Chapter 5: Eight Steps Back to Her
Neither of them moved.
I was the one who went up.
Noah was standing at the top of the stairs in his pajamas, one hand on the banister, the other holding the small stuffed dog he carried everywhere.
He'd been put to bed an hour ago.
He'd heard the voices.
"Hey," I said softly, reaching him.
"You should be resting.
Your legs need time."
"I heard people." He looked past me toward the entrance hall below.
"Who's the lady?"
I crouched down to his level.
My heart was doing something complicated.
"Someone who wanted to see you," I said.
"Does Dad know her?"
"Yes."
He thought about that.
Then he looked at me with those pale green eyes — the same ones I'd just seen in the entrance hall — and said, "Is she nice?"
I didn't know how to answer that.
I didn't know enough yet.
"I think so," I said.
"But you don't have to go down if you don't want to."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he moved to the top of the stairs and looked down.
Lena was still standing in the entrance hall.
She'd seen him the moment he appeared.
She hadn't moved — I understood why, watching her.
She was holding herself very still the way you do when you're afraid that any sudden movement will end something fragile.
Noah studied her for a long moment.
"She has my eyes," he said.
My throat tightened.
"She does."
He sat down on the top step.
Not going down.
Not going away.
Just sitting, looking at her from a safe distance, the stuffed dog in his lap.
Lena sat down on the bottom step.
They looked at each other across the length of the staircase for what felt like a long time.
Then Noah said, "Are you sad?"
Lena's composure — which had held through everything in the entrance hall, through Margaret, through Ethan, through all of it — shifted visibly.
"A little bit," she said.
"Why?"
A pause.
"Because I missed you."
Noah frowned.
"Did you know me before?"
She glanced at Ethan, who was standing to the side, watching.
He gave her nothing.
This was hers to navigate.
"Yes," she said.
"A long time ago.
When you were very small."
"I don't remember."
"I know.
That's okay."
Noah considered this with the seriousness that seven-year-olds bring to things adults think are complicated.
"My mum d\*ed," he said.
"In a car."
Lena's breath caught.
Just once.
Just barely.
"I heard that," she said carefully.
"Dad doesn't talk about her much.
Margaret said it made him sad." He paused.
"Margaret's in trouble, isn't she?
I heard Dad's voice."
"Yes," Lena said.
"She is."
"Because of my medicine?"
"Partly."
Noah looked down at his dog.
Turned it over in his hands.
"It always made me feel heavy.
Like my legs were full of sand." He looked up.
"I told Margaret that once.
She said it was the illness."
Lena pressed her lips together.
"It wasn't the illness," Noah said.
It wasn't a question.
He'd already worked it out, the way children do when adults stop explaining things and they're left to fill in the gaps themselves.
"No," Lena said.
"It wasn't."
He nodded slowly.
Then he stood up, one hand on the banister, steadying himself.
His legs were still tired from the afternoon.
He came down two steps.
Stopped.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She looked up at him.
Her voice, when it came, was very quiet.
"Lena."
He came down two more steps.
"I'm Noah."
"I know," she said.
"I know exactly who you are."
He reached the bottom.
He stood in front of her — this small boy in pajamas with his stuffed dog — and looked at her face with the kind of careful attention children give to things they're trying to memorize.
Then he held out the dog.
"You can hold him if you want," he said.
"He helps when you're sad."
Lena took the dog with both hands.
She held it against her chest.
Her eyes closed for just a moment.
Ethan turned away from both of them and walked toward the far end of the hall.
He stopped at the window.
His shoulders were rigid.
I stayed at the foot of the stairs.
Noah climbed back up to me, satisfied that he'd done what needed doing.
He slipped his hand into mine.
"I think she's nice," he whispered.
I squeezed his hand.
"I think so too."
"Will she stay?"
I looked down at Lena, still sitting on the bottom step, holding a small stuffed dog like it was something precious.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"I hope she does."
He let me lead him back to bed.
And as I settled him in and pulled the blanket up, he was already half asleep, one hand reaching for the dog that wasn't there — and then going still, remembering where it was, and not minding.
Downstairs, I heard Ethan's voice.
Low.
And then Lena's.
Low.
The conversation that should have happened three years ago was finally starting.
I sat in the chair beside Noah's bed and listened to the house settle around it.
Then I heard Ethan say, clearly enough to carry up the stairs:
"I need to know who told you Noah was d\*ad.
I need the name."
May you like
And Lena said: "I'll give you the name.
But first you need to hear what else they did."
