Chapter 10: The First Morning After
Nia woke before her brother.
I heard her bedroom door open at six forty-seven and her small footsteps in the hallway.
I was already awake.
I had been awake since five.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the morning quiet and nothing else.
She appeared in the doorway wearing the yellow pajamas with the rabbits on the cuffs.
She stopped when she saw me.
Not flinching — just stopping.
Checking, the way she always checked.
"Good morning," I said.
"Good morning, Daddy." She looked at the table.
"Can I have breakfast?"
"You can always have breakfast," I said.
"You never have to ask."
She thought about that for a moment.
Then she walked to the chair directly beside mine — not the corner, not the small side table, the chair right next to me — and climbed up and sat down.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Toast," she said.
"With the orange jam."
"Coming up."
I made her toast with the orange marmalade and cut it into the triangles she liked and set it in front of her.
She looked at it.
Then she looked at me.
"Am I—" she started.
She stopped herself.
Something shifted in her face — a small, private correction she made all on her own.
Then she picked up a triangle and took a bite.
I sat back down with my coffee.
We ate in the morning light together, the two of us, and nobody spoke for a few minutes, and that was all right because the silence was a different kind of silence.
The kind that doesn't require anyone to be careful.
Her brother appeared at six fifty-nine, hair sideways, one sock on.
He stood in the doorway and looked at both of us at the table.
"Is there toast?" he asked.
"There is toast," I said.
He sat down on my other side.
The three of us sat at the main table — the large one, the family one — and ate breakfast while the light came through the kitchen window and lay warm across the floor.
Nia finished her first piece and reached for the second without asking.
I noticed.
I didn't say anything.
I picked up my coffee and drank.
The marmalade jar was open in the middle of the table.
Nia looked at it.
She looked at me.
Then she picked it up and helped herself to more, the spoon scraping the jar with a cheerful little sound that she didn't apologize for.
Her brother said, "Can I have some of that?"
She passed it to him.
Just like that.
No hesitation, no checking, no waiting to see if someone would go still.
Just two children sharing jam at their father's table on a Thursday morning in November.
I set my mug down.
Looked out the window at nothing in particular.
She had drawn pictures of the front door.
She had counted the days.
The front door was right where she had drawn it.
And I was on the right side of it.
I didn't need anything else.
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*Some doors take a long time to open — but the people who love us are always on the other side, waiting.
Have you ever fought for someone who couldn't yet fight for themselves?
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