth, practiced motion. “No hugs for Riley right now. We’re going to give your sister lots of space. So much space.”
“She’s a dragon,” Sydney added, stirring the soup. “Dragons need space.”
Ellie considered this with grave, one-year-old seriousness. Then she blew a spit bubble and said, “Ga!”
“Genius,” Sydney agreed.
The soup came out steaming. The long noodles were a success so complete that Riley gathered enough strength to smile. Cate set the bowl down, napkin, spoon, the precise ritual of care. “Slow,” she said, the way she’d said the word to Riley the first time she’d taken a step without holding a hand. “It’s hot.”
Riley breathed the steam in. Then: “What if I die, Mama?”
Cate’s heart squeezed so hard she swore she could hear the muscles creak. She knelt until she was eye level with the tiny tyrant in the chair. “You aren’t going to die,” she said softly. “You have a cold. You will feel yucky, and you will sleep a lot, and I will be here every second, and then you will feel better.”
“But what if.”
There it was—the gravitational tug of Cate’s own brain, reflected back at her from a face that was equal parts her and Sydney. Cate took her hand. “I know it feels scary, baby. But your body is a superhero at fighting colds. We have medicine, and doctors if we need them, and more cuddles than you can count. You’re safe. Daddy and I will be with you the whole time.”
“A superhero…like you and Daddy?” Riley’s voice was husky with hope.
“Exactly like us,” Cate said, tapping the tip of her nose.
Riley squinted, thinking it through. “Do I get a cape?”
“Temporary towel-cape privileges have been approved,” Sydney decreed.
That won a small, valiant smile before her mouth worked around the edges of belief. Then she nodded once, fierce, and tangled her fingers in Cate’s. “Okay. But…if I do die, Ellie can have some of my stuff.” She considered, magnanimous. “Not Bunny, but she can use my rainbow cup n’three stickers. Four if she doesn’t cry.”
Across the counter, Sydney leaned against the stove and exhaled a smile. She didn’t say I told you so. She didn’t even say it’s just a cold. She let Cate have the ritual: the hand on the forehead every ten minutes, the thermometer like a metronome, the humidifier huffing gentle clouds in the bedroom. Cartoons were put on the TV like a sacrament: soft colors, low volume, the kind of shows where the most dangerous thing was a misunderstanding somehow corrected in under seventeen minutes.
Cate tried not to hover. The trying lasted five minutes.
“Babe,” Sydney said, catching her in the hallway wiping down a doorknob with the severity of a crime scene tech. “There’s clean, and then there’s clinically insane.”
Cate dropped her gaze, heat rising that had nothing to do with a fever. “She’s so small,” she said. “They both are. They’re—”
“Breakable,” Sydney supplied gently. “Which is why we wrap them in love and blankets and boring TV and the long noodles. But not airtight, babe. Okay?”
Cate nodded. She could hear thoughts when she chose to, could let them skim through her mind like minnows, but she didn’t need power to read the room now. Everything inside her was a tuning fork struck by the sight of Riley’s heavy eyelids.
They retreated down the hall to gather the day and relocate. Riley’s pillow, Ellie’s blanket, the humidifier like a fog machine in miniature, Sydney ferrying tissues and tea, cartoons queued up on the tablet, until the bedroom became home base.
Ellie napped, mercifully. Riley drifted in and out, nose whistling. Cate parked herself in the glider beside the bed, one hand on Riley’s back counting breaths, the other trading out cool washcloths from a bowl on the nightstand. The house shrank to the size of a bedroom: humidifier hiss, cartoon lullabies, Riley’s little sleep-sighs. Sydney moved through that orbit with ease—food in, trash out, a hand on Cate’s shoulder every time she passed.
“Switch with me.” Sydney’s whisper was the kind designed not to stir children. “Go lie down.”
“I’m not tired.”
Sydney’s eyes drifted to the bowl—three washcloths wrung to exhaustion—and the stack of used tissues like a snotty snowdrift. “Uh-huh.”
Cate smoothed Riley’s hair. It had never gotten old, the miracle of being allowed to touch without her gloves. “I’ll sleep when the fever breaks.”
Two hours later, it hadn’t. It climbed a little, two tenths of a degree that felt, to Cate’s body, like the planet tipping. She held the thermometer up to the light as if scrutiny could bully the numbers lower.
Sydney pressed her lips to Cate’s temple. “Acetaminophen time,” she said with quiet authority. “You do the honors?”
They woke Riley with a kiss and a joke about red juice that tasted like heroism and bravery, that every real hero drinks when they want to get better. Riley made a face worthy of an award but swallowed anyway. Cate wiped her lips, then wiped them again. The washcloth ritual resumed, cool circles on hot skin, little hums of praise: there you go, there’s my brave girl, I know, I know.
“Tell me a story?” Riley whispered, lids slivered.
Cate’s voice was a thread. “Once there was a girl who could hear thoughts,” she said, “and it was very loud for her sometimes, too loud. And then she met a girl who could be anywhere all at once. And together they made a very quiet house, where all the thoughts were safe.”
“That’s our house,” Riley murmured.
“Yes,” Cate said, throat thick. “Our very safe house.”
Sydney sat on the edge of the bed, one arm looped gently around Cate’s waist. In the low light, she looked endlessly young and impossibly sure, the kind of sure Cate had spent her whole life disbelieving in until there were two small people who needed it from her. She leaned back into Sydney until their ribs aligned.
“Check her in fifteen again,” Sydney said, “then check yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say that like a person who has blinked since three p.m.”
Cate found a smile. It stuck better this time. “Bossy.”
“Hot,” Sydney countered, and even here, in the small cathedral of a sickroom, Cate felt laughter rise and felt it soften the fear’s hard edges.
They kept vigil. Riley slept. Cartoons looped to the part where the misunderstanding was resolved with a hug. Cate stayed, listening to the little breaths, the ventilated hush of water vapor, the subtlest creak of the house as if even it was trying not to wake the baby.
The spoon incident™ happened because they’d underestimated the determination of a one-year-old on a mission to claim shiny things.
Cate went to refill the soup bowl. She was gone not thirty seconds. Ellie, who had been corralled by a fort of pillows and a stack of books, found her moment and her calling. She scaled the pillows like a mountaineer, found the nightstand, and found the gleam of stainless steel.
By the time Cate turned back, it was in Ellie’s mouth. Ellie beamed around it like she’d discovered fire. “Mmm!”
“No—no no no no—” Cate scooped her up, plucked the spoon from her mouth, and sanitized the universe with a speed that would have impressed OSHA. Ellie merely blinked, pleased with the attention, and then reached for Cate’s hair.
“We talked about the space rule,” Sydney said gently, taking the spoon to the sink. “We made it a whole afternoon.”
Cate pressed her lips together, eyes stinging. “She’s going to get sick.”
Sydney kissed Ellie’s forehead, then handed her back over with a show of gravitas, as if passing a ceremonial baton. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. But if she does, we will do this again, and you will become the queen of washcloths.”
“I hate that crown,” Cate whispered.
“I know.”
It happened late that night: Ellie’s nose went from soft to angry, then to full symphony. The baby’s eyes were glassy, her tolerance for injustice—i.e. everything—plummeted to zero, and the household doubled its triage. Sydney strapped Ellie to her chest in the wrap and paced the living room in long figure eights while Ellie drummed snotty protest on her sternum and then finally surrendered to the rhythm. Cate moved between rooms like a tide, refreshing cloths, smoothing Riley’s hair or tucking Bunny back under her arm, reheating Emma’s emergency casserole straight from the freezer, texted thank-you heart emojis she didn’t remember typing.
“Swap,” Sydney said at midnight, voice hoarse, hair flattened by exertion. She tipped her chin toward the bed. “Lie down. If you don’t, you’re going to earn your own fever.”
Cate looked at both girls—Riley’s mouth open, cheeks less flushed now. Ellie damp and stubborn, fingers clenched in the wrap fabric like a sailor gripping rope—and shook her head. “If I sleep, they’ll need me.”
Sydney’s smile was understanding. “If you sleep you’ll be better at being needed.”
Cate’s laugh came out as a sound that hurt. She let Sydney pull her toward the couch. She lay down, closed her eyes for sixty seconds and saw only thermometers. She sat up again. “I can’t.”
Sydney tucked a blanket over her anyway, and Cate grumbled but didn’t move. The house quieted into the kind of silence that had texture: humidifier breath, a neighbor’s plumbing, a baby snore against Sydney’s chest. Cate’s body loosened as if the strings inside her had been tuned and then cut.
She didn’t sleep. Not really. But she dozed between the beats of worry until Riley whimpered, and then she was back in the glider, back on watch, back pressing cool to warm, back whispering. It wasn’t martyrdom. It was devotion. It felt ancient, like a ritual not quite learned but remembered.
Around three a.m., Riley’s fever broke.
The numbers lowered. Riley’s breath evened. Her cheeks lost that oversaturated watercolor pink and went back to normal. Cate pressed her lips to Riley’s temple and felt normal skin.
She didn’t cry immediately. She sat very still while her bones catalogued the event. Then she leaned forward, folded one careful arm around her daughter, and the breath she’d been holding finally escaped. It made room for tears.
Sydney was there in an instant, kneeling, Ellie drooped against her shoulder like a sleepy scarf. Cate flashed her a wet, incredulous smile. “She’s cooler,” she whispered. “She’s—she’s okay.”
“Told you,” Sydney said, so gentle the words were barely audible. “It’s just a cold.”
Cate nodded like she’d been told a secret, because it felt like one—because every time health returned it arrived with surprise, a gift nobody owed her but the world gave anyway. She smoothed Riley’s hair again and then, unable not to, reached across for Ellie’s foot, pressing her thumb to the soft arch. Ellie wriggled. Somewhere deep in babyhood, immune systems plotted their quiet mutinies and victories.
“Come here,” Sydney said, and they found a way to all fit: Cate in the bed, Riley curled into her side, Sydney half-squatting, half-perched on the edge, Ellie slumped over both of them like a damp loaf of bread. An awkward sculpture of relief. Morning was a rumor on the far edge of the blinds. Cate’s muscles trembled with exhaustion, but every tremor felt like proof that she’d endured the night for this exact reason.
“Next time,” Sydney murmured, lips in Cate’s hair, “we’ll keep strict surveillance on the spoons.”
Cate barked a laugh that startled Riley half awake. “What?”
“Nothing, Riot,” Sydney said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
Riley sighed, burrowing. “Love you, Mama. Love you, Daddy.”
Cate’s throat tightened. “Love you, baby.”
Ellie, never one to be excluded from declarations, made a muffled “Mmm!” that she clearly believed translated.
Minutes ticked. Relief was loud in its own way, a ringing in the ears. Cate watched the girls breathe and let the universe take a step back from the precipice. It would happen again—of course it would—because life with children was an orchestra of germs and growth and falling down and getting up. Cate would dread it every time. She would try to clean the air and then forgive herself when she couldn’t. She would pretend she wasn’t worried and then sit vigil. She would not sleep until the fever broke.
She rested her head on Sydney’s shoulder. “You’ll tell me again?” she asked, eyes closing. “When I forget?”
Sydney’s thumb traced the inside of her wrist, gentle. “Every time,” she said. “It’s just a cold. And even when it isn’t, we’ll still be okay.”
Cate exhaled, and something unclenched so fully she thought she felt the bed rise. Their quiet house hummed. Their daughters slept. Cate finally let go, not because worry had released her but because love had a better grip. She slept with her palm splayed warm over Riley’s ribs, counting, still counting, but now counting toward morning.
By morning, the germs had chosen their second princess.
Ellie woke grumpy and snotty, nose shining, eyes rimmed pink, hair doing a broad impression of a thundercloud. She announced her symptoms by hurling her pacifier at the floor and declaring, “No,” to the sun, the concept of socks, and the oatmeal Sydney was stirring like an apology.
Cate kissed her forehead and winced. Warm. Not terrifying—nothing like Riley’s peak—but enough to make her spine fit itself into that tight, protective shape again. “Hi, my love,” she murmured, collecting the small, outraged body from the high chair. “You’re allowed to be dramatic today.”
“Ah,” Ellie agreed, which was toddler for yes and also I’m right.
Riley, miraculously less glassy and fiercely proud to be upright, hovered at Cate’s elbow. She wore the makeshift towel-cape Sydney had knotted for her—official superhero gear for fighting off colds—and a crooked paper sailor’s hat over her curls. Across the front in fat marker letters: NURS RILEY. She was improving, still a little sniffly, but her grin said she could handle it.
“I can help,” she announced, solemn as a judge.
Sydney pivoted with two mugs—one coffee, one lemon and ginger tea—and squinted at the outfit. “Oh wow. Do you accept bribes? Because I will absolutely bribe medical staff.”
Riley’s grin tipped sideways with purpose. “I need my tools.”
“What tools?” Cate asked, bouncing Ellie, who had fallen into the limp, sniffling slouch of the freshly miserable.
“My stethoscope," Riley said (a rainbow toy one), “n’my notebook. We have to write down if she breathes.”
Sydney passed Cate the tea and bent to Riley’s level. “We can write down that she breathes a lot,” she said. “But we’ll also write her temperature and how much milk she drinks.”
Riley nodded, all business, then sprinted off for supplies. Cate watched her go, something softening under her ribs. The dread that had clawed up into her throat last night eased with the sight of Riley—better enough to boss people around again, better enough to want to care for someone else.
“Tag out?” Sydney asked, circling an arm around Cate’s waist. “You take the chair again, I’ll handle breakfast attempts.”
“Good luck,” Cate whispered into Sydney’s shoulder. Ellie tried to climb into Cate’s sweater like a baby kangaroo. Cate let her. “She has opinions.”
“She gets it honestly.” Sydney kissed Ellie’s temple. “Okay, little dragon. Daddy’s on spoon duty.”
“No,” Ellie said, but with less venom. The hum of being held was working its old magic.
They set up sick camp in the bedroom again: humidifier puffing soft clouds, curtains pulled to that twilight gray that makes naps easier to believe in, cartoons queued to Riley’s favorite Bluey episode. Cate’s washcloth bowl took its sacred place on the nightstand. She settled into the glider with Ellie stretched along her chest like a warm, grumbling cat, the toddler’s fists kneading at Cate’s sweater. Cate stroked the damp hairline at the back of her neck with two fingers until Ellie’s breath stopped hitching and started doing its slow, snuffly loop.
Riley returned with a backpack that thumped like a paramedic kit. She spilled its contents onto the bed: the toy stethoscope, her notebook with a jellyfish on the cover, a pencil sharpened into a lethal point, a sticker sheet, and a small plastic flashlight that had seen better days.
“Okay,” she said, opening the notebook. “First we listen to her lungs.”
Cate fought a smile. “Gently.”
Riley perched, concentration narrowing her whole face. She pressed the stethoscope to Ellie’s back delicately. “I hear…whooshes.”
“That’s a good sign,” Sydney called from the doorway, a sippy cup dangling from her fingers. “Very advanced medical terminology.”
“Write whooshes,” Riley told herself, and did, tongue tucked at the corner of her mouth.
Ellie peered up at the cup like it might personally offend her, then took two grudging sips under Cate’s quiet praise. “Brave,” Cate murmured. “Very brave.” Ellie blinked and submitted to another sip because the word brave made her eyes go soft.
Riley slapped a glitter star sticker onto the notebook page, then frowned. “What if she dies?”
Cate felt it, a small aftershock under her breastbone, the echo of last night’s dread in a different register. She met Riley’s eyes steadily. “She’s not going to die,” she said, even and warm. “She has a cold. It’s her turn to feel yucky, and we’re going to take care of her, and then she’ll feel better. Just like you.”
Riley’s gaze flicked to the thermometer on the nightstand, to Ellie’s flushed cheeks, to Cate’s face. She nodded, businesslike. “Okay. I’m going to read to her.” She climbed carefully onto the bed, arranging pillows into the topography of a nest. “Ellie loves the bunny book.”
“Buh,” Ellie muttered, half-asleep, which was agreement enough.
Riley read the bunny book, a little congested still, a little sing-song, stopping to show Ellie every picture as if Ellie had never seen a rabbit in her life. Ellie watched with heavy-lidded reverence.
Cate felt her own shoulders drop another inch. The sound of Riley’s small voice, confident and careful, brushed across her nerves like a balm. She adjusted the washcloth on Ellie’s forehead and skimmed the edge of Riley’s thoughts without really trying: bright threads of I’m helping, I’m good at this, Mama is not scared when I’m brave. Cate withdrew—she didn’t need to know more—but the warmth of it stayed.
“Temperature check,” Riley announced when the book was done, because she loved a task. She turned the digital thermometer with a flourish. “You do it, Mama. You have the very gentle hands.”
Cate swallowed around a sudden wave of love so physical it nearly made her dizzy. “I learned from the best.” She tucked the thermometer under Ellie’s arm, waited for the beep, and exhaled at the number. Up, but not up-up. She caught Sydney’s eye where she had settled on the floor with her back to the bed, a laptop open but ignored. Sydney nodded once. We’re good.
Ellie dozed, off and on, the way toddlers do when their bodies are busy fighting germs. When she woke cranky, Riley produced new strategies: a puppet show using socks, a gentle patting of Ellie’s toes as if they were keys and she was composing a lullaby, an earnest demonstration of how to blow her nose (“like blowing out candles, not like trying to blow down the house,” she coached, which made Sydney choke back laughter and then cover it with a cough).
There were setbacks. Ellie swatted the tissue away and declared, “No.” She refused the second sippy cup of breast milk and then, five minutes later, accepted it like it had been her idea all along. She cried at cartoons, then clapped at them. Cate breathed through each wave with her, patient and quiet, whispering little reassurances into the damp curls at her temple as if she could write comfort directly onto skin. “Here. I know. Breathe. That’s it. There you go, Ellie-bear.”
At lunch, Sydney brought long noodles cut small and blew on each spoonful while Ellie glared. Riley sat beside her with a sticker ready. “If you eat three bites,” she bargained, “you get a rainbow.” Ellie eyed the sticker sheet without blinking and then—without breaking eye contact—ate four, because she was a menace even when sick.
“We’re raising a negotiator,” Sydney murmured.
“We’re raising you,” Cate said, smiling into her lemon tea.
The afternoon stretched. They napped in shifts: Ellie and Cate in the chair, Riley curled like a cat against Sydney’s leg on the floor, Sydney’s hand automatically rubbing circles between Riley’s shoulder blades even in sleep. When they were awake, there were low-light cartoons and soft talk and temperature numbers that bobbed without drowning anyone. The house smelled like eucalyptus, broth, and clean laundry.
At some point, Riley slipped off to her room and came back with a printout badge that read DR. RILEY STARK, taped to a lanyard made of yarn. She’d crossed out DOCTOR and written HELPER. She presented it to Cate with ceremony. “It means I’m allowed to do the songs.”
“What songs?” Sydney asked, eyes twinkling.
Riley cleared her throat and laid one gentle hand on Ellie’s back. Softly, off-key, she sang the made-up melody Cate used on the worst nights: a looping hum with no words, just comfort, the sound Cate defaulted to when her brain was too full for language. Hearing it in Riley’s small voice undid Cate in a place she didn’t have a name for. She swallowed and brushed her fingers over Riley’s hair.
“You’re perfect,” she whispered.
“I know,” Riley whispered back, but her eyes were shy.
They made it to evening with only two hard cries and one surprisingly civil negotiation about the humidifier being “too smoky.” Cate burned through half the washcloths and both of her sleeves. Sydney kept the house clicking along on quiet autopilot: dishwasher, laundry, trash, texts answered. And every time she passed the bedroom, she touched Cate—wrist, shoulder, the back of her neck—little grounding taps that said I’m here, you’re here, we’ve got them.
Ellie’s fever eased just before dinner, a slow recession that Cate recognized now like a familiar shoreline. She pressed her cheek to Ellie’s forehead to confirm what the numbers told her, and then she laughed, a small, incredulous sound. “Cooler,” she said, because Riley was watching and needed the word.
“Cooler,” Riley echoed, writing it in the notebook in deliberate letters. She added a star sticker and then, after a private consideration, another. “Two stars because she tried very hard not to be mad.”
“Strongest girl,” Sydney said, kissing the top of Ellie’s head. “And best nurse.”
“Helper,” Riley corrected, but she glowed anyway.
Night came. They did bath time slowly, turning the bathroom into a steam tent, letting Ellie pour water from cup to cup like a scientist who occasionally tried to drink her beaker contents. Riley supervised from the bath mat with her badge, ready with a towel and an opinion about pajamas. Cate felt the tight coil in her own chest finally loosen, not all the way, but enough that she could take a breath that reached the bottom of her lungs.
They paused by the crib so Riley could stand on her tiptoes and press a careful kiss into Ellie’s curls. Then Cate eased Ellie down, smoothing the blanket to her chin until the baby gave a sigh that sounded like safety. Sydney guided Riley across the room to her own bed. The moment her butt hit the mattress, she leaned into Sydney’s side, suddenly wobbly with relief. “I did a good job,” she whispered, as if confessing.
Sydney tucked her in with a look that belonged in the dictionary next to pride. “You did.”
Cate watched them, all three, and let the quiet house settle around her like a blanket. Tomorrow there would be more snot and more cartoons and, probably, a relapse in Ellie’s mood because toddlers believed in comebacks. Kindergarten would keep offering up germ lotteries. Cate would keep dreading it, would keep pretending she wasn’t worried, would keep sitting vigil with her bowl of washcloths and her whispered songs.
But also—this. Riley’s careful hands. Sydney’s steady orbit. Ellie’s breath evening under her palm.
“Okay,” Cate whispered into the room, a private promise to herself as much as to the children. “We’ve got you.”
Ellie huffed, already half-asleep, and—the day’s final miracle—murmured, “Ah,” back.