For a second, I was seventeen again, awkward and eager, hands clammy around a phone, staring at October's name like it was sacred. Drawing her initials on the backs of notebooks. Holding my breath when she laughed at something dumb I said, like that laugh made me worthy.
"She already likes you," I said, sitting beside him. "That's the hardest part. Just... be honest. Be gentle and listen more than you talk."
He smiled a little, "Okay." I reached out and ruffled his hair again, and he rolled his eyes like it was the most embarrassing thing in the world but he didn't pull away.
"Now sleep," I added, standing and turning off the bedside lamp.
As I closed his door most of the way, I stood in the hallway for a second, swallowed in memory.
It felt like only yesterday that I was calling October late into the night, listening to the way her voice curled around a joke, how even her silences felt like lullabies. She used to leave me notes, little torn scraps of paper that smelled like her skin. "You were in my dream again." "I hope you're smiling today." "Come find me."
I used to carry them in my wallet until the ink faded and the corners went soft. She called me mon velours or my velvet when we were young. Because I was tall and quiet, all sharp edges on the outside, but soft where it mattered. Soft with her. Always soft with her. She said I was loud in silence, constant, comforting.
God, how I miss her words. How the world feels emptier without them. I walked back to our room. The sheets were still warm from where she'd lain. I slipped under them slowly, careful not to wake her but I didn't need to. Even in sleep, she found me. She shifted, curling toward me, her hand resting gently over my heart, fingers twisting slightly in the fabric of my shirt like she used to when she needed grounding. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper—barely even a sound—she murmured into my chest: "I love you,"
For a moment, everything else, guilt, fear, shame, the uncertain weight of trying to repair something so deeply fractured, fell away. There was just her voice. Her warmth. The past we shared and the future still clinging stubbornly to us, waiting. In that moment, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we weren't lost yet. Maybe we were just finding our way back. One breath at a time. 
She went back to sleep and I murmured, "I love you too and I'll keep loving you until I've silenced every ghost that tells you otherwise. One day, you'll believe me."

**
I woke up early and got the kids ready while October was already gone, off to the lab before the rest of us had even finished brushing our teeth. She kissed the kids, her bag slung over one shoulder, hair pulled back, eyes sharp with that kind of quiet purpose that makes you stop and stare.  She was already knee-deep in formulas and dreams, already halfway inside the world she was building for herself, one scent at a time. Then I dropped off the kids and I went to my appartment. 
 When I came in, I found Beth standing in the living room, arms folded so tightly across her chest I could almost hear the tension buzzing in her muscles. She looked like she'd been standing there a while, waiting for the right words and not finding them and then I saw her—my mother. She was standing just behind Beth, looking older than I remembered, smaller too. The sight of her hit me like ice water down my spine. Something in my chest locked tight. Beth's voice cracked the silence. "Thomas... I didn't know what to do. She just showed up. I'm sorry."
I nodded slowly, my voice barely rising. "It's okay," but it wasn't especially after what happened with Laura. None of this was okay. The air was too thick, the past too loud, and I couldn't look at my mother without seeing a thousand moments I'd tried to forget.