Chapter 1: age four: earthworms and space phones

Chapter Notes

hi! the story is marked complete as of april 24, but i’ll still be updating whenever inspiration hits. thank you so much for reading!! Luka Hollander-Rozanov is not, objectively speaking, the most unflinching four-year-old the world has ever known. To Ilya, this feels less like a flaw and more like something he did very right. One of his finest accomplishments, in fact—even if the screeching from his little boy carries clear across the lake and into the house. Through the walls. And, perhaps, up the stairs. He didn’t need to check his phone. Ilya already knew his husband was typing in all caps. Ignoring Troy’s chuckles, he swallowed the last of the citrus-flavored nonalcoholic beer his husband had helped a famous brewery unleash into the world and turned back toward the playground: the netted, padded, liability-proof, weather-rated, architect-designed, commercial soft-play monstrosity where all of the children were gathered. He took unhurried steps, because every surface was foam-wrapped, vinyl-skinned, rounded, enclosed, and clearly built by people who did not believe childhood injuries were a learning experience. He knew this. He trusted it. The slide was a fully enclosed spiral-tube situation, which meant no broken ankles from jumping off the top; the crawl-through tunnels were wide enough for an anxious adult to easily retrieve a stuck child without public shame; the climbing elements were technically ramps, because Shane worried; and the ground itself had the cushioned give of something tested extensively for the most delicate knees and elbows because, well, Ilya worried. Even with the fenced-off lake ten yards away, nothing inside it could be drowned, cracked, launched, or meaningfully harmed. Ilya told himself this twice, ignoring the knowing laughter from his teammates. Luka was still screaming. Ilya played it cool. It was fine. Everything was fine. They were working with the child psychologist they checked in with every so often, learning —slowly, sometimes painfully—that it was okay to let Luka (and Ilya and Shane) figure out how to settle themselves again after things tipped sideways. Emotional regulation, she called it, like it was a muscle children had to build. That meant letting him cry a little longer than every instinct in Ilya’s body wanted to allow. Not rushing in the second his voice wobbled. Waiting a moment at the doorway, listening to it crest and creak and gather again, giving him the space to find his way back down. He reminded himself—again and again—that comfort didn’t always mean rescue. Letting him struggle a little wasn’t abandonment. Stepping in immediately, every time, only taught Luka the feeling itself was something to fear. Sometimes love meant giving Luka the room to learn that every bad thing inside him would pass, even if Ilya still stood there the whole time, quiet on the other side of the door, counting Luka’s breaths through the wood, just in case. But the sight of his tiny boy, red-nosed and snotty, face streaked with tears, blue-strapped glasses knocked crooked and the lenses fogged over—cracked something open in Ilya’s chest all the same. “Oh, baby, moy dozhdevál’chik,” Ilya cooed despite the firm, laminated guidance about using so-called 'Big Boy Language' still magnetized to the fridge, meant to encourage so-called 'independence' in his son. But he wasn't in the kitchen to see it, and there were no doorframes to lean against, he justified. Shane had eaten two burgers instead of one. The whole day had already slipped out of its proper shape—crooked, a little off, a little too perfect. So really—who was going to stop him from picking up his baby? He scooped Luka up without hesitation, tucking him close, instinctively shifting his weight and beginning the slow, familiar sway that had soothed him through infancy, through fevers and bad dreams and incomprehensible toddler catastrophes. His son wasn’t a toddler anymore. Luka was tall for a four-year-old, just like Ilya had been; long limbs, narrow shoulders, all sharp little joints that never seemed to fold the way Ilya expected. His legs dangled farther than they should have as he settled him on his hip, the weight of him still surprising every time. His hair curled every which way, springy and fine, flattened where small hands had worried at it. It was already damp, beginning to frizz with tears and sweat as Luka pressed his forehead into Ilya’s shoulder. He clung to Ilya’s shirt and wailed louder. Full-bodied, unrestrained, the kind of cry that made adults wince and other children go still. Which they did. The playground had gone oddly quiet: little bodies stilled, eyes wide, feet shuffling uncertainly against the padded ground as though everyone were waiting for something terrible to be revealed. It wasn’t until Jade spoke up, voice small and earnest and trembling with guilt—“I’m sorry, Uncle Ilya, I don’t know what happened”—that Ilya realized he’d been turning slowly in place, murmuring nonsense comforts under his breath, trying to regulate his own breathing as much as Luka’s. “No. Nyet. We are not starting with ‘sorry,’ Jade Pike,” Ilya said, firm and even, the kind of certainty that didn’t invite argument. This part—this always mattered. He had learned it the hard way, over years that left the heart a little worn at the edges: children reached for guilt the moment something went wrong, as if they could carry it for everyone. You did not let them. Not his. Not anyone’s. Feelings were loud, messy things, yes—but they did not break what mattered. The ground stayed under their feet. The world did not tilt because they cried. Parents were supposed to teach you that. Ilya hadn’t known it until he’d had to become one. “It’s okay,” he said again, softer now. “Luka is okay, da? Then you don’t feel bad, printsessa.” He gave a loose, unbothered shrug, as if that settled it. Jade lingered anyway, shifting her weight, unsure, like she was still waiting for something to fall. Ilya felt the tug of it in his chest—oldest of four, too much responsibility packed into someone that small. It sat wrong with him. He would get her a pony, he decided. Immediate. Non-negotiable. Fuck Hayden Pike and his trash hockey; his main career, as far as Ilya was concerned, would be shoveling manure and answering to a princess. He grinned at the thought, easy and a little crooked. “It’s okay, Ruby. Luka probably saw some sad, dry patch of grass and thought, ah—my papas need help. I will water it properly.” He huffed a quiet, almost-laugh, waiting just long enough for her to mirror it. “Tears are efficient, da? Very practical solution.” His son had already quieted to soft, hiccupping sobs, as he always did within seconds of being picked up and coddled. His little body clung with the earnest weight of a child who still believed being held could fix anything, knees drawn up awkwardly, socked feet kicking once to rise higher on Ilya's hip before going still. His thumb brushed uncertainly at his chin, close enough to tempt, but not quite there; he wanted to suck it for comfort, lips already pursed in anticipation, but Luka is, above all else, a good boy who understood germs, who had been told no thumbs in a serious voice and took that rule very much to heart. Ilya felt the small nod against his collarbone and leaned closer as Luka whispered, his voice thin and wrecked with horror and the terrible certainty that nothing would ever be clean again, “I touched the icky worm,” Ilya winced despite himself. Of course. “See?” he said, lifting his head to address the small, anxious audience. “Luka is alright.” He smoothed a hand over his son’s honey-brown hair, gently nudging the glasses back into place where they’d slipped crooked on his nose. “He just wanted to help the poor little worm stay hydrated and healthy.” Ilya paused, as if this were an entirely ordinary explanation, then added with maybe too much sincerity, “Very responsible, yes?” “And kind!” Jade added enthusiastically, seizing the thread of it the way good elder sisters did. Everyone knew Luka was a little more… easily affected than the other boys. Where most of them barreled forward with scrapped-raw knees, with loud voices, with pockets mysteriously full of rocks and contraband sticks—Luka sometimes stopped dead in the middle of things, struck still by some small tragedy no one else had noticed. A bent flower. A dead beetle. A balloon tangled in power lines. Feelings arrived in him all at once, large and immediate, and sometimes the world caught him by surprise. The grown-ups had all learned the rhythm of it by now: the brief pause, the careful quieting of their faces, the gentle pretending that nothing unusual was happening until it stopped being unusual— like Arthur, who was currently attempting to conceal a fistful of damp, wriggling worms inside the pockets of his shorts with the breezy confidence of a boy who had never once considered the emotional welfare of a worm. Ilya very deliberately did not notice. “Yes,” he agreed warmly. “Very kind.” Against his shoulder, Luka’s ragged hiccups settled, his small hands still clutching at Ilya’s shirt as if letting go might undo the whole fragile arrangement of the world. Ilya kept swaying, slow and patient. “There, there,” he murmured into Luka’s soft, damp curls, his favorite English comfort— there, there. “The worm is very grateful, solnyshko. You did such a good job.” Luka sniffed hard, his grip tightening. “It was wet. It moved,” he added miserably, in a tone of voice so unmistakably Shane that Ilya had to bite his tongue to keep himself from crying, all of the sudden. Because, speaking of his husband, Ilya should have handled it like Shane: explained patiently that worms were icky because they had to be wet and wiggly to do their important worm work in the dirt. But his son’s freckles stood out like blinking kiss me here signs against his flushed red face, and Ilya was briefly, devastatingly overwhelmed by the fact that this small person existed at all. That he had somehow helped make him. So he pressed a kiss to Luka’s sticky cheek and agreed, with feeling, “Oh, very icky. Absolutely unacceptable. Let’s go wash our hands from the gross earthworm.” His little water sprinkler nodded solemnly, as if this were the most reasonable plan anyone had ever suggested, and Ilya felt a stupid, fierce rush of gratitude that his four-year-old loved washing his hands and being clean. He was good at it. Thorough. Committed. Certainly more than Hayden Pike, who called his husband every other week with a stuffed-up nose, because four children supposedly meant a never-ending ouroboros of sickness. Ilya couldn’t fathom it. He would eradicate every strain of daycare flu, invent a permanent cure for runny noses, and find a way to make all the worms in the world fit neatly into Arthur Pike’s pockets if that was what Luka asked. He would do worse things. Impossible things. Reasonable ones, too, if required. And as if reading his mind—and ready to take advantage of how soft Ilya’s heart had grown since his birth—Luka wriggled closer again, pressing himself in, warm and a little damp, not unlike an earthworm himself. He tucked his cheek against Ilya’s collarbone, one small hand clutching at his shirt, and then tipped his head back just enough to look at him with those pretty brown eyes and say, soft and trusting and still a little congested, “Spasibo, papa.” That was enough. More than enough. Ilya adjusted Luka higher on his hip and thought, not for the first time, that he would happily spend the rest of his life escorting this child away from minor horrors and toward a sink.

“Papa, you know we live on a planet called Earth?” Luka asked from the center of the warm, bubble-thick bath. He sat very straight, knees tucked up, fingers sifting and re-sifting the foam as if searching for something specific inside it. He was squinting hard again. There was nothing wrong with his eyes; just common hyperopia, like children often have because their eyes are still growing and developing. His expression was simply a borrowed habit, something he’d taken from David months ago and folded into himself, as deliberate as the way he lined up his bath boats along the porcelain edge—red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow. Ilya hummed, focused on the small, precise work of it: soap behind the ears, along the hairline, down the back of the neck. With Luka, a smudge was never just a smudge. It spread, it lingered, it burrowed under sensitive skin until everything felt wrong. The only way through it was this: warm water, steady hands, the same quiet order every time, until his shoulders loosened and his breathing found its rhythm again. “Earth is round,” Luka went on, solemn as a lecturer, chin tipped up like he expected notes to be taken. “Like a ball. Not like a puck—pucks are flat. This is round-round.” He shaped it with both hands, as if Ilya might miss the point otherwise. “But very, very big. Bigger than the rink. Bigger than the arena. Bigger than—” He stalled, searching, eyes flicking up. “— than all the arenas. All of them together. Even the really big one. And it spins all the time. Even at night. Even when we’re sleeping. It doesn’t get dizzy.” “Water on your back,” Ilya murmured. Luka sucked in a sharp breath at the first trickle, shoulders jumping before he forced himself still again, like he’d decided—very firmly—not to make a big deal out of it. “It spins a bunch,” he recited, voice tight but determined, words coming a little fast, a little tangled, like if he didn’t say them now they might fall out of his head. “That’s why there’s space. So Earth has room. Otherwise it would bonk.” He made a small, decisive smack of his hand. “Into stuff. Like—like other planets. Or… space things.” Truth be told, Ilya didn’t understand him—not for lack of trying, but because Luka spoke in that very specific four-year-old way, all leaps and missing pieces, words tangled together into something that made perfect sense if you were four and far less if you weren’t. Ilya caught maybe half of it on a good day. The rest he filled in by instinct, by tone, by the way Luka’s hands moved when he talked. It didn’t seem to matter to Luka. He just liked talking—liked knowing someone was listening, steady and certain, no matter what. It made Ilya very, very happy. His son squeezed his eyes tighter, thinking so hard it showed “Space is quiet,” he went on, words careful and a little sticky around the edges. “And dark. Like—like when the lights go off but more. And it has the moon.” Another pause, less certain now. “The moon doesn’t spin like Earth.” He tilted his head, reconsidering. “I think it does a little spin. But not too much. Or it would fall down.” “That’s very considerate of the moon,” Ilya said gravely, rinsing suds down Luka’s spine in the same smooth path as before. He did it twice more until Luka’s shoulders uncurled. It meant finally clean. Luka nodded, satisfied. He dipped both hands under the water, pressing his palms flat against the enamel as though testing the planet’s spin for himself. “The Earth is mostly hot in the middle,” he added. “Very hot. But the crust is thin. Like…” He searched for it, frowning. “Like the ice before practice. If you cut it, there’s water underneath.” Ilya smiled, though Luka wasn’t looking at him. “That sounds right.” A small silence fell. Luka reached for the yellow boat, nudged it until it floated parallel to the blue one. "And Earth goes around the sun,” he continued, “Not too close. Because then we’d burn, but not too far, or else we’d be cold. Anya doesn't like it cold.”

“Mmhmm,” Ilya agreed, then warned: “Water on your face. I won’t get it in your eyes.” He tipped Luka’s chin back with two steady fingers, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand as he rinsed the shampoo from dark curls. “But the moon goes around us,” Luka said, nodding to himself, bubbles lapping at his chest. “That’s why it follows our car sometimes. Because it likes us.” He paused, then added with quiet conviction, “Mostly me.” “That sounds right,” Ilya said. He didn’t correct him. There would be time for that later, or maybe not. The moon should love with his son. But Luka had gone quiet in that particular way again—the kind that meant something was being assembled very carefully. He picked at a cluster of bubbles, popped one with deliberate precision, then another, counting under his breath so softly it barely made a sound. “Papa,” he said after a moment, voice measured, like he’d decided this needed to be done properly. “I think… when I grow up, I might be an astronaut.” Something soft pulled tight in Ilya’s chest, but his hands stayed steady, rinsing soap from small shoulders. “Mm,” he said. “You might be. That is good job.” “I’m sorry,” Luka added quickly, brows knitting, the words rushing now that they’d started. “I know you and daddy play hockey. And I try at practice. I do. But space is very interesting. And helmets are important there too.” He tipped Luka’s chin up just enough to meet his eyes. “We are not apologizing for that. You like space? Good. You go to space. You do what you want, solnyshko. This is not problem.” Luka blinked at him, wide-eyed, searching his face like he wasn’t entirely convinced yet. “Even if I go to the moon?” he asked. “Even then,” Ilya said easily. “Moon is fine.” A pause, then, more serious—“You still call us.” Luka considered this very seriously, already turning the logistics over in his mind. “From the moon?” he asked, troubled by the details. “From the moon,” Ilya confirmed, rinsing the last of the soap away. “Morning and bedtime.” Luka nodded, solemn and resolved. “Okay,” he said. “I will. I can use a space phone, I think.” “I’m sure you can,” Ilya said, reaching for the warm towel—the one Shane kept in that strange little heating machine he’d ordered from China, always set to the exact same temperature—and lifting him out in one smooth motion, tucking him close so he wouldn’t catch the cold. Luka melted into it immediately, all bones gone soft with comfort now that everything was finished, clean in the way that mattered. A few bubbles clung stubbornly to his shoulders like small, drifting planets. His eyes slipped half-shut, already somewhere quieter. Halfway to sleep. Halfway to the stars.

Honestly, parenthood had never scared Ilya. There was an obvious solution, if not an easy one: be the opposite of what he had grown up with. That mostly meant paying attention. Being involved more than just showing up. Taking small feelings seriously, because to the person having them they were not small at all, and dismissing them solved nothing. It required patience, which Ilya had acquired the long way, captaining a team of men whose brains had taken more hits than they admitted, and consistency, which he trusted far more than vague freedom after building a life with Shane Hollander. Rules helped. Routines helped. Watching for the moment when something shifted by half a degree helped, because now Ilya was responsible for more than himself. Children, it turned out, appreciated that. And love, he’d learned, could repeat itself without wearing thin. It could be quiet. Steady. Almost dull in its reliability. Boring. Shane was boring—wonderfully so—and Ilya had learned to be boring with him. Their marriage was boring, and that meant their child was, too. Perfect. Their perfect, boring little boy, all wet lashes and borrowed expressions—so much of Shane in him it caught sometimes, sharp and unexpected, with just enough of Ilya threaded through to quiet something old and restless at last. It had taken this—this small, ordinary life in boring, dull Ottawa—for Ilya to understand: Ilya hadn't been cursed. He hadn't failed some divine test as a little boy and destroyed his family. There had never been anything wrong with him. Only with what had been done to him. It was a strange way to learn yourself. Backwards. Not in youth, but by becoming the very thing Ilya had once been afraid of. Ilya had been afraid of becoming Grigori. Of becoming Andrei, who loved cocaine and hookers more than he had ever loved his wife, more than his child. Afraid, too, of becoming his mother—of discovering that even a child with his own eyes, looking back at him, would not be enough to make him stay. Once, those endings hadn’t felt like possibilities. They had felt like inheritance. Something waiting for him. Patient. Inevitable in the quiet, creeping way of things that lived in the blood. They had been wrong. Being a good father and a good husband turned out not to require anything extraordinary. All Ilya had to do was hold his son upright while he cried. Reach for his husband’s hand when everything else felt fragile enough to break. Explaining why. Explaining it again. Apologizing when he was wrong. Letting himself be forgiven. Stay—especially on the days when staying felt like a decision he had already, once, been afraid he might not make. Do it again tomorrow. And tomorrow, Ilya learned, was no longer frightening when it looked back at him through brown eyes. His husband looked tired tonight. He was rinsing the glass bottles bound for the recycling, shoulders slumped as he stood at the sink; the backyard was empty and the living room quiet, which Ilya took to mean everyone had left—even Jackie and Hayden, who usually lingered for wine once the kids were worn down enough to sit around before it was time to go. Luka, noticing the same, widened his stance from the tip-toeing he did from time to time. His little arms rose high and swung with his stance, elbows bent too far, head thrown back with a swagger that was all Ilya and none of Shane—and with a delight so pure it turned his voice squeaky, he announced, “Daddy! I’m clean!” Shane’s weary expression dissolved like Luka’s favorite yogurt melts in milk: too soft, too pink, and a little too sweet to be good for anyone’s long-term health, much less Ilya’s. “Hey, buddy,” he greeted. “I see that. Did you use your lotion?” He crouched to Luka’s height, soap suds still clinging stubbornly to his wrist, and took the impact when Luka barreled into him. His hands hovered helpless, careful not to touch the pajamas. Soft, tagless cotton, printed with mismatched dinosaurs in little bedtime hats. They had to stay pristine. If they felt wrong—damp, twisted, off by even a little—Luka wouldn’t settle. Not in time for bed. Their son nodded hard enough to set his drying curls bouncing. “Mhm,” he said, holding up his hands for inspection. He wiggled his fingers, demonstrating thoroughly, then added, with quiet authority, “You need lotion too, Daddy. Everyone does.” Shane pressed a kiss to the top of Luka’s head and inhaled deeply, as if checking for body cream. Ilya didn’t believe him. He just liked the smell—clean, powder-soft, something stubbornly babyish Luka was already, unfairly, outgrowing. He lingered there a second too long, forehead resting briefly against Luka’s hair, like he was borrowing a little steadiness from it. Then Shane straightened with a soft exhale and glanced toward Ilya. “Bath’s done. Teeth next?” “Teeth,” Luka echoed, uncertain. He rubbed his thumb along the seam of his pajama sleeve, again and again, worrying the thread in small, careful passes—searching for reassurance in the repetition. All Ilya, Shane liked to say. It made him grin. “But not the mint one.” “We know, klúbnichnyy moy,” Ilya said easily, crouching on the other side so Luka was bracketed between them. He pressed a steady hand to Luka’s back, right between the shoulder blades. “It’s Sunday, which means strawberry toothpaste. ” Shane cringed, but didn't argue. Rules were rules, even if he did not like them. Luka’s breathing evened out by degrees. “Okay,” he decided. Then, after a pause that meant something else was coming, called, “Daddy?” Shane smiled, tired but fond. “Yes?” “You’re coming too,” Luka said, already padding toward the bathroom, bare feet slapping softly against the tile. It wasn’t a question. Ilya chuckled. “All you,” he mouthed, feeling like his heart had gone gravitational and bright, as if it had swallowed a star and didn’t know what to do with it. His husband shot him a look as he stood up. He leaned into Ilya’s side anyway as they followed Luka down the hall, hand settling at Ilya’s waist, fingers curling there like muscle memory. Ilya adjusted without thinking, arm coming around Shane’s back, pulling him close. It was easy. Everything was now. This was the life they’d built together. Nothing would ever be more perfect. Shane pressed a brief kiss to Ilya’s cheek as if to agree, unhurried, and smiled toward the glow of the bathroom light. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Sure. Anything you ask for, Luka. Anything.”

Chapter 2: age four: legacy and very respectable pumpkins

Chapter Summary “Is that your grandson?” asked Marianne, the new transfer from Finance, pausing in the doorway with a folder tucked under her arm. “He’s adorable.” David nodded. “That’s Luka,” he said. “He was born at four-point-three kilos.” Marianne’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s big,” she said. “Big cheeks.” “Mm-hm,” David said, pleased. Nearly ten pounds. A fact he carried around the way some people carried lucky coins. “They had to weigh him twice. The nurses kept calling him solide.”

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes David Hollander, as he did every morning, tied his tie with a sincere joy that made his wife roll her eyes. “Honey,” she asked as she did every morning, reaching over to adjust the knot, “when will you retire?” He tried to give a new reason every day. Because I’d miss the routine felt too plain to say, he knew, and I love the work I do was something he’d already used—ten years ago, during a winter when his hair had still been mostly dark. So David thought of the list he made every Sunday morning while reading the newspaper, one reply for each day of the week, carefully penciled in the margins beside the crossword. Tuesday’s answer was circled twice. “Because I like planting seeds in a garden I’ll never get to see,” he answered. Yuna rolled her eyes again, but her palm lingered on his chest, smoothing his suit as if spreading fondness beneath the fabric, and he felt the affection in her lips when she kissed him and said, “You don’t like gardening, David.” He didn’t. “I don’t,” David agreed, nodding, honest to a fault. But that was fine, in the same way Yuna didn’t like The New Yorker, or the news at all unless it was hockey-related. She never cared about Alexander Hamilton or the editorials tucked behind the headlines, never noticed the half-stolen quotations David slipped into conversation just to see if they’d make her laugh. She liked what she liked, decisively, and he loved her for it. It gave him the opportunity to feel like a poet, even if his words were borrowed. Yuna smiled despite herself. “Well,” she said, smoothing his lapel one last time, “try not to plant anything too dramatic today.” “I never do,” David said, reaching for his coat. His wife snorted, stepping back to look him over, fingers flicking an invisible speck from his shoulder. “Don’t be late,” she reminded him. “And don’t forget your lunch.” “I won’t today,” he said, though sometimes he did—on purpose, occasionally, something they both knew he did because he enjoyed the look on her face when he drove back at noon and stepped quietly into her at-home office with lunch for two and the flowers that made him late to work in the first place. Yuna did not tease him further, though; just handed him his keys, as she did every morning. He kissed her cheek in thanks, as he did every morning. For a moment they stood there anyway, neither quite in a hurry, suspended in the doorway as if the day might wait if they asked it nicely. “I love you,” Yuna said. “I love you,” he replied. David paused at the door, the word garden still warm in his mind. There were potted plants on the porch, large and well-kept; beautiful in color, too—green and spotted pink here and there like their son’s freckles. Some leaves curled lazily toward the sun, others heavy with water from that morning’s careful watering. Yuna never forgot. David did. He headed to his car. And today, he noticed the hedges that lined the driveway a bit more— though they’d always been there, trimmed monthly by a hired man Yuna prepared iced tea and extra electrolytes for in the summer heat. The rows were straight and deliberate, dark green walls guiding the path toward the road. He knew the Japanese maple centered among the rocks, too, because he had planted it himself there before Shane had still been a wish and a thousand IVF injections away. Back when the yard had been mostly dirt and hope and a promise that something would take root. It was grown now. Sturdy and beautiful. Its red leaves lifted slightly in the breeze, casting thin shadows across the pale stones below. But Yuna was right—David didn’t like dirt under his nails or the patience of waiting seasons out. Not burnt-cheeks and gloves and aching knees. None of that had ever appealed to him. But there were other ways of planting things, he figured. Quieter ways. Ways that didn’t require sunlight or certainty, but things set carefully into place and left behind, trusting time to do what it would—like marriage, and the dream of a child shaded beneath a canopy, and a lingering kiss in the morning to sustain him until the afternoon. That kind of work he understood, like the click of a seatbelt. A careful placing. A long faith. It was planting. Work done without instant reward, without ever knowing who might one day rest beneath what had grown. If there was a form of gardening he liked, it was this. David drove to work.

By the time he reached his office at the Treasury Board, the building had settled into its weekday hum: the low thrum of ventilation carrying through long hallways, the polite murmur of early meetings, the soft percussion of keyboards already at work. He hung his coat on the hook behind the door, straightened the framed mandate letter on his wall out of habit rather than necessity, and set his briefcase down beside his desk. The family photo was already where it always was, angled slightly toward the chair across from him: Luka sat on Yuna’s lap, red-faced and furious at the camera, fists clenched like he had been born with a list of grievances to file. David smiled before he realized he was doing it. “Is that your grandson?” asked Marianne, the new transfer from Finance, pausing in the doorway with a folder tucked under her arm. “He’s adorable.” David nodded. “That’s Luka,” he said. “He was born at four-point-three kilos.” Marianne’s eyebrows lifted. “He’s big,” she said. “Big cheeks.” “Mm-hm,” David said, pleased. Nearly ten pounds. A fact he carried around the way some people carried lucky coins. “They had to weigh him twice. The nurses kept calling him solide.” He handed Marianne the framed picture as she came in and reached for the chair. Big baby, he thought, not for the first time. When he’d held Luka back then, carefully, as if supporting a crate stamped FRAGILE in four languages, David had been struck by the weight of him. Shane had been three-point-three kilos; much lighter than four-point-three, even if the numbers sounded deceptively close. So David had learned to never remember Luka as a figure on a chart, but as a heft, a fullness. Something that had taken its time, drawing nourishment steadily, unapologetically, until it was ready. A healthy, loved, big, big baby. That’s his grandson. Marianne handed the photo back, smiling. “That’s impressive.” David slid it into place on his desk, angling it again toward the light. “He had a good start,” he said, which felt truer than anything else he might have offered. Both of his fathers were professional athletes; metaphorically speaking, the soil could not be greater than that. He didn’t add that he’d looked it up later, that four-point-three kilos was roughly the weight of a sturdy watermelon, or a very respectable pumpkin if the season had been good. Luka was perfect. From winter to spring, all throughout the summer and fall, each season, his grandson is perfect. “Well,” Marianne said, glancing at her watch, “ready when you are.” David gathered his papers, capped his pen, and rose, the small motions of preparation falling into place as naturally as breath. “Of course,” he said. As they stepped into the hallway, the office door clicking shut behind them, David carried the image with him—the sense of something solid and well made, the quiet satisfaction of growth allowed to happen at its own pace. Yuna was right, of course. His wife tended to be more often than not. Still, as the meeting room lights were already on, chairs pulled back at uneven angles, voices gathering into something purposeful, David took his seat among them; he set his notebook squarely on the table, and listened as the conversation found its footing. He spoke when it was his turn, asked the questions that needed asking, made the small adjustments that kept things aligned. Decisions would ripple outward, unnoticed, taking years to show their shape. David was content with that. Content to tend what was in front of him and trust the rest to time. The harvest, after all, was never the point.

David was late to many things. He was late getting back to work after lunches at home, especially when Yuna had made tea and neither of them pretended to watch the clock. He’d been late to the grocery store often enough that the clerks learned to recognize him in his suit, apologetic and sheepish, reaching for whatever was left on the shelves. He’d even been late, once or twice, to Shane’s childhood hockey games; arriving breathless in the rink lobby, skates already cutting ice without him. He lived in the clouds occasionally, his wife lamented. He agreed. But David was never late to pick up Luka. At three twenty sharp, David’s car was already idling across the street from the school, engine quiet, radio off. He watched the door the way some people watched departures boards, alert to the smallest movement. When Luka finally appeared, less of a burst than a careful exit, scanning the sidewalk before spotting him, David felt the familiar settling in his chest, a sense of having arrived exactly where he was meant to be. “Dedulechka,” Luka called, voice lifting with relief as he hurried over, his blue glasses strapped securely around his head, slightly crooked from the day. “Hey, bud,” David said gently, opening the door. “I’m right here.” Luka talked the entire walk to the car, about paint and dinosaurs and how loud it had gotten during indoor recess, and how he hadn’t liked that part. His hair, more blond like Ilya’s than Shane’s brown, stuck up where the elastic of his glasses pressed it flat. David buckled him into the booster seat, careful and practiced. He adjusted the glasses, then the seatbelt, narrating the steps without thinking, the way he always had. Luka watched his hands closely, calming as each click fell into place. He had Ilya’s coloring, the same pale hair and open face and little kissed-on moles, but the quiet sensitivity was familiar. The way hesitation lingered too long. The way reassurance mattered more than the bravado and medal- assigned honor that still made Ilya straighten his spine to much. For a moment, from time to time, David could only see Shane at the same age: eyes tracking every movement, rules memorized, comfort found in sequence and predictability. Shane had been quieter, more contained, but the need was the same: to know someone was there, steady and unhurried. David had known it in his son the way one knows sunlight on the ground, the soft scatter of it breaking through leaves. It was not the same tree, never the same light, and yet it was unmistakable. Looking at his grandson now, David recognized it again—and loved it with the same patient certainty he’d felt all his life. “All set,” David said. Luka nodded, then paused. “Are we going the fast way home?” he asked suddenly, inexplicably. He didn’t question it. “No,” David said right away. “Same long way as always.” Luka nodded again, relaxing into his booster seat. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t like the other cars.” David knew that—in the same way he knew some things you learned not to be late for, and some things, if you were lucky, you learned how to tend just right. “I don’t either,” he agreed. He closed the door gently.

Luka’s workbook lay open on the kitchen table, its pages bright with cartoon apples and smiling numbers. David sat beside him, glasses perched low on his nose, one finger resting patiently at the edge of the page. “All right,” David said. “Let’s try this one again. If there are three apples here, and we add one more—” Luka leaned so close his nose nearly touched the paper. He counted carefully, lips moving as if the numbers needed encouragement. “One… two… three,” he said, then frowned. “But what if one rolls away?” David chuckled. “Then we’d have a different problem.” Luka thought about this very seriously. Then he nodded. One problem, he understood, was not the same as another. You only had to do one at a time. He was a smart boy like that. David waited a moment before turning the page, letting the quiet stretch just enough for Luka to refocus. He’d learned a long time ago that lessons went better when you gave them room to land—but then the front door unlocked with a familiar click. Luka froze. His head snapped up, eyes already bright. “Papa! Daddy!” he shouted, scrambling off the chair so quickly it nearly tipped. The workbook slid a little, forgotten. Footsteps followed—two sets, heavy-weighted and easy. Shane and Ilya came in together, hair still dark from the shower, dressed in loose sweats and soft T-shirts, bodies relaxed in the afterglow of practice. “A vot i moy malen’kiy matematik!” Ilya said, scooping Luka up mid-run. “Did you defeat the numbers?” Luka squealed as his feet left the ground, clutching at Ilya’s shoulders. “I did!” he declared, breathless. “They were big numbers.” “Big ones?” Ilya repeated gravely, bouncing him once. “Ah. The dangerous kind.” Luka nodded hard, pressing his face into Ilya’s shoulder “But I won.” “Of course you did,” Ilya said, pressing a quick kiss into his hair before setting him back down. “I never doubted my mathematician for a second.” Shane smiled, quieter, leaning in to kiss Luka’s hair. His son turned to him. “Hi, Dad.” “Good practice?” David asked. “Hard,” Shane said. In his and his mother’s language, it meant, Yes. Once David learned that, an embarrassing amount of his lifelong worry evaporated. As if summoning her by thought alone, Yuna appeared from her office at Luka’s happy squeals, blinking as if she’d surfaced from deep water. Luka wriggled free and launched himself at her next, narrating the entire afternoon in an excited rush. Ilya followed them to the living room, laughing happily. David loved it. Still, Shane lingered by the table, his attention catching on the open workbook, so he lingered too. Together they stared at the faint ghosts of erased pencil marks, the careful lines Luka had tried to straighten and redo. After a moment Shane let out a slow breath and drew himself upright; David did the same, already pushing back from his chair. “Dad,” Shane said, a little tentative. “About earlier. About you picking him up again. You don’t have to—” “It’s fine,” David said. Shane shook his head, the words coming anyway, measured but insistent. “I know you say that. I just— I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. About work.” He hesitated, searching for the most careful way to say it. “You don’t need to anymore,” he said, quieter now. “Not if you don’t want to. I mean it.” His gaze flicked down to the workbook, then back to him. “Use the retirement fund for a vacation home. I can cover everything else. For Mom. For you. If we need someone to help with Luka —pickups, afternoons—I can arrange it too. It’s not… a strain. I can handle it.” The earnestness in his voice tightened something deep in David’s chest. Before Shane could keep refining the argument—before he could turn it into a plan with numbers and schedules and contingencies, David crossed the space between them. He reached up and rested his hand at the back of Shane’s neck, thumb pressing there gently. Shane went still immediately, breath catching, just like he had when he was small, when everything in his head spun too fast and he didn’t yet know how to slow it down. “It’s all right,” David said truthfully. He had always been a terrible liar, something Yuna had pointed out decades ago, when she told him his eyes spoke too loudly to keep secrets. Shane was the same. He was like David in that way. But not for the first time, David found himself thinking how much Shane took after Yuna in another sense: the way responsibility settled on him like something fragile and enormous, something he was terrified to drop—not because of the shards it would leave in his own hands, but because of the sound it would make when it shattered might scare others. It didn’t have to be that way. Thankfully, David had a lifetime of practice picking glass from his own palms, and an endless reserve of patience for the bleeding fingers that insisted on trying to hold what was never meant to be carried alone. “I know you could,” he acknowledged. “And I’m proud of you.” Shane swallowed, nodding once. “But I love what I do,” he continued. “And I love this.” He glanced toward the living room, where Luka was now on the floor between Ilya and Yuna, counting something invisible on his fingers while they listened like it was vital. He was so young—just learning what numbers were. One day, he would count to numbers David would never reach himself. He didn’t know how to put that into words for his son. So all David could do was ask, quietly, “Let me have this.” Shane’s shoulders eased. He leaned, just slightly, into his father’s hand. “Okay,” he said. David released him and returned to the table, straightening the workbook before closing it. Luka looked up at him from the floor. “Dedulechka,” he called. “I did the apples right.” “I know you did,” David said, smiling.

His wife was right. David could retire tomorrow and be all right. He knew this in the clear, practical way he knew most things—by looking at numbers like counting apples, by checking boxes, by understanding margins. He was blessed like that, he thought once, remembering a Chinese proverb he’d come across years ago in an essay he’d clipped and never quite managed to throw away: The crooked tree lives its life; the straight tree becomes lumber. He had bent where it was wise to bend. He had stayed where he needed to. He had accumulated. He had worked for annuity and a retirement fund steady enough to feel like solid ground. Plus, his son had been generous with what he earned, too—overly so, if David were honest. There was no mortgage to worry over anymore, no need for vacations that required spearing or strategy, no sense of impending scarcity hovering over the years ahead. The future, at least financially, was handled. And yet. Alexander Hamilton had once questioned legacy. What is a legacy? And then answered himself: It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. David had read it in The New Yorker as well; clipped that line, too, and carried it with him ever since. He could retire tomorrow and be all right, but there was joy in the days as they were. Joy in waking each morning to brew coffee for two. Joy in his wife’s hand on his chest, fingers adjusting the knot of a tie their son had bought him in a forgotten Christmas, blended in the memories of a lifetime of holidays. To David, there’s joy in the small, growing collection of photographs he kept ready to show anyone who asked: his wife in white before grays adorned her hair, laughing and vowing to be his forever; an old picture dated May 10, 1991, of Shane small and wrinkled, not yet the man he would become. Newer ones too, proof that time had not stopped but widened.His son’s own wedding. Professional shots of Ilya and Shane at the All-Star Games; glossy, balanced, arena lights caught in their hair. Shaky, candid ones too—creaky wooden chairs sunk into the forest floor, campfire smoke drifting thick and blue, blurring their smiles. Luka. Always Luka. Red-faced, indignant Luka, impossibly solid, impossibly beautiful, a whole four-point-three kilos like a tomato grown too heavy on the vine, cradled in the arms of his teary-eyed parents. There was pride, too, in quieter places. In seeing the deductions on his paycheck and understanding what they meant. In knowing that one day, when his knees ached no matter how much gardening he’d avoided, when his grandson was in college or nervously signing papers for his first car or buying his first home, Luka might say—offhandedly, without shyness—Oh, Dedulechka helped me pay for it. That, David thought, was legacy. Not recognition, or the credit, or being quoted in The New Yorker like Alexander Hamilton and all of his words of poetry. Just the assurance that something good had been made easier. That was why, when Wednesday morning arrived, and David tied his tie with the same sincere joy that made his wife roll her eyes, and she asked—adjusting the knot, as she always did—“Honey, when will you retire?” He smiled. It was only a matter of time. He knew that too. But it was Wednesday, and Wednesday had its own answer. “Because,” David said, gently, “I’m in the middle of a very long beginning.”

Chapter End Notes

never tell david that he read hamilton the musical and not actual alexander hamilton quotes LOL

Chapter 3: age four: slow days and being good

Chapter Summary Shane had always carried the quiet conviction that one day he would ruin it. That sooner or later Ilya would see clearly whatever it was Shane himself had been trying to compensate for all these years. And then Luka had been born. And suddenly the quiet misalignment Shane had learned to live around did not belong only to him anymore. It had become something that might be inherited. Something he might have passed along without meaning to. Something Shane had given Ilya’s son.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes Shane isn’t scared of parenthood, regardless of what his mother insisted. Fear, after all, implied uncertainty, and Shane Hollander had never been uncertain about raising children with Ilya—or the fact that having a baby was, fundamentally, an unpredictable undertaking. Anyone who wasn’t afraid simply hadn’t done the reading. Thankfully, enough parents had. That was why these things existed: prenatal preparation programs, pediatric and infant emergency training, developmental milestone charts broken down month by month. Not guidelines so much as safeguards; evidence that if you studied hard enough, tracked carefully enough, watched closely enough, the worst kinds of damage might be prevented entirely. So no, Shane wasn’t afraid of parenthood. He was just afraid of doing everything right and still discovering that no amount of care could keep Luka from inheriting the parts of him Shane had never managed to fix. And that was—fine, really. Not neuroticism, like his psychologist insisted, or regret, the way it seemed to haunt Ilya on his lowest days. He was doing well, his parents assured. Luka is four-years-old already! Over one thousand, four hundred sixty days of gummy smiles and tears and hair-tearing worry, yes, but one thousand, four hundred sixty days alived and healthy by their side. So, by all accounts, things were good. Fine, like he said. Perfect. Except— Except they weren’t—because Shane remembers being four-years-old and stopping in the middle of a room for no reason he could name, his heart slamming as if he’d been caught doing something unforgivable. And sometimes—now—he thinks he sees his son do the same. So yes, everything is perfect, except that Shane remembers being five as well—the age Luka will be soon—and already knowing dread by feel alone, already braced for consequences that never quite came, but never stopped threatening to. Everything is perfect, really, except he knows that the older his son gets, the louder that ticking clock will become—just as it did for him, because it was impossible to forget the pressure in his chest that formed at six and only got worst with time; the constant, dull, burrowing in around his seventh birthday like a maggot beneath his skin and never leaving. The way breathing all the way in began to feel impossible, as if a full breath might trigger something worse. The fear that his blood was infected. The way he had wished for it to disappear over the candles of his eighth birthday cake, only for it to tighten when he turned nine, sinking in deeper, in heavier, as if it had decided to stay forever. Everything is perfect, except Shane remembered lying awake at night rehearsing apologies he didn’t yet need, running through every mistake he might make the next day, the next week, the rest of his life—because maybe if he stayed ahead of them, if he catalogued them carefully enough, they wouldn’t hurt as much when they finally came.

He had been ten, then—and Shane remembers so well because the feeling has never left him. It was still there. And now he has a son who draws smiles from everyone who sees him. The thing is, adults used to smile at him back then, too. The same soft, approving smiles they gave Luka now. They had called Shane sensitive, careful, well-behaved—just like they called his son. Words that turned fear into something admirable, words that made it sound intentional, like it was discipline instead of perturbation, or, like, if it were a decision he made rather than something that was happening to him. And Christ, Shane has held Ilya while his husband broke down into choked sobs at the thought of inheritance; of Gregori’s blood, of Irina’s blood, for all how good she had been. And Shane knew, he knew, that anxiety wasn’t the same as fucking dementia, or the kind of depression that hollowed beautiful women out until they swallowed pill bottles whole. He wasn’t trying to compare them. He wasn’t trying to soften or, like, dilute that fear. He wasn’t trying to minimize anything— But it had hurt. It had hurt to grow up afraid inside his own skin. It had hurt to be praised for how little space he took up when every mouth that uttered ‘diversity’ and ‘representation’ seemed to make him feel smaller. Hurt to be told—again and again—that he was good when what Shane really felt was terrified and trying very hard not to show it in a way that inconvenienced others. Loving parents hadn’t fixed it. Friends hadn’t fixed it. A career he was good at, one he had earned and kept and excelled at, hadn’t fixed it either. Girlfriends, a hook-up, a boyfriend—a whole marriage hadn’t fixed it, either. And now Luka was here. Warm. Real. Impossibly small and big at the same time; a full contraction covered in curls and freckles. Half of Ilya. But half Shane, too. So the fear came anyway, already marrow-deep and never leaving him. The thought that his son might’ve inherit it—that Luka might wake one morning with his heart already slamming, already convinced something terrible was about to happen—it made Shane feel sick. Made him think of how he used to wish for it to be something: a broken arm. A concussion. Cancer in his blood. Anything visible enough to earn concern. Anything bad enough to justify the terror. Anything that would put him under fluorescent lights with doctors’ hands on him, voices serious and focused as they ripped him open and searched. The thought of Luka wanting that—of his baby boy growing up to believe he’d need real damage to prove what was already killing him inside—crushed the air from Shane’s lungs. It made his chest lock tight, it made each breath snag, it made his body brace for a blow that would never come—because logically, Shane knew it wouldn’t come. But what if? What if? Shane remembered. How was he supposed to look at his own son and pretend to be all right while seeing himself reflected back at him? How was Shane supposed to be all right when he knew he was the reason? The door to the home gym opened anyway. Not abruptly—carefully, like he trained into Ilya a decade ago. Shane flinched anyway, breath catching hard in his throat, and then his husband was there, one hand still on the handle, the other resting lightly on Luka’s shoulder. “Hey,” Ilya said lightly. He took in Shane’s face in one glance and didn’t comment on it. “We’re not interrupting? Luka leaned forward, already half-escaping Ilya’s grip. He was wearing socks and dressed in a matching little exercise set that looked aggressively coordinated, the sort of outfit Rose and Ilya loved to buy, with its own bright, matching headband shoved crookedly into his hair. No glasses today. His eyes—too big for his face, too earnest—were pure Shane. He wishes they weren’t. “Papa said it’s okay,” Luka announced, his words spilling out in a soft, lilting rush. The consonants were a touch blurred, vowels stretched just a little too long, an accent half- formed, as if he were still deciding which sounds belonged to which language. “’Cause you’re doing the slow, stretchy thing. And I can be quiet.” He nodded once, firmly, to underscore this promise. Shane looked at him, and when Luka closed his eyes for a blink—just for a second—Shane saw Ilya standing there: the same sun-lit curls, the same tilt of the head, the same long arms. Scrawny, too-tall proportions that promised a body that would lengthen and lean without requiring correction. Shane had never had that. He had been shorter for longer than most, denser for longer than most, built wrong for ease and never the sort of child anyone could point at and say that one will be an athlete. Nothing about him had ever fallen into place naturally. Healthy had never come easily to him, not the way it seemed to for Ilya, whose body had always looked like it understood its own instructions. Shane’s had needed supervision. Every pound gained was a problem to be solved, every softness a flaw to be measured, corrected, and carved out. Mirrors had never been neutral things for him; they were inspections. His shoulders too thick one year, his waist too soft the next, thighs carrying weight that had to be burned away in miles and hours and numbers written down with quiet severity. His body could not be trusted to become what it should on its own. Control had been the only thing standing between him and failure. Luka would not have to learn that. Luka had Ilya’s height, Ilya’s lines, Ilya’s possibilities, prospects, his future— The realization hit Shane in the chest so hard he had to look away. It was almost perfect. It was almost everything he had wanted. But Luka’s eyes were brown. What if the good Ilya had passed on was undone by the part of Luka that came from him? From the door, Ilya squeezed Luka’s shoulder. “Rules,” he reminded their son. “You stay on the mat. No wandering.” “I know,” Luka said, already stepping onto the edge of the yoga mat with exaggerated care. Shane reached for him. His hands were still trembling, but he held them out anyway, palms open. “Come here,” he said. Luka didn’t hesitate. He crossed the last bit of space and plopped down in front of Shane, legs folding clumsily, headband sliding halfway over one eyebrow already. He sat back, mimicked Shane’s posture with total seriousness, hands on his knees, spine straight, face solemn. Ilya lingered in the doorway a moment longer, watching them with something careful and knowing in his expression. Then he smiled, just a little, and let the door slide shut behind him. Shane closed his eyes. Luka leaned forward, elbow pressing into Shane’s knee, warm and solid and entirely unafraid. Shane breathed. “Are we breathing now, Daddy?” Luka asked. Shane opened one eye. The second he did it, Luka copied him, squeezing one eye shut with exaggerated seriousness, watching him closely, face intent. “Yes,” Shane said. His voice came out softer than he expected. “We’re breathing.” He exaggerated it a little, on purpose. In through his nose. Slow. Counted, even though he told himself not to. Out through his mouth, careful not to rush it. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. A pattern worn into him so deeply it barely registered as choice anymore. Luka watched him like this was a trick he might get wrong if he blinked. He copied immediately. Not perfectly—too loud, too fast—but earnest enough, with his whole chest, then exhaled in a long, exaggerated sigh that ended in a soft huff. “I’m doing it,” he whispered, unnecessarily. Shane breathed again. Luka followed. Too big an inhale. Shoulders lifting almost to his ears. Why was Luka rushing? Was that nervous energy or just excitement? Was the sound— Then his son exhaled and blew the air out with a soft pfff, lips vibrating. He grinned at the sound, pleased. Shane forced himself to breathe again. In. Out. They did it a third time, then twice more, and on the fifth inhale, Shane heard it then—a tiny hitch, barely there. A catch in the rhythm. Luka’s breath stuttered just enough to trip every internal alarm Shane had ever learned to live with. His chest tightened reflexively. His attention narrowed, sharpened, zeroed in on the space between Luka’s ribs, the rise and fall, the timing. Too fast? Too shallow? Was that another hitch, or a joke, or just a four-year-old getting distracted? An early sign of asthma? What did it mean when a four-year-old couldn’t hold his breath for longer than five seconds? Did Shane have to make, like, an appointment with his pediatrician? But Luka took another breath, then leaned a little closer, his knee bumping Shane’s thigh. “Am I doing it right, daddy?” he asked then, voice soft with wonder. Shane went still. There it is, his mind said, unhelpfully. That’s how it starts. It would have been easy—automatic, really—to correct him. To say slowly, Luka. To put a hand on his back and guide the breath; to model, to intervene. To correct. Shane could already feel the impulse forming, sharp and urgent, the same instinct that had driven his own childhood: fix it now before it gets worse. He remembered his mom doing that. Always gently. Always kindly. A hand at his shoulder that never quite rested. Honey, try like this instead. Have you considered these options? You don’t need to feel that way. Breathe slower, honey. A laugh; You’re making me anxious! Sit up, Shane. Think about it this way. Don’t worry about that yet. Worry about this instead. She never raised her voice, never sounded unkind; Yuna simply adjusted him as she went, corrected his angle, narrated what mattered and what didn’t, trimmed his feelings down to something manageable before they could sprawl and pull them off course. Well-meaning. Loving. The kind of care to be grateful for. And he was. It kept him upright, kept him from falling apart. It just also taught him how not to. And Shane—carefully—did not want that for his own son. This was the moment, he knew. The point where a word could tip into something heavier than it needed to be, where giving it a name might make it stick, might give it weight before Luka had the room or understanding to set it down again. Shane knew how easily that happened. But two percent of Norwegian preschoolers experienced depressive disorders. In the United States, 1.7 percent. It was psychopathology. Genetics dictated it. Genetics ruled everything. He thought of the long, slow conversations they’d had about Ilya’s depression. About how to notice feelings without turning them into verdicts for Luka. How they had agreed—again and again—not to rush, not to assume, not to borrow fear from the future. Shane didn’t want to teach Luka to monitor himself the way he had learned to. Didn’t want to turn breathing into a test. Didn’t want to teach him that a hitch meant something was wrong. But he also didn’t want to miss something real. Shane swallowed and forced himself to stay still. He let out his breath and felt it all the way down this time, felt the mat beneath him, Luka’s warmth ahead of him, the steady, ordinary quiet of the room. “You’re doing it,” he answered finally. “There’s not really a right or wrong.” Luka considered this. He breathed again, not really meditatively, but, well, he is four and Ilya’s son. There was no hitch this time. “How does it feel?” Shane asked still, keeping his voice light, careful. Just—opening the door. Luka thought about that, too. His brow furrowed in concentration, the way it always did when he was trying to find the exact word. “Um,” he said. “It feels… big. In here.” He pressed a hand to his chest, then grinned suddenly. “Like a balloon.” “Yeah,” Shane said. “That makes sense.” He let his hand rest flat on the mat between them, close but not touching. They breathed together a few more times. Luka’s attention wandered, as it always did: he rocked slightly, adjusted his headband, peeked one eye open and then shut it again when he caught Shane watching. All throughout it, Shane remembered being that age: how quickly attention could turn into concern, and concern into scrutiny, and scrutiny into something that stuck. “Hey,” Shane began again carefully. “When you feel funny in your body, like, too fast, or too buzzy, what do you do?” Luka frowned, thinking. “I wiggle,” he said. Then, more earnestly, “Or I go find Papa! Or you.” “And does that help?” he asked. “да,” Luka said, easy and certain—the sweetest word he knew, because it was the one Ilya never seemed to deny him. It threaded through every small indulgence: yes, my baby, one more story; yes, my life, one more minute tucked in close; yes, my love—ask me for one more of anything, and it’s yours. I can’t imagine a reason I’d ever say no to you. His son beamed up at him and said, “’Cause then I’m not by myself, Daddy.” Shane’s throat tightened at that. At the same time, something in his chest loosened; he drew in a breath that almost didn’t hurt, and the simple act of it nearly felt like comfort. “Okay,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as emotional as he felt. “That’s a good thing to do. You don’t ever have to be alone if you don’t want to be.” Luka brightened at that, then tilted his head, considering. “Sometimes I feel funny in my tummy,” he added, as if remembering something only just now relevant. “Like before school. Or before tying my skates.” Shane kept his face carefully neutral. Four years old, he reminded himself again. New experiences. Transitions. Anticipation. A lot of emotion for one tiny body. Emotional regulation, he told himself. “Funny how?” he asked, just to be sure. Luka shrugged, shoulders lifting. “Like… krutit sya.” He made a vague motion with his hands. “And my legs don’t want to listen.” “Oh,” Shane said, letting a very casual second pass before speaking again. “And what helps then?” Luka scooted a little closer without realizing it, knee pressed to Shane’s thigh again. “Well, some times Papa says we can have a slow day,” he said. “Or you hold my hand, remember?” Shane nodded. He knew those scripts. They had built them carefully, word by word, the same way they had built the ones around Ilya’s bad days: Papa’s having a low-energy day, Papa’s brain is tired today, Papa needs a little quiet, but he still loves you the most. No big labels, or explanations Luka wasn’t ready for. “And when you do those things,” Shane asked, “does the twisty feeling stay, or does it change?” “It goes away,” Luka said. Then, after a beat, corrected himself. “Or it gets smaller.” “Smaller can be good sometimes,” Shane said—and he did mean it, at least at first. But the thought didn’t settle; it kept stretching, snagging on all the places in his brains that he hadn't learned to curve with meditation or medication. Smaller could be bad too. It depended. On how small, on how often, on whether it hurt and for how long. The reassurance slipped, unraveled, and something sharper took its place. Shane felt it building under his skin, that restless, insistent need to check, to be certain, to not miss anything. The questions came anyway, crowding in faster than he could sort them, each one pressing against the next: Do you ever feel scared for no reason? Do you lie awake at night, all night? Does your heart ever start racing and not stop? Does it hurt—here, or here—do you feel it now? Like me? He didn’t ask them. Instead, Shane said, “Do you ever feel like you have to be very, very good?” Luka blinked. “I am good,” he replied promptly. “You are,” Shane agreed quickly. “I mean—do you ever feel like you have to be extra good? Quiet good. Still good.” Luka considered this longer. He leaned back on his hands, headband slipping all the way off now. “No,” he said, huffing like Ilya, like it was ridiculous. “I like loud sometimes.” Shane almost laughed. He pressed his lips together, nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “You do.” Luka grinned, pleased with himself. “Loud is okay sometimes too.” “That’s right,” Shane agreed. They breathed again. One more slow cycle. Shane felt his shoulders drop a fraction. “But when you feel krutitsya,” he asked gently, careful not to load a new word in dooming English, “what does it feel like for you?” Luka scrunched his face up, searching. “Like when the stadium has a big noise,” he said. “Or when I think I lost Anya.” “And what do you do then?” “I yell,” Luka said. Then, softer, “Or I cry.” Shane nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “Scared’s allowed to be loud too, right?” Luka nodded. “Right,” he agreed—then the metaphorical door shut, and his son breathed out, long and dramatic, until he leaned sideways and rested his head briefly against Shane’s knee, as if the conversation itself had tired him out. “You’re good at breathing, daddy,” Luka said, muffled. Something twisted in Shane’s chest at that, the ache a blend of pride, fear, and grief he’d learned to carry, but his voice remained calm. He wouldn’t force the door open. He wouldn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of practice.” Luka nodded solemnly, accepting this. “I’m still learning.” “That’s okay,” Shane replied. “You don’t have to learn fast.”

Two days later, Shane stood behind the low glass of Rink Three with his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, watching twenty four-year-olds attempt to skate in roughly the same direction. Parents lined the boards in loose, shifting clusters, voices kept low in that particular register adults used when watching children attempt difficult things badly: fond, amused, a little too self-satisfied that they had paid someone else to be responsible for their children for an hour and a half. It was fair. On the ice, the children were barely taller than their sticks. Luka was still easy to spot. His jersey was tucked in neatly, otherwise he’d complain about it almost reaching his knees, and the sleeves swallowing half his gloves, but it was still custom-stitched and professional- grade, with his own number on the back—84—because Ilya saw no practical value in pretending they couldn’t afford things other parents couldn’t. If there was a best version of something, he liked Luka to have it; it was simply a matter of course, the way some people automatically reached for organic produce or booked direct flights. It’s one of the things Shane loved most about Ilya—and one of the things that made him feel, at times, a little ill. Because Luka looked ridiculous, of course. Adorable, overdressed, with all expensive gear and baby milk teeth and uneven strides. He pushed off too hard, overcorrected, windmilled, then somehow stayed upright through what appeared to be a combination of luck and arrogance. Shane felt his mouth pull, almost despite himself. There he is, he thought, glancing at his husband as Ilya banged his palm against the glass once in encouragement, completely incapable of being subtle. There you are. His son. Their beautiful, absurd little boy. And for a minute—less than that, probably, but long enough to matter—Shane let himself have it: the uncomplicated pleasure of watching Luka exist in the world spoiled and love. The pleasure of recognition. The small, private vanity of seeing that child and knowing, irrationally and completely, that no one else’s could possibly be as dear. Then, because Shane was still Shane, something tightened. There was something quietly disorienting about watching his four-year-old wobble across the ice in equipment with a price tag some adult players would never afford for themselves. It was not regret. Not even dread. Top-of-the-line helmets and skates with the best-rated ankle support were necessary for Luka’s safety, even if the Bauers alone had cost 1,020.14 Canadian dollars and won't be used again past the summer. Still, a rational expense, Shane told himself. Ankles were complicated, after all—but that didn’t quite settle the small, unpleasant stirring somewhere beneath his ribs, like a thread being pulled too slowly to snap. Because this—Luka in expensive gear, Luka with a stitched number, Luka being driven to an early skating session by two men with Olympic gold medals, with multiple Stanley Cups, with international titles and Hall-of-Fame trajectories and more contracts, and endorsements, and money than either of them had grown up imagining—was still, technically, meant to be a pastime. Something Shane and Ilya had agreed—repeatedly, explicitly, almost defensively— was only meant to be fun. Something social. Something good for balance and coordination and winters in Ottawa, not, like, a plan. Not the first clean line in some future they would later claim had always been inevitable. Maybe they were doing too much already. Or maybe it only felt like too much because Shane knew how easily generosity could harden into pressure without anyone intending it to, and how quietly a child could come to understand that certain things had been given to him and therefore something, eventually, had to be given back in some way. Shane had grown up knowing what things cost. Not because anyone had told him so, or because his parents ever made him feel poor, or lacking. They hadn't. They had never once complained in front of him about the money, or the driving, or the time, or the re-shuffling of whole weekends around practices and tournaments and camps and sharpening appointments and replacement sticks and the private coaching that always, eventually, arrived. No one had ever sat him down and told him to make it worth it. But he had known. Children did. The observant ones always did. Shane had been one of those children. And, the older Luka gets, the more people say he’s like Shane. All of his childhood Shane had known that hockey cost money. That his mom stopped working for a reason and his dad worked more for another; because ice time cost money. That every extra hour, every better opportunity, every small advantage someone had made possible for him meant something. His parents never said make it worth it.

They didn’t have to. The sentence built itself. And Shane had spent years—most of them, if he was honest—trying to. He never wanted that for Luka. Never wanted love—not his, not Ilya’s—to be converted into something their son felt obligated to repay or justify with excellence, or gratitude, or becoming exactly the right kind of person in return. He tried not to think about it that way. He really did. But the thought lingered anyway, always somewhere in the back of his mind. Because Luka had Shane’s eyes. Because Luka was half of him. And if there was one thing Shane had never managed to make peace with in this life, it was his own reflection. Neuroticism, he knew. Emotional overextension. Whatever his psychologist had decided to call it most recently. Shane was self-aware enough to recognize the spiral while it was happening; that had never once meant he could stop it. He made himself look back at the ice. Watched as the coach said something Shane couldn’t hear through the distance, and watched as Luka looked up with too-sweet seriousness, nodding so firmly he nearly tipped over again. The girl next to him did fall straight down, neat as a dropped toy, and Luka turned at once, bent awkwardly at the waist, and appeared to offer assistance while remaining profoundly unstable himself. He fell forward just as Shane expected. The fallen girl laughed. Luka laughed too. Both of them went down together again like tipped turtles until a coach finally came over to help them up. Just a kid, Shane told himself. Just a four-year-old learning how to skate without falling. Not the beginning of a career, not projection, or a debt being accrued in real time. Just Luka. Just Luka, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, who laughed with his whole body and cried with it as well, who never seemed to know the meaning of failure when joy was involved. His glasses always a little too crooked, his laces perpetually half-unraveled, and when he smiled, it came quick and open, as if the world had never given him a reason to hold anything back. A stubborn little wobble of determination lived in him. Even when his skates slid out from under him, even when he tipped sideways like a baby deer, he would huff out a breath, grin at whoever had fallen with him, and plant his hands on the ice to try again. Just Luka—who never bothered hiding his tears and never searched every silence for signs he had done something wrong. Luka, who cried the way small children were meant to cry: openly, with the quiet certainty that someone would hear him eventually. That someone would come. He never doubted it. Shane hadn’t been like that. It was a good sign, right? He was still preventable. Next to him, Ilya sat on the bench with the easy posture of someone who had spent most of his life in rinks like this—one ankle crossed over the other, arms folded loosely, breath fogging pale in the chilled air. He looked perfectly at home. Of course he did. The fluorescent lights were unflattering to everyone else and somehow only made him look sharper, all long lines and careless grace. Shane glanced at him, then back at Luka. And there it was again—that mean little split in him. Because Luka looked so much like Ilya that sometimes it made Shane’s chest cave in with gratitude. Shane didn’t believe in God, not even in the halfway sense his husband did, but if there was one, he prayed Luka would stay like that forever, never becoming like Shane at all. He should be all Ilya, for his own good, because for normal little boys—the kind Ilya had once been—joy came easily at four. Four was small enough to be delighted by falling. Four still believed, with complete sincerity, that if something hurt or frightened or overwhelmed you, someone bigger would notice in time. Ilya’s childhood had not been gentle in every way, but he had still been that kind of child. Who trusted, instinctively, that the world ran on some underlying current of care. Who had the same best friend since he was little. Who, even when things hurt, even when they went wrong, believed—stubbornly, with a three-beamed faith—that someone would see and step in eventually. Normal children like that grew into normal adults who could be wounded by the world and still reach for it anyway. Men who shook hands with strangers in Saskatchewan. Men who fell in love with boys who couldn’t make eye contact. Men who still looked, despite everything, for evidence that the world was good, even if a chemical imbalance in their brain told them otherwise. Shane hadn’t been born like that. Maybe he’d come into the world already a little older. Already noticing. Already worrying, already sick with a careful, watchful guilt that medication never quite touched. The kind of child who didn’t fall without immediately checking who had seen it, who felt the need to apologize for it. Who understood, even at four, that skates cost money and ice time cost money, and that someone had to stand outside the glass every week in the cold just to judge his progress had taken time out of their life to watch him—so it had to be worth it. Because even if nobody said it out loud, he understood: love was labor. And labor ought to matter. And mattering looked a lot like being good. Extra good, for a not-normal boy like him. Quiet good, even when he got called slurs for being half of something he couldn’t wash out in the locker room. Still good, even when his skin felt too tight around his jagged bones and being a role model mattered more than anything. The kind of boy who offered up his whole heart in every interaction and didn’t understand why it unsettled people until it had been rejected enough times that he learned to keep it to himself. The kind of child who tried—quietly, carefully—to be worth the trouble. The kind of child that held back tears and never cried. Shane folded his arms tighter across himself. He could feel his mind beginning to braid things together the way it always did when he let it get too far ahead: expectation, performance, gratitude, body, fear. Luka’s little shoulders under the jersey. Expectation, performance, gratitude, body, fear. Luka learning to listen too closely. Luka learning to interpret every kindness as an investment. Luka, ten years from now, saying yes when he meant no because someone had spent too much on him already. Luka growing quiet in all the wrong ways. Luka becoming careful. Expectation, performance, gratitude, body, fear. Luka becoming good like Shane, not good like Ilya. The panic was not sharp this time. That would almost have been easier. It came low and steady instead, an internal constriction, as if his thoughts had begun tightening around his ribs one loop at a time. Beside him, Ilya shifted. “You know,” he said mildly, eyes still on the ice, “you are going to have to talk about it at some point.” Shane did not ask what. He kept his gaze fixed on Luka. On the little wobble of his stride. The confidence. The laugh that carried even through glass. The ugly, strangling tenderness Shane felt every time he looked at him. Not what. Not why. Just it. He exhaled slowly through his nose. They had been married too long for Shane to pretend he didn’t understand. Too long for him to pretend there was nothing there to understand, either. On the ice, Luka collided gently with another boy, and both of them spun in a useless half- circle before dissolving into laughter again. One coach skated over. Luka waved him off with all the dignity available to a child wearing a helmet bigger than his body. Shane watched him. Watched the easy joy of it. Watched the way he pushed himself upright again without hesitation, as if recovery were the most natural thing in the world. “I know,” Shane said quietly. Ilya nodded once. He didn’t press. On the ice, Luka had reached the final cone. He paused beside it, overwhelmed by what came next. The coach pointed toward the net. “Shoot!” Luka brightened instantly. He skated forward with renewed determination, planted his tiny skates as firmly as they would allow, and swung his stick with enormous effort. The puck moved approximately one meter. Luka threw both arms into the air anyway and turned toward the glass instinctively. Ilya and Shane were already on their feet, cheering and clapping. “ДА! ДА, ЛУКА!” his husband shouted across the rink, voice carrying easily over the scrape of skates and chatter of parents. “КРАСАВЕЦ! ОТЛИЧНЫЙ БРОСОК!” Shane winced, clapping, but he laughed too—because Luka grinned and waved both arms back so enthusiastically that he lost his balance and toppled over again. “АЙ!” Ilya winced theatrically. “Поднимайся, чемпион! Вставай!” Luka scrambled upright and waved at them one last time before skating off the ice, still grinning from ear to ear. Shane shook his head, smiling as they sat back down, and Ilya’s arm slipped along the back of the bench behind him this time. It was an easy, familiar movement, loose and unthinking, but it tugged Shane a little closer all the same until their shoulders touched through the thick padding of their coats. “You’re going to get us kicked out of practice again,” Shane said, trying to smooth the knot in his throat into something light. "Just hooting and hollering, Rozanov." Ilya didn’t even pretend to look chastened. “He scored,” he said, firmly, like the fact itself was sufficient justification for anything that might follow. He turned toward Shane as he said it. His eyes moved slowly across Shane’s face, the way they always did when he was checking something only he could see—lingering just long enough to make Shane feel exposed in places he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone looking. His gaze flicked from Shane’s mouth to his eyes, to the tight place between his brows; from the faint shine gathering at the corner of his lashes to the careful composure he was trying so hard to hold together. The longer he looked, the softer it became; the sharp lines of his face loosening as if whatever he had been looking for had settled into place. It was that look Shane knew too well: fond, patient, and sometimes a little bit sad for him. It has found him on his worst days: the ones where he was convinced he was too much, or not enough, or some impossible combination of both. It was the kind of look that didn’t stop at the surface. It slipped past every joke, every deflection, every small effort Shane made to keep things tidy and manageable. It saw the whole tangled interior anyway. And stayed. Shane didn’t tear up. He cleared his throat again and gestured vaguely toward the ice. “The puck moved a meter,” he said. “A very good meter,” Ilya murmured. He leaned closer, slow enough that Shane could feel the warmth of him before the contact came. His nose brushed lightly against the curve of Shane’s cheek, warm against skin chilled by the rink air, a soft, absent-minded nudge. His lips pressed a gentle kiss there. “Very, very good,” he whispered. His hand slid up Shane’s sleeve, fingers warm even through the fabric, until he reached the back of Shane’s neck. The touch was light, almost lazy, thumb brushing once along the edge of his hairline as he leaned in again. “Like you,” he said quietly against his ear. Another kiss, softer than the first. “A little bit like his papa, though,” Ilya added, voice teasing; he lingered there a moment longer before pressing one more kiss to Shane’s cheek. “But mostly like you.” Shane huffed out a quiet laugh, the sound escaping him before he could stop it. He ducked his head a little, rubbing the side of his face where Ilya had kissed him. Out on the ice, Luka was still wobbling determinedly across the practice rink, chasing the puck. Every few seconds, though, he glanced back toward the boards. Just a quick look over his shoulder, checking. Each time he spotted them sitting there—still watching—his whole face lit up, sudden and brilliant, like he had just scored something real. It made something inside Shane feel like it had been split open, warm and aching all at once. He watched his son skate. And with Ilya’s shoulder warm against his, he tried, for as long as he could, to let that be enough.

Shane grew up wishing for something. A broken arm. A concussion. Cancer in his blood. Anything visible enough to earn concern. Anything bad enough to justify the constant, quiet terror that seemed to live under his ribs. Anything that would place him beneath fluorescent lights with doctors leaning over him, voices serious and attentive, finally saying there it is—we found it, Shane. We can finally name the thing that hurt. The thing that made you different. He imagined it sometimes—the relief. The clarity of explanation written in charts. Tests with numbers circled neatly on lab reports. A diagnosis recorded in a file, clean and authoritative and indisputable with a treatment plan and a timeline for when he’ll be normal just like everyone else. It’d be proof of it: that Shane had really tried, but that thing had prevented it. It would be something external, something that could be solved if the right people paid enough attention. But no doctor ever did. Because Shane was good. “Good” meant healthy. “Good” meant capable.“Good” meant the sort of boy that adults accepted with quiet approval—the kind teachers praised at conferences with small, satisfied smiles. The kind scouters pointed to when they talked about discipline and promise. The kind who grew up into the man coaches trusted immediately and made captain without hesitation even though no one really liked him. They just tolerated him because he’s good. Because “good” meant there was nothing wrong, but there’s nothing perfect, either. Shane used to like “good.” He was good at hockey. Exceptionally good, as it turned out. Good at contracts and interviews and investing and the strange professional performance of being watched constantly while revealing very little and still coming off as human. He was good at remembering to call his parents. Good at organizing the quiet routine of an adult life so that nothing important slipped. Good at structure. Good at discipline. Good at control. Good, too, at smiling when people looked at him. That smile had served him well. It reassured people. It confirmed what they already believed. It fit the story everyone preferred: talented athlete, steady temperament, successful career. A man whose life had turned out exactly the way it was supposed to. Minus the Asian thing. Minus the gay thing. Minus the eating thing. Minus the Voyageurs thing. Minus, minus, minus. All that stopped him from being great. But even those complications had resolved themselves into something tidy enough to file away. Because Shane handled things well. Because Shane was good. Because nothing about Shane Hollander suggested something might be wrong. He had a psychologist who helped him take care of his mental health and keep his marriage from quietly collapsing in on itself. Doctors who looked at charts and bloodwork and told him everything looked excellent whenever he started worrying about mold or disease. Counselors who laughed gently at his self-awareness and assured him he already knew how to manage stress. Trainers checked his joints and reflexes and cleared him to play. Teammates knew he didn’t always like to be touched and called him friend anyway. And his mother—his mother offered to help now, instead of just doing it. She said he’s a good father. He was reliable. "Reliable" meant "stable." "Reliable" meant "capable." "Reliable" meant the sort of man who had already solved whatever problems he might once have had. On paper, Shane Hollander was doing extremely well. On paper, Shane Hollander was good. Sometimes, though, it surfaced when he was alone in the hallway after games, leaning against the cool concrete while waiting for Ilya to finish with media. Sometimes it arrived in the middle of perfectly ordinary mornings while coffee brewed and sunlight crept slowly across the kitchen floor. Occasionally it appeared during moments that should have been uncomplicatedly good. Those were the strangest moments. Because nothing in Shane’s life looked like a problem. But when there was no visible problem, there was nothing to fix. No clothes to fold. No fat to trim. No person to hire. No schedule to adjust. No solution. Just the uncomfortable suspicion that something inside him was slightly off. Sick. Infected. Indication that the thing continued to live inside of him. Over the years, Shane had become very good at managing that feeling. He worked. He trained. He paid attention to details. Structure helped. Systems helped. If you approached life carefully enough—methodically enough—most things could be kept under control. He had learned that early: Control the schedule. Control the body. Control the food. Control the work. Control the image. Control enough variables and the feeling might stay quiet. It had worked, mostly. He was good. Life was good. He had parents who adored him. A career with more records than anyone else in his field. A husband who loved him more than Shane would ever fully understand. And a son. A son whom Shane did not want to resemble him in any way. That had to be the sickness, right? Because what kind of father looked at a child he loved completely—looked at the small, perfect human being who trusted him without question—and thought, with absolute sincerity: Please don’t grow up like me. Because Shane was good. He had always been good. Which meant the problem, the thing, whatever it was, had never been bad enough for anyone to notice. Just bad enough for him to live with. And that was the worst part. Because if Shane was good—if he had always been good—then whatever was wrong with him had survived everything. The parents. The coaches. The doctors. The success. The discipline. The love. It had survived all of it. Which meant it was still there. And Luka had Shane’s eyes. —the pantry light came on. Shane froze. The bulb itself was soft, neutral-toned, just a small brass-lined fixture in the center of the ceiling, installed more for aesthetics than necessity, but the sudden brightness felt sharp enough to sting. He could swear he heard the electricity hum in the silence. It spilled across the tile floor and crept up the narrow walls lined with neatly labeled containers and stacked grocery boxes Shane had arranged himself last Sunday in a careful alphabetical system that had made perfect sense at the time. But Ilya stood in the doorway, one hand still on the switch, and Shane was sitting on the floor with his back against the cabinet doors, a half-unwrapped Snickers bar in his hand. So, really, nothing made sense anymore. For a moment neither of them spoke. Ilya’s hair was rumpled from sleep, sticking up in several directions, while Shane’s remained perfectly in place because he had lied about going to bed hours ago and it was now too late to pretend otherwise because Ilya’s gaze moved slowly from Shane to the candy bar and back again. Shane had eaten most of it already. He wasn’t entirely sure when. His first instinct was still to explain something about blood sugar. Something reasonable. A measured solution to the vague nausea that had followed him home from the rink. But the sweetness had hit his tongue, and the familiar, blinding panic had followed immediately after—so quick, so sharp, so irrational—that he had sat down. He had forgotten to get back up. “I wasn’t—” Shane started, and then stopped, because the sentence had no reasonable ending, really. He tried again, more carefully. “I just needed—” Ilya looked at him for another second. The words dissolved somewhere between his chest and his throat. Shane tried to breathe normally. He tried to remember that nothing about this moment was actually dangerous. That the man standing in the doorway had, for soon-to-be two decades now, responded to every version of Shane—good, bad, exhausted, injured, quiet, impossible —with the same patient steadiness. Rationally, Shane knew exactly what was about to happen. Ilya would not raise his voice. He would not look disappointed. He would not do anything except love him. But that’s what made it impossible for Shane to keep himself together. His eyes burned before he could stop them. Then Ilya reached past the doorframe and turned the light off again. The pantry returned to darkness. There was the soft click of the door closing, the faint rustle of fabric, and then—his husband lowering himself to the floor beside him, as though sitting on cold kitchen tile at 3 a.m in the morning were the most ordinary thing in the world. Strong arms slid around Shane’s shoulders and drew him sideways until his forehead found the familiar warmth at the base of Ilya’s throat, resting against the line of his collarbone. One hand came up to cradle the back of his neck, thumb settling instinctively into the spot just below his hairline. Ilya’s other arm wrapped around Shane’s midsection, tightening in a quiet, steady hold. His palm settled where it always hurt first—where the thing had taken root when Shane was four years old and never quite left his blood: his ribs. The touch broke something loose in Shane’s chest. The sting of tears came immediately, hot and humiliating. His head dipped further forward until the weight of it rested fully against Ilya’s collarbone, breath catching as he pressed into the warmth of him. Shane knew Ilya would wait. Ilya always waited. He would sit on the pantry floor for as long as necessary, regardless how much it would hurt his knees, holding Shane without asking questions until his arms hurt and longer than that, without offering solutions, without trying to fix something that Shane himself had never been able to name properly. Because Ilya was Ilya. And Ilya loved him in a way that had never seemed conditional on Shane being good. That was, perhaps, the problem. Shane swallowed hard and tried to steady his breathing. The chocolate tasted cloying now, thick and sugary at the back of his throat. “I don’t think—” he started, his voice rougher than he intended. He paused, shook his head once against Ilya’s shoulder. “I don’t think there’s actually anything wrong tonight.” Ilya’s hand continued its slow movement through his hair. “Okay,” he said quietly. “But I just—” Shane tried again, the words catching. “I keep thinking about him.” “Luka?” Ilya murmured. Shane nodded. His voice took a moment to come back. “He’s like me,” he said finally, the sentence uneven as it left him. “His eyes.” Ilya hummed. “That’s good,” he said softly. Shane shook his head against him. “No,” he said, and the word carried a quiet helplessness he would never have allowed in the light. “That’s the problem, Ilya.” The pantry was still completely dark. Shane could feel the steady warmth of his husvand’s chest beneath his cheek, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the hand still resting at the back of his head. It was a familiar position, one they had found themselves in more times than Shane would have liked to admit over the years—becaus Shane has never changed, and it was clear that he never would. He drew in a shaky breath. “I’m scared he’s going to be like me,” Shane said at last. He tried to laugh a little when he said it, as if that might make the sentence sound less absurd, but the sound broke apart halfway through. “And the worst part is that everyone thinks that would be a good thing,” he continued. “They say it, like, it’s reassuring. Like it’s the best possible outcome.” His fingers tightened unconsciously in the fabric of Ilya’s shirt. “But I—” Shane began, and stopped. The sentence refused to finish itself. He could feel the words pressing forward anyway, pushing against the back of his teeth, heavy with a kind of honesty he had spent most of his life learning how to contain. I’ve never liked being me. He couldn’t say it. Not like that. Not to Ilya. Because how could he explain that without it sounding like a rejection of everything Ilya had chosen? Ilya had left an entire country behind. His language, his mother’s grave, the long inheritance of streets he had been born already belonging to—the place where his family had lived and been buried for generations, where the past did not feel distant but simply continued in the air and the stone and the names people carried. He had left Boston, too. The steady, sensible shape of a life that had begun to make sense. Ilya had walked away from it all with the stubborn certainty of someone who had already chosen what mattered most, and knew that once he turned back, some doors would close behind him forever. He did it for Shane. How could Shane turn around now and say that the man Ilya had chosen so completely was not someone Shane himself would ever have chosen at all? How could he say that when little kids looks up to him? When his name is said next to Serena Williams’ and he was his mother’s pride and everyone had always seemed perfectly satisfied with Shane Hollander? Except Shane himself. Because, before Ilya, Shane had been so— He searched for the word and could not quite find it. Not lonely, exactly. Loneliness implied the absence of people, and Shane had never lacked for people. Coaches, doctors, trainers, reporters, teammates, fans, family; there had always been someone nearby. Someone talking to him, praising him, evaluating him, expecting something from him. But he hadn’t felt like a person. Not a human like them. There had always been something slightly wrong with the fit of it: the texture of words broken under his molars, the tone of flat speech coming out of his mouth, the fit of the skin over his skull and nose. Something that never clicked. A joint that moved just a fraction of an inch too far in the wrong direction—nothing dramatic enough to break, nothing obvious enough for anyone else to notice, just a persistent, private awareness that the mechanism was not assembled quite the way it was meant to be. Shane had spent most of his life compensating for that small misalignment. It had worked well enough that, from the outside, no one ever suspected there had been anything to compensate for. If he controlled enough variables—his body, his schedule, his work, his food, his public face—then the feeling stayed quieter. Not gone, but contained. Containment had been enough for a long time. Then Ilya had arrived, loud and bright and impossible to contain at all, and somehow that had helped too. Ilya loved him in a way that did not seem dependent on Shane being orderly or impressive or even particularly reasonable. That had been new. Better, certainly, but never perfect, because Shane had always carried the quiet conviction that one day he would ruin it. That sooner or later Ilya would see clearly whatever it was Shane himself had been trying to compensate for all these years. And then Luka had been born. And suddenly the quiet misalignment Shane had learned to live around did not belong only to him anymore. It had become something that might be inherited. Something he might have passed along without meaning to. Something that now lived in a small boy with Shane’s eyes and Ilya’s trust. Something Shane had given Ilya’s son. “That thing,” Shane said into the dark, voice fraying. “Whatever it is. The part of me that always feels—” He broke off with a sharp breath, jaw tightening. His fingers dragged through his hair as if he could pull the right words loose. They wouldn’t come. “I keep thinking about the way he looks at things,” he forced out. “The way he concentrates. Gets quiet. Like you can see him working through everything around him.” Shane swallowed hard, frustration twisting his mouth. “And I— I can’t even explain what I mean—” He paused. Ilya’s fingers slid between Shane’s, prying them gently out of his own hair. He let his hand fall, and Ilya’s took its place, combing slowly through the strands—careful, patient, everything Shane had never managed to be with himself. It made his eyes screw shut. “But I recognize it,” Shane admitted, the words breaking apart as they came. “And everyone else sees it as a compliment—they think it’s, like, sweet or something. They say he’s going to be like me.” His voice went thin. “But they don’t know what that actually means.” For a moment Shane said nothing. The refrigerator hummed faintly somewhere in the kitchen beyond the pantry door. The house was otherwise silent. “I don’t want him to grow up with that feeling,” Shane said at last. “The one where you can do everything right and still feel like there’s something inside you that nobody else can see. I don’t want him spending his life trying to—control every part of himself just to keep that feeling off his skin. I don’t want him thinking that if he just works hard enough, or organizes things well enough, or fixes enough problems, eventually he’ll become the kind of person who feels normal.” The word sounded strange in his mouth. Shane himself had never quite figured out what normal was supposed to feel like. “I want him to just…” His voice faltered. The rest of the sentence wouldn’t come. He dragged a hand over his face, frustrated. “I want him to—” He stopped again, jaw tightening. “Be happy,” he finished finally. It sounded wrong as soon as he said it. Small. Mean, almost. Because Shane with Ilya is happy. Shane with Ilya and Luka is the happiest ending he could’ve imagined for himself—but before that, before all of this, when it was just Shane, it had hurt in ways he still didn’t quite know how to explain. “I want him to,” Shane tried to correct, the words coming out slower now, testing each one before letting it go and break Ilya’s heart further, “to wake up in the morning and feel like the person he is… makes sense.” He pressed his face more firmly into Ilya’s shoulder, like he could hide there before admitting: “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way.” Not really. Not even once. For a long moment, Ilya didn’t say anything. Shane could feel him breathing, slow and steady, the quiet rise and fall beneath his cheek. The hand at the back of Shane’s head had not stopped moving, fingers threading gently through his hair, the motion so familiar it felt unconscious. The other arm remained wrapped firmly around him, anchoring him there on the cold tile floor like nothing about the situation was unusual at all. Then Ilya shifted slightly. Not away—never away—but enough that Shane felt the soft brush of lips against his temple. Even without the light, Shane could feel the shape of his expression: the small smile Ilya always wore when he was trying very hard not to cry, too. Another kiss followed, just beneath his hairline, and then another pressed to the side of his forehead the way Ilya had done earlier that morning at the rink when Luka had skated past them with his little knees wobbling inside expensive pads—because Ilya had always loved like this, physically, instinctively, as if affection were something that had to be given with his hands and mouth and body and money or it might disappear. Shane had never been able to stop wondering what, exactly, he had ever given back that could possibly make the exchange fair. “Shane,” Ilya said quietly. The name alone carried something soft and aching inside it, enough to make Shane’s throat tighten again. Ilya’s thumb brushed once beneath his eye, catching a tear Shane hadn’t realized had fallen, his touch careful and slow as if the simple presence of it mattered. “You think something is wrong with you,” he said. It wasn’t a question. Shane hesitated only a moment before nodding once. Ilya’s mouth trembled. Then he leaned forward again and kissed Shane’s face—quick, helpless presses of his lips along his cheek and temple. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against his skin. The words startled Shane enough that he pulled back slightly. “For what?” he whispered. Ilya’s eyes were shining now, though the small smile had not left his mouth. “For how long you had to feel that way alone.” The simplicity of the answer landed somewhere deep in Shane’s chest, heavy and disarming all at once. Ilya pressed another soft kiss to the side of his face before resting his forehead lightly against Shane’s again. “And I’m sorry you think Luka might feel it too. I’m sorry you worried over our son alone.” Shane’s fingers tightened weakly in the front of Ilya’s shirt. “I don’t want him to hurt like that,” Shane said, his voice quieter than he intended. “Or… Or you. I didn’t want to hurt you, either” “I know.” Ilya said it immediately, the certainty in his voice so complete it left no room for doubt. His hand slid down to lace their fingers together, squeezing gently before he continued, softer this time. “I know.” For a moment he simply studied Shane’s face in the darkness, tilting his head slightly the way he always did when he was paying very close attention, as though he could see every small movement of Shane’s expression even without the light. “But Shane,” he said at last, brushing his nose lightly against Shane’s before pressing another soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, “I see this very different from you.” Shane let out a small, tired breath. “I figured.” A quiet huff of laughter escaped Ilya, warm despite the tears still clinging to his lashes. “Of course you did.” They didn’t say that that was why Shane never brought it up to him. Because Shane liked the sickness, maybe. Liked the insidiousness of it. Saying it out loud would mean confronting it. It would mean letting it go. And Shane had never been very good at letting go of the things that hurt him. Ilya kissed Shane again, though, slower this time, lingering for a moment before speaking. “You say Luka looks like you like it is something bad,” he murmured, thumb brushing along the line of Shane’s jaw. “Like it is something that might go wrong.” Shane didn’t answer. “But do you know what I think when I see that?” Ilya continued gently. When Shane shook his head, Ilya’s voice softened in a way that carried a quiet sort of wonder. “I think God was being extremely generous with me.” Shane blinked at that. Ilya smiled wider, though the tears in his eyes finally slipped free, tracing quiet lines down his cheeks as he spoke. “I spent my whole life believing it was impossible to love another human being the way I loved you,” he said softly, brushing Shane’s hair back from his forehead. “When I realized how much I loved you, it scared me, Shane.” He laughed under his breath, embarrassed by the memory even now. “I thought—this is too much for one person. My heart will not survive this.” Shane made a weak, disbelieving noise at that. But Ilya only shook his head, still smiling. “No, really. I was very worried I might actually die from it—from all your freckles and the lines between your brows when you frown.” That earned a faint breath of laughter from Shane despite himself. “Tragic,” he murmured. “Yes,” Ilya agreed solemnly, though the amusement in his voice gave him away immediately. “Very tragic.” Then his expression softened again. “But then Luka was born.” The words came out quieter, reverent in a way that made something shift in Shane’s chest. “And suddenly,” Ilya continued, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, “I had somewhere else to put all the love that was going to kill me.” Shane felt his chest tighten again as Ilya squeezed his hand gently. “So now I have two of you,” he said, brushing Shane’s hair back once more before kissing his forehead. “Two pairs of those eyes. Two people who think too much. Two people who look at the world like it is a puzzle they are personally responsible for solving.” The affection in his voice made the words feel less like teasing and more like awe. “Twice as many freckles to kiss,” he added, smiling against Shane’s skin. “I think this is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Shane swallowed, his throat tight. “Ilya…” But Ilya only shook his head, pressing another kiss against Shane’s temple. His hand moved to the center of Shane’s chest, settling there over his heart. The steady thud of it was strong beneath his palm. “Now,” Ilya continued softly, “if you say something hurts here, then we fix it.” His thumb began to move slowly against the fabric of Shane’s shirt, an absent, soothing motion. “Maybe it takes time,” he said. “Maybe we talk to your psychologist more. Maybe we change the water filter again.” A small smile touched his voice. “Maybe we invent a new plan.” His hand stayed where it was, warm and certain over Shane’s heartbeat. A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You love plans.” Shane let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “But we will fix it,” Ilya said softly, kissing Shane’s forehead again. “Because that is what we do.” His hand slid back to the familiar place at the back of Shane’s neck, thumb pressing gently into the spot that had always calmed him. “And if Luka ever starts to feel that strange thing you describe,” Ilya added after a moment, “then he will not face it alone the way you did.” His eyes softened. “He will have you. And me.” He nudged Shane lightly with his nose, smiling again with that quiet, teasing fondness that had first undone Shane years ago. “And honestly, Shane Hollander-Rozanov… that boy already has the biggest advantage in the world.” Shane’s voice came out rough. “What’s that?” Ilya’s thumb brushed slowly along his cheek. “He has your heart,” he said simply. Then he leaned forward and kissed him again—slow, lingering, full of a tenderness so steady it almost hurt. “And I promise you,” Ilya murmured against his lips, “there is nothing wrong with that.”

Morning arrived slowly. At first it was only the dull pressure behind Shane’s eyes, a heavy pulse that seemed to sit somewhere between his temples and the back of his neck. The kind of headache that didn’t stab so much as throb patiently, as if reminding him that sleep had been shorter than it should have been and the night before had asked more of him than his body quite knew how to process. He stayed still, eyes closed, letting the quiet of the room settle around him. The blankets were warm. The mattress beside him warmer where Ilya had slept earlier, though the space was empty now. Pale morning light pressed faintly through the curtains, turning the bedroom into a soft gray blur behind Shane’s eyelids. For a few seconds he thought the house was silent. Then he heard the murmuring, soft voices in the hallway. The bedroom door creaked open slowly—carefully. Shane kept his eyes closed. “Shhh,” Ilya whispered gently, his voice pitched low in that charming, conspiratorial tone he used with Luka when the two of them were sharing some important secret. “Daddy is having a slow day today.” There was the faint rustle of small socks on the hardwood floor. Luka’s whisper floated back, high and earnest and not nearly as quiet as he believed it to be. “Oh,” the little boy replied, like this explained something important. Then, even softer: “Is Daddy okay?” “Daddy is okay,” Ilya murmured. “Daddy’s brain just worked very hard yesterday.” Another thoughtful silence followed. Then Luka whispered, very seriously, “Should we be quiet?” Shane heard the smile in Ilya’s voice. “Yes. Very quiet.” “Can I still see him?” Luka asked. There was a small rustle of fabric, probably Ilya crouching down to Luka’s height the way he always did when conversations mattered. “Yes,” Ilya answered. “But we move very slowly, so he can sleep more.” “Okay.” A pause. “…Can I cuddle him?” The hope in the question was so naked it made Shane’s chest tighten. Ilya’s voice softened even more. “I think Daddy would like that very much.” There was the faint sound of the door closing again, slower this time, and then the soft shuffle of small footsteps approaching the bed. The mattress dipped slightly. A careful little weight crawled under the covers beside him, movements deliberate and gentle, like Luka was trying not to disturb something fragile. Shane felt a warm knee bump against his hip. A tiny hand rested cautiously on the blanket near his arm. The light pressure of a little body settling beside him, warm and careful and impossibly gentle. The blanket shifted. A small arm rested across Shane’s side. For another moment Shane kept his eyes closed. Not because he wanted to pretend he was asleep. Just because the tenderness of the moment felt almost too large to look at directly. He still opened them. And there they were: Brown eyes. Wide, sincere, watching him. His own eyes, reflected back at him from a much smaller face. Luka had propped himself up on one elbow beside him, hair slightly crooked from sleep, his sleep-softened expression serious in the way children get when they are trying to handle something important the right way. When he noticed Shane was awake, his face brightened immediately. “Hi, daddy!” He greeted happily, then seemed to remember something; he smiled sheepishly and whispered again, "Hi, daddy." Shane’s throat felt thick. “Hi, baby,” he managed softly. Luka studied him for a moment longer, as if confirming that everything about Shane was still intact. Then he nodded solemnly. “I know you’re having a slow day,” he said, the words careful, deliberate, like he had practiced them somewhere in his head. “It’s okay.” Luka shifted closer until their noses brushed together, close enough that Shane could feel the boy’s warm breath against his face. All he could see was brown—brown eyes, bright and steady, filling his whole world for a moment. “I still love you,” his son whispered. Something in Shane’s chest gave way quietly. For the past five years, he had worried about what parts of himself might pass down to his child—the anxiety, the constant need to control things, the nagging sense that something inside him had always been slightly out of place. But the boy beside him wasn’t looking at him the way Shane had always looked at himself. Luka wasn’t measuring. He wasn’t diagnosing. He wasn’t trying to fix anything. He didn’t think anything was broken at all. He was simply there. Because then I’m not by myself, Shane remembered; he could hear in the way Luka settled against him. If Shane was sick—if he truly was—if there was something wrong with him somewhere deep inside, something that wasn’t a broken bone or a concussion or cancer quietly growing in his blood… if something in him had been misaligned from the very beginning, leaving him a little off-balance his whole life— Then maybe this was the cure. He lifted a hand, slower than usual, and brushed Luka’s hair back from his forehead. The boy leaned immediately into the touch. “I love you too,” Shane said, his voice rougher than he intended. Luka only smiled, burrowing deeper into the blankets beside him, as if the answer had always been obvious. Then he looked over Shane’s shoulder toward the doorway where Ilya still stood watching them. Shane followed his gaze. Ilya was leaning against the doorframe, barefoot and half dressed, arms loosely folded across his chest. His hair was still rumpled from sleep, and there was that familiar soft smile on his face—the one he wore when something in the world had quietly confirmed what he had believed all along. Their eyes met. Ilya gave the smallest nod, barely more than a shift of his chin, like he was gently reminding Shane of something. Slow day. It was allowed. It was allowed. Shane was allowed to—he was allowed. He sank a little deeper into the mattress and let out a long, quiet breath into the pillow. When he drew in another breath, it felt deeper somehow—like his lungs were finally opening all the way, filling fully for the first time in a long while. Beside him, Luka shifted closer and tucked himself comfortably against Shane’s side, content now that everything had been explained properly. “Papa,” he called, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. “Hurry. We’re all having a slow day today. We need rest.” Ilya chuckled as he climbed in beside them. His arm slid around Shane’s waist, easy and familiar, their ankles tangling together beneath the blankets. Luka was already humming quietly to himself within seconds, some half-remembered lullaby Ilya used to hum, the soft vibration of it filling the small space between them. “All you,” his husband murmured sweetly, his breath ghosting against Shane’s ear as his lips brushed the curve of it. Shane closed his eyes again. The headache was still there. But the tightness beneath his ribs had loosened, just slightly. And this time, when he breathed in, it didn’t hurt at all.

Shane isn’t scared of parenthood, regardless of what his mother and his psychologist insisted. Fear, after all, implied uncertainty, and Shane Hollander had never been uncertain about raising children with Ilya—or the fact that having a baby was, fundamentally, an unpredictable undertaking. Anyone who wasn’t afraid simply hadn’t done the reading. Thankfully, Shane had. He had read everything. Expecting fathers. Early childhood development. Sleep training philosophies and attachment theory. Nutrition charts cluttered his bedside table, and he had nightmares over the first aid manuals with entire chapters devoted to choking hazards measured in millimeters. He had read books about labor, books about post-partum recovery, books about how babies saw the world in blurred colors and sound long before they could recognize faces. Some of them had been written by pediatricians, some by psychologists, some by babushki who claimed to have discovered secret systems for raising calm, resilient half-Russian children who slept through the night So, by the time his son was born, Shane had been living with that imagined future for so long that the hospital room itself felt oddly familiar. The soft mechanical beeping of monitors. The pale light filtering through the blinds. The careful movements of nurses who spoke in calm, efficient voices while explaining things he already knew because he had memorized entire chapters of prenatal care literature months earlier. When they finally placed the baby in his arms, Shane had looked down at the small red-faced human wrapped tightly in hospital blankets and experienced a brief, disorienting pause in reality. He had waited so long for that moment—studied it, rehearsed it, pictured it in so many different quiet ways—that for a second he genuinely couldn’t tell whether it was happening or if his mind had simply continued the dream. Then the baby’s fingers had curled weakly around one of his. That had been the first real thing. The tiny grip. The tiny noise as Shane held him closer and thought, for the first time, You’re mine. Mine. My son. A part of me. He remembered looking up then, searching instinctively for his husband, because it suddenly seemed impossible that something this important could exist in the world without him witnessing it too. Ilya had been standing beside the bed, crying openly and laughing at the same time, the way he did when he was overwhelmed by happiness. “Shane,” he had said breathlessly, like he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Shane, Shane.” And Shane, who had spent months studying every possible outcome of that moment, had found that none of his research had actually prepared him for the simplest part: The feeling that arrived quietly in his chest as he looked down at the baby in his arms. Not the startling realization of something new, but the end of waiting. The quiet recognition. The calm, almost surreal sense that he had finally met someone who had always been part of his life, the embodiment of him and all the love he had for his husband; brown eyes and blonde curls with kissed-on freckles and kissed-on moles. For the first time in his life, a thought formed in Shane’s mind with perfect clarity: Oh. There you are, Luka. Half of Ilya, but half of Shane, too. Perfect.

Chapter End Notes

then they take luka in for an autism diagnosis and the longer it goes on the more Ilya just slowly turns to look at Shane standing there in his suit vibrating like a malfunctioning appliance and has his own quiet oh moment LOL this is what looping It's You for ten hours does to a person <3 but thank you for all the love on twitter and for butterball baby luka!! i'll be back with another immaculately conceived baby soon and more actual Baby content but this chapter made me cry like 12 times and im tired i do think i aligned shane more with ocd-like symptoms than purely autism but neurodivergence tit for neurodivergence tat ig thank u again i love all of you pls comment ok bye!!

Chapter 4: age seven: yogurt, laid-off businessmen, and what it

means to live for love Chapter Summary “And I’ll have it forever?” he asked, his head tilting back. Yuna swallowed, setting something into place inside herself. Then she smiled—not to soften it, not to make it easier to hear, but because it was true, and she was finally letting it be. “Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s part of who you are. You’ll be Luka forever.” He considered that, his face tightening in concentration—working it through carefully, the way he did—and then it eased. “That’s good,” he decided at last. “I like being Luka.” Something in Yuna’s chest gave way, loosening at last; the final tight thread unspooling into something softer she didn’t have to hold together anymore. “Oh, honey,” she said, a small, unguarded laugh slipping through—relief, and something deeper she didn’t try to name. “That’s perfect. It’s my favorite thing in the world, too. Do you want to know why?” Her grandson looked at her, brown eyes wide and expectant. “Why?” “Because being Luka means being loved forever,” Yuna reminded him.

Chapter Notes

JESUS THIS TOOK MY FUCKING SANITY TO WRITE CHRIST i'm sorry it took so long but it IS long; this chapter alone doubled the book’s word count and i did briefly considered death about it. but thank you so much for all the comments and kudos, i love you guys an unreasonable amount 😭 ALSO OMG: thank you to @crashcrowns on twitter!! i got so much love because of you, i wish i could return it twicefold—thank you again!! also quick note ahead of time: NOTHING happens to Yuna, she’s fine, nobody panic. another also: this is dedicated to sonderstarrs <3 i know it’s not exactly what you asked for, but i had to do it for the sake of the family-focused chapters. last also (i'm so sorry) i’m tentatively calling this complete for now, but i do want to come back for a troy chapter (for reasons you'll see), plus more fluff and putting luka in various Situations thank you!! Yuna Hollander is fond of labels. A label, when it’s done right, is immediate. It cuts through ambiguity, puts things in their proper place, and keeps everything from slipping into unnecessary complexity. It doesn’t need further explaining when done correctly: whatever is labeled simply is what each singular letter designates as a whole. A single, well-placed word can accomplish what most people waste entire conversations trying to articulate. All it takes is a glance. One look, and Yuna knows what something is for, whether it matters, and what should be done with it— keep it, file it away, discard it, revisit it later. The answer is there, already settled. There’s no need to linger over it, no need to wonder. And yet, since her grandson was born, wonder is all Yuna has done. Wonder, and revise, and try again. Luka arrived with two soft extra chins resting one atop the other and a set of darling baby rolls that pressed snugly against the seams of his onesies, as though he carried just a little more of himself than the world had quite planned for, packed with a surplus of love the stitching could barely contain. He was round in all the places babies are meant to be, and then some—weighty in the arms in a way that felt reassuring rather than cumbersome, substantial in a way that left muscles aching and hearts quietly full. He settled easily into any hold, content in the steady, predictable way that made people say things like easy child and good baby, as if either could be measured so early and trusted to last. Yuna’s mistake was letting herself believe it. She had penciled in the first, tentative labels: healthy, if not a little overweight, but calm, uncomplicated—and set them aside with quiet satisfaction. Yet somewhere between then and now, Luka grew, as children do—but not along any line Yuna could follow with any real certainty. The soft baby weight slipped away from him too quickly, as if he had simply decided he no longer needed it, leaving behind narrow wrists and small, visible collarbones that showed when he stretched and played and reached for her to hold him. Yuna remembered when she had to part gentle folds just to powder him twice; now there was less of him to hold, no matter how carefully she tried to keep him full. So she adjusted. Different meals, larger portions, snacks slipped in between—things he used to love, things she was certain he would love, things no child had any reason to refuse, Luka least of all. He had never been picky before, after all. He had been an easy baby. And so, naturally, an easy child, too. And for a while, it held—just as “a good baby” had, for twelve months. For months at a time, Luka would eat everything she set in front of him, beaming up at her with that all-sun smile and a delighted, Spasibo, babulechka!—as if it were the best thing he had ever tasted. As if it were the food. The right food. La Fermière yogurt, and sodium-free soups. Mashed potatoes without butter. Ice cream from the small artisanal shops over Rockcliffe Park—the kind she chose carefully, deliberately, because details matter. Yuna recognized the pattern as it formed. She always did; first with David, then with Shane, Ilya, too, eventually, and now with Luka. She paid attention. Kept a quiet, ongoing record— what he reached for first, what he finished, what made him light up like that—and adjusted accordingly, without announcement, without making a show of it. She stayed one step ahead, so that by the time Luka decided what he liked, she was already there, waiting with it. Labels, after all, made things smooth. And then—it broke. The yogurt first. Every morning, the same yogurt, in the same container, until one day it wasn’t the same anymore. Too tangy. Too soft. Wrong. It sat there, untouched, as if it had deceived Luka. Eggs were next. Prepared exactly as always, unchanged in any way she could detect—until he decided they were not the same eggs. Not these eggs. A small shake of his head. The plate pushed away. There was never an explanation. Just a firm, frustrated refusal, as if something had shifted inside him and that was that—and it was not his responsibility to explain when, or how, or why. So: not picky—though not quite not. Selective, perhaps. Temporarily selective. It is the best Yuna has been able to do. Her grandson is a child, just at the edge of leaving behind his wilder toddler days, which should, in theory, simplify things. At this age, children are meant to be legible in broad strokes. Energetic or shy. Independent or attached. Sensitive or resilient. Not perfect categories, but usually serviceable. Luka is none of them in a way that stays true for longer than an hour, much less years. He is quiet, sometimes. Not shy—she would recognize shyness like she had in Shane—but observant in a way that felt as if he were auditing a room before deciding how to exist in it, turning it over internally before deciding whether it is worth sharing. He will sit, small and self-contained, and watch an entire room without interrupting it. And then, with no clear transition, he is loud, expansive, filling space as if he had always intended to—suddenly, emphatically present. Laughing and running, narrating things that did not require narration, and asking questions he did not wait to have answered as though stillness had become intolerable. Sensitive, Yuna thinks, when Luka cries over something small, over things that seem too inconsequential to warrant it. Resilient, she revises, when he takes a big fall without tears, brushes himself off, and refuses comfort with a small, decisive shake of his head. Independent—he insists on doing things himself, pushes her hands away with quiet determination. Clingy—he appears at her side a moment later, finding the fabric of her sleeve and tugging her closer and closer, as if the distance were a mistake. None of it holds. Not through four, or five, or six years old; not through any of the growth spurts that lengthen him by quiet degrees, or the small, shining milestones that slip past almost as soon as they arrive. There should be a way to define this; a way to narrow it down into something Yuna can understand, something she can plan around and pin down before it grows out of her reach. She tries—but even the obvious things refuse to settle with Luka. There is hockey, whether anyone names it or not. It stands at center ice in every practice Luka attends, an inheritance too large to ignore and too early to let go of—the son of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. There, at least, the labels are clear. They are the best: proven, repeated, recorded. Two players who shaped the sport so completely that no one thinks to question it. There are expectations that come with that, whether anyone says them out loud or not. Yuna has never turned away from what is true. The assumption was straightforward: Centers produce centers. It would have been simple. Logical. A clean line drawn from them to him. But Luka does not seem particularly interested in lines. He skates, yes. Steady enough—what you would expect from a little boy—but each month he is quicker than the last, as if speed comes to him the way laughter does: effortlessly, without a pause for thought, something he leans into and thrives at simply because he can. There is an instinct to it, too, a kind of rightness in the way he moves that Yuna refuses to overstate, even in her own mind—though it would be very easy to, because her grandson holds a stick like it belongs to him, not something he was encouraged to do because his parents happened to enjoy it, or a pastime he did because winters in Ottawa are harsh and outdoor play is limited —but something that feels, disconcertingly, like it has always been his. The angle, the lift, the timing—he finds them quickly, cleanly, with an ease that would pass without comment in someone older, and doesn’t here, because— “Jesus,” the coaches say, half-laughing, half in something closer to reverence. “That’s Hollander’s kid.” Yes, Yuna thinks. Yes. Exactly. He is. And when the cameras find Luka at official games, it only confirms it, the image sliding neatly into place. Yuna can already see the shape of it years from now, in some carefully edited documentary: her grandson, a first-round pick—just like both of his fathers might have been, if they had waited a year instead of a month without each other. Luka will be composed when the announcement comes. Certain. He’ll speak in full, measured sentences about legacy and role models, about expectations, about the privilege of growing up around the game. He will say the right things. He will understand how. He’ll learn it from her, and carry it with him long after she is gone. The footage will cut—of course it will—to something softer. Earlier. Luka at five: small, unselfconscious, sprawled across his fathers’ laps at a press table as if drifting off at a conference in a sixty-billion-dollar industry were the most ordinary place in the world to be. And to him, it is. One of his dads is fielding questions, the other idly steadying him with a hand at his back. Neither of them looks down; they don’t have to. Luka is already accounted for. He’s exactly where he belongs. He won’t be looking at the camera then. Or—no. Maybe he will. He already has, a few times —just long enough to register the lenses trained on him, to smile, to hold it that fraction longer, long enough for the glint in his eyes to be caught. They’ll slow that moment down. They’ll set it to music. In the documentary—Yuna prays she’ll still be around to watch, still here, still able to sit through it from beginning to end—they’ll call it inevitable. Obvious, in retrospect. They’ll draw that same clean line from the child—sleep still caught in his doe-brown eyes—to the greatest player she knows he will become, tracing it as neatly as a constellation, as if it had always been there between Shane and Ilya, waiting for someone else to discover it, to map it. As if Luka Hollander-Rozanov hadn’t been rising onto his toes since he was six years old, chasing the edge of the ice, close enough to feel the cold lifting off it—balanced on the narrow ledge behind the glass, leaning forward like he trusts it not to startle him when grown men crash small against it. Small hands braced, carving out a sliver of space to see through, watching the Centaurs practice with a focus that never flickers, with a love that feels too immense and too innate to be anything but his own. Luka is seven now, folded into a lower-bowl seat at every home game, oversized noise- canceling headphones slipping slightly as he tilts his head to follow the play. He does not watch the way other children do—does not drift, does not fidget, does not need reminding to pay attention. And when the cameras find him—and they do, more often now—he notices. Not by accident. Never by accident. His attention sharpens, shifts outward, and then— He smiles. Wide. Gap-toothed. Openly pleased. He does not shrink from it. Does not turn away, does not hide his face or press closer into the nearest adult. He brightens under the attention, as if it isn’t an intrusion but a confirmation— something returned and enjoyed, as if that, too, is part of it. As if it belongs to him. As if he belongs to it. Rozanov’s son. Yuna turns it over, again and again. She imagines it—dreams it—and wants it so badly that she’s willing to believe in it as something certain, something that will hold even if she isn’t there to see it. For once, she doesn’t mind when the commentators fill the silence she cannot. They say it easily, confidently—the way they always have, the way she would, if she were allowed. Are we looking at the future of the MLH? they ask, light enough to pass as a joke, but not so light it can be dismissed. That is how these things begin—half-serious, half-performative, and then, over time, not half of anything at all. It had been like that for Shane, Yuna remembers; some things take hold whether they are encouraged or not. So, of course, people agree. Of course. It follows. It makes sense. Centers produce centers. And then, one afternoon at practice, without announcement or hesitation, Luka veers off course. He drifts toward the net as if it has been waiting for him all along, steps into the crease, and settles there—small, planted, unmovable. When they try to coax him out, he shakes his head once, sharp and certain, and stays where he is. For the rest of the drill. The rest of the hour. The rest of whatever the adults have decided this is supposed to be. He does not explain himself. He doesn’t need to. A goalie. Jesus, Yuna agrees, half-laughing, half in something closer to reverence—and later, at home, she finishes half a bottle of wine on her own, the quiet stretching out around her like something with no clear end. It settles in her chest all at once—heavy, irreversible—if she had to be honest. The two greatest centers the sport has ever seen, and their son in the net. It is not wrong. It is simply—early. Temporary, most likely. Children are allowed their contradictions. They are allowed to try things on without consequence, to discard them just as easily. Still, it felt like she’s been moved, without noticing, a little further from the part of the story where she understands how it ends. Luka is too young, and yet—he is not. They already call her grandson one of the most promising prospects in North America, and he is still losing his milk teeth. He is her baby’s baby, and already he is growing out of clothes faster than Yuna can keep up with, out of habits just as quickly, leaving her with nothing stable to record, nothing she can trust to stay the same long enough to name it properly—nothing she can hold still long enough to feel she has truly known him. But Yuna Hollander is fond of labels.

She has always been fond of them. They are meant to hold. That is their purpose—to fix something in place, to make it knowable, to make it stay. Labels do not change. They remain, even if she doesn’t. With Luka, they do not hold. So she wonders, and revises, and tries again.

On the mornings she takes him to the park, she considers cautious. He lingers at the edge of things; studies the other children, the structure of their games, the unspoken rules, turning it over somewhere internal before deciding whether it is worth entering. Cautious feels right. Shane had been cautious. And then a boy twice his size barrels past him, knocking shoulder to shoulder, and Luka doesn’t retreat—he shoves back, quick and decisive, a flash of temper so clean and immediate it startles her. No hesitation, no weighing of outcomes the way her son would have. No, the moment happens, and Luka answers it. Cautious does not account for that. ‘Courageous’ might, though. On the day of his dentist appointment, she tries difficult—reluctantly, but with some grounding. Luka starts before they’ve even left the building. Shoes are wrong. The air is wrong. The idea of going anywhere at all is, apparently, unacceptable. He cries loudly, unrestrained, disproportionate in a way that feels almost intentional, as if he’s committed fully to the position because it unsettles her as much as it does him. By the time they reach the car, he’s shouting through his tears, words tangling into something only half-formed, and Yuna has already swallowed two Advil. Difficult, she tells herself, steadying against it. And then, in the waiting room, it stops. The shift is so abrupt it has to be deliberate. Luka goes quiet. Climbs into the chair without prompting, red-nosed, cheeks still tacky, wearing a smile Yuna has only ever seen on one particular Slavic man. He watches, listens. When the dentist lifts a tool, he doesn’t flinch; he asks, clear and curious, “What does that one do, mister?” He follows each step, compliant out of interest, as if the earlier refusal had already done its work and can now be set aside. Not difficult. Something else. Something she doesn’t have a word for—at least not one that doesn’t contradict itself halfway through. Later, in her kitchen, she tries particular. He notices things—small inconsistencies, shifts she wouldn’t expect him to register. The new fridge makes a different hum than the last one, babulechka. The stool is a little uneven, isn’t it, babulechka. The new cushions don’t match. The color is almost right, but not, babulechka. Particular suggests preference. A child who knows what he likes, and how things should be. But Luka doesn’t correct her—not always, not really. He doesn’t complain about the fridge’s changed hum, or the uneven stool, or even point it out again when Yuna replaces all the couch cushions so they match even less, just to see. He pauses, takes it in, and moves on as if the discrepancy belongs only to him. Not particular, then. Not in any way that asks something of the world. Yuna exhales, slow and quiet, and revises. Tries again. Methodical. He lines things up sometimes—small objects, toys, whatever happens to be near —arranging and rearranging them with quiet focus. There is an order to it she almost understands, volitional in the way he moves one piece, then another, correcting himself without frustration. Until he abandons it halfway through, leaving the pattern unfinished, attention already pulled elsewhere. The system, whatever it was, no longer relevant. Later, he returns to it; not to fix it, but to change it entirely. Yuna watches, arms folded lightly, expression unreadable. None of the words are wrong. That is the problem. Each one fits cleanly for a moment, settles into place with the satisfying certainty she expects —and then loosens, replaced by something that contradicts it just as convincingly. Difficult becomes composed. Cautious becomes courageous. Methodical becomes spontaneous; that becomes something else entirely, something she cannot fix into a single, stable shape. Luka does not resist being understood. He simply does not remain the same long enough for understanding to stay useful. She keeps trying anyway, because a single, well-placed label can tell her about the future— about decisions babulechka won’t be around to help with; it can stand in for her, a poor substitute, but something that might last where she won’t. Proof, if nothing else, that she knew him once—knew him well enough to get it right, or close enough that it will not matter, later, when she is no longer there to be corrected.

Yuna knows the air of melancholy that has trailed her all winter, like a scarf wound once too tightly around her throat, has followed her here, into Shane and Ilya’s home for the evening. It settles onto her shoulders as she removes her coat, as if it has been waiting for the warmth to make itself known again, and she does not bother shrugging it off. She makes her slow circuit of the room, greeting the dinner guests, accepting kisses pressed lightly to her cheek and returning them as well. Some she can place by voice alone; others slip loose the moment they’re offered, names untethered from faces—roster changes and trades she hasn’t kept up with the way she once did. She smiles through all of it anyway. The house is full—of sound, of movement, of conversation folding easily into itself, the kind that comes from people who know one another well, from people she loves because they love her sons. It should feel like enough. It almost does. Ilya is already pouring drinks, attentive in that quiet, watchful way of his, keeping track without ever seeming to. He murmurs to himself as he does—telling his husband who prefers sparkling water, who will only take the cider from the Drover orchards, who avoids alcohol entirely. None of it comes from her, and none of it needs to. He has always known how to take care of what is in front of him. Shane stands at the counter next to him, half-listening, focused, chopping vegetables with the same steady rhythm she taught him years ago, when he first insisted on living on his own and refused to do it poorly. Fingertips inward, honey—like a claw. Behind them both, David manages the stove, moving between burners with an ease that has always been his—practiced, self-contained, the kind that comes from years of cooking for one, from a life already arranged before she ever stepped into it. They had met late and married quickly; there had never been anything for her to teach him here. She can try to trace it nonetheless, if she wants: what came from her, what did not, what remained, what improved, what carried on without her at all. To sort it cleanly, to name it. To be certain of it. But there is nothing for her to fix. Nothing to adjust, no place where she is required. So she slips away. Out to the patio, where the night air meets her without question. She brings an open bottle of wine, a tall flute, and leaves the lights off. Through the wide glass doors, Yuna watches. Luka is speaking to Wyatt, wide-eyed and all motion, his hands moving with every word, carving the air into pieces that match his thoughts. It is only a matter of time before those hands go too far, before they collide with something solid. Still, Troy holds him close on his hip, doting in the way only a godparent can be—the kind of indulgence that began the moment he accepted the title and never once wavered. He listens more than he speaks, watches more than he interrupts, tracking every small shift of Luka’s face with a quiet, almost disbelieving fondness. It is not something Yuna would have imagined, once. Not in Toronto. Not in the version of Troy Barrett that existed there, all those years—sharper, meaner, more explosive with all hard edges and crueler tendencies. This—this ease, this softness, the way it seems to sit naturally on him now—belongs to Ottawa’s Troy. Their Troy. The one who fits, somehow, into the shape of their family as if he had always been meant to. He looks down at Luka like there is nothing else he would rather be holding. And then it happens—Luka’s narrow wrist catching Troy at the nose with a careless, certain force that must sting. Yuna smiles helplessly. They laugh it off. She can see Wyatt say, Got him good, buddy! But Luka is delicate, sometimes. So tender-hearted that those words break him open instantly. He turns in Troy’s arms with a stricken expression, the bright, restless energy that had him buzzing a moment ago collapsing inward as quickly as it came. And even from this distance —through glass, through night, through the low, indistinct murmur of conversation—Yuna can almost hear him cry: I’m sorry, Uncle Troy. Je suis désolé. Are okay? There goes the animated, overbright boy. And here, just as quickly, is the tender, clinging child. She watches the way he moves through it. The way his expression folds in on itself first: the smile dimming, collapsing inward, tears rising all at once, catching the light in his brown eyes before they can fall. His fingers follow, turning careful. Gentle, pleading. Luka reaches for Troy’s face, brushing at his nose as if he could undo it, as if love alone might soften what’s already happened. He always tries, because Luka is the sort of boy who was taught to tap at bug bites instead of scratching, who has had kisses pressed to every playground bruise since he could walk and nurtured into growing within that softness, into an affection that borders on excess—quick to cry when it overtakes him, and just as quick to give back whatever comfort he’s offered, multiplied, immediate and without hesitation, because Luka is— Luka is lovely. Yuna holds onto that, quietly, fiercely. She hopes it does not change. She hopes it is one of the few things that won’t. Ever. Troy says something reassuring and Luka folds into it at once, the tension leaves him as quickly as it came. He tucks himself in, small again, contained and trusting, hiding his face in the curve of his uncle’s neck when Troy adjusts his hold. Yuna watches his hand lift—thumb hovering near his mouth, the old habit almost returning. It lingers there, uncertain, then shifts, brushing instead along his chin at the last moment. He knows better. He knows his fathers don’t like it, so he stops—even though the comfort would be immediate, easy. Because Luka learns the shape of what is expected of him and bends, gently, toward it. Not out of fear, but out of trust. Because he is attentive. Because he is receptive. Because he has only ever been met with love, and it has not yet occurred to him that the world might be motivated by anything else. It could all change. As sudden as the strike to the nose. As complete. Tomorrow. In a week. A year. A decade, two. It could all change, and Luka will be different. And Yuna will not be there to see how, or why, or when. The feeling rises again in her chest, that quiet, persistent unraveling; the impossibility of fixing him in place, of naming him in any way that will hold, of walking far enough ahead of him to leave something behind that might catch him when she cannot. A label. A promise that Luka can be predicted, that he can be understood, that he will be all right—even when Yuna is no longer there, offering her sleeve for him to hold. No longer there to find his new favorite yogurt brand. No longer there to drive her arms tired rearranging the order of his blankets. No longer there to kiss his freckled cheeks—and remember, too late, when her hair was more black than gray. When she believed waiting to have a child was the smart thing, because she had not yet learned what it would cost her. How much time it would take from her. From this. From her baby’s baby. The sliding doors open. For a moment, when she glanced the glass holds her reflection—just enough to fracture it, to layer her face over the scene within. She looks at it, at herself suspended there, caught between inside and out, between knowing and not knowing. And for a brief, unsteady second, Yuna cannot tell which side of it she belongs on. Ilya sat beside her nonetheless. “Oh, honey, I already have a glass,” she spoke, clearing her throat to hide how tight it had become—how tight that metaphoric scarf was really wounded around it. Her son-in-law waved at her as he dropped into the chair. “Is for me,” he says, taking a sip of beer and lowering his bottle—until he pauses, hovering uncertainly, before reaching for a coaster, and Yuna feels her eyes prickle. Because more than a dropped personal pronoun. More than just a coaster. It is Shane’s mannerisms, settled into his husband. It is Ilya, who had worked so hard at his English—smoothed it out, corrected it, trained himself out of the small omissions that once marked every sentence only for it returns, easy as breath, because he is teaching Luka Russian. Of course it shreds her heart. Because isn’t that what love is, in the end? Not just care, or presence, but the the quiet, cumulative act of leaving something of yourself behind in another person—something that will stay, and stay, and stay. A turn of phrase. A habit. A way of speaking, of thinking, of being. Marking them, cutting through the ambiguity of time and death, and grief and loss through permanence. Changing them, little by little—until it no longer belongs to you at all. Until it is simply theirs. Until it is all that’s left of you. Yuna meet Ilya’s gaze. Those patient, all-knowing hazel eyes that have never learned to turn away from ugliness and mothers who carried a sadness they wished he would never see. They’ve known each other too long for embarrassment to survive something as small as being caught crying, Yuna knew; there are no apologies left between them, no careful deflections, or polite fictions. He sees her, and she sees him, and they let it stand. But it isn’t that—this ease of being family—that keeps Yuna from hiding her tears. It is knowing the particular shape of his endurance. The carefully held, deliberate ways Ilya has chosen to carry what cannot be put down. The way he stands in the sun long enough, every summer, for it to burn the outline of the crucifix into his skin—to let that loss be written over him again and again no matter how many winters pass to fade it. It is knowing, too, the things he does not mark. The things Ilya keeps unspoken, held somewhere just beneath the surface, where they will not trouble anyone else. Yuna remembers the day Luka asked innocently—how come Daddy has a mommy and daddy, and I have a daddy and papa, but Papa doesn’t have either?—and how Ilya had gone very still before he answered. How his voice, when it came, was careful, pared down to something quiet, as if anything softer might break. The simple words he chose, the gentle lies, and the way he set them down one by one, as if he were building something fragile between himself and his son— My mama was sick. She could not get better, so she passed away. The pause. The shuddered breath. Yes, my love. Like Anya passed. Forever. —spoken with the fragile hope that it might be enough, that it could hold off the questions, if only for now. Something he could offer without cutting too deep—something he could return to when he was stronger. As though naming his grief plainly might keep it contained, might stop it from spilling over and crushing Luka too. As if speaking of loss had ever come easily to Ilya. Most of all, Yuna remembers—because she is the one who catalogs, who takes notes, who remembers so the people she loves can live a little more freely—how long it took Ilya to find his voice again afterward. Something in him had gone static that winter. Drawn tight, strangled; a breath that could neither be released nor fully taken in. It stretched thin as an endless length of scarf—across his throat, his diaphragm, his lungs; across hours, across days, across seasons—forever— tightening, worsening, until even his silences seemed strained by it, until Mom, it’s really bad this time—and then, slowly, it receded beneath the surface, as though it had never been there at all. So Yuna does not hide her tears. Not from Ilya. All she does is reach for the napkin her son-in-law had brought under the pretense it was for himself—as though Ilya Rozanov had ever been bothered by the sweat of alcohol on a glass —and, as she dapped the tears from her eyes, says, “You know, when Shane was born, I didn’t trust myself to hold him until he was six months old” Ilya took another sip of his beer. Yuna went on, wishing her voice wouldn’t tremble— wishing she could be even half as steady in hurt as the boy sitting across from her. “I had a lot of pride back then,” she explained. “I’d done everything right, in my mind: graduated Summa Cum Laude, a career at a Fortune 500, a happy marriage, even if it came later than I’d hoped—and I did not want to stop enjoying everything I worked for to be a mother. Not at the time so… I put it off for as long as I could.” Yuna said, a trace of shame in her voice. “I was thirty-six when I found out I was pregnant, almost thirty-seven. Geriatric pregnancies, they’re higher risk. Preeclampsia, gestational diabetes…” She hesitated. “I told my doctor I didn’t care.” Because David had cried when the test came back positive. He cried harder than Yuna had ever seen a man cry before—dropping to his knees, kissing her stomach between breathless thank-yous-thank-yous. She would never be able to forget that. She let out a soft, unsteady laugh nonetheless, her smile dimming at the edges. “She still advised against it. Said it wouldn’t be safe for me or the baby. Fertility starts to decline at thirty-five, and the risks go up: miscarriages, stillbirth, preterm birth. I decided to go through with it regardess.” Ilya handed her another napkin. Yuna took it without protest; she hadn’t realized how hard she’d begun to cry until she noticed how thoroughly the first one had soaked through, her thumb tearing straight through the damp paper with no resistance. For a moment, she only stared at it—at the small break in the thin white sheet, at the glimpse of her own skin beneath it, blurred by tears. “But I didn’t let myself think of ‘it’ as a ‘him’ until twenty weeks,” Yuna admitted, her voice unsteady, fraying at the edges. “I thought—if his ears were developed, it would be… cruel, to let him hear me call him anything less. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want him.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the napkin. “But it was terrifying. Not knowing if you were carrying a baby—if you were helping him grow bones and muscles and a brain for thirty-nine weeks—only for him to never take a breath.” She swallowed, but the words kept coming, releasing after they had been waiting for years. “Or that he’d be born sick, you know? Because I cared more about a promotion than his health. Or that something would happen to both of us, and David would be left alone—” “Yuna,” Ilya said, cutting gently through the spiral. She hadn’t realized she was shaking until his hands settled on her shoulders, firm and grounding, steady enough to pull her back into herself. She drew in a breath that stuttered on the way down. “It was all fine in the end, no?” he asked. “Yes,” she agreed quickly, because it had been. Because her son had been born whole and bright and tremendously alive—so much so that it had unraveled something deep inside her. Shane had been a miracle in every sense of the word, the kind that made her believe in something beyond herself. The kind that stripped her of her carefully built pride and placed all of it, unquestioning, into him. But— “I still wasted so much time not holding him,” she confessed, her voice breaking open around the truth. “I was so afraid of SIDS, of losing him in his sleep, of doing something wrong without realizing it… that I kept my distance. I thought if I was careful enough, if I followed everything exactly, I could keep him safe.” Her grip tightened again, crumpling the napkin in her hands. “And now I feel like I didn’t love him enough. Not when it mattered most. And now, with Luka—” The rest collapsed into a sob, caught and strangled in her throat before it could fully escape. Because Yuna loves her grandson—God, she loves Luka with a kind of intensity that borders on panic. It lives in her chest like urgency, like a clock she cannot see but can always hear ticking. There is never enough time, not enough hours in the day or years left in her life, to learn him completely—to memorize every expression, every small change, every fleeting version of who he is becoming— and Luka is seven already. Seven, and growing faster than she can keep up with, faster than she can hold onto, and Yuna is older now in ways she cannot ignore, cannot stop thinking about—in the gray threaded through her hair, in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes that no cream seems to soften, in the quiet, creeping awareness of limits she once believed she could outpace. Surely her fingers aren’t as strong as they used to be. Surely she spent that strength on something useless, when she should have saved it to hold on to Luka. The waste of it feels as inevitable as time itself—as irreversible as the loss of the nights she did not hold her son when he was small enough to fit entirely against her chest, paralyzing like the fear that kept her at a distance when she should have drawn closer. That old sorrow has never quite left her; it lingers still, now, forever—forever—tended by regret, by the quiet anger she still carries toward herself for not pushing past it sooner. For not working through that fear sooner, for not recognizing what she was losing while she still had it. For waiting to have Shane, never knowing how much it would shorten her time with Luka. For not holding Luka longer, knowing how little she had held Shane. For not realizing, then, how brief it would all be. Yuna has never forgiven herself for it. She knows she ever will. Is seven old enough for a child to remember his grandparents, Yuna wonders. Would it ease the loss? But when she meets Ilya’s eyes, the question feels pointless. What is memory worth, after all, when absence is what hurts most? He smiles at her anyway—wry, crooked at the edges, like he’s indulging them both. But it’s a smile. Ilya’s smile. “‘With Luka,’” he says again, the words edged with a rough, disbelieving patience, humoring her, maybe, but probably mocking her—as if her spiraling, all this needless suffering, is a script he knows by heart and has decided to play along with. “All this other… doubt, regret —” He flicks his hand, dismissive, almost lazy. “You are filling your head with ghosts. For what?” His brows knit, shadowing his eyes, and his shoulder lifts in that half-shrug, half-brace— preparing to argue her out of it, even knowing how little that ever works. There’s something unpolished in it, something stubborn and deliberate, like he’s choosing this version of himself on purpose. It makes Yuna smile through her tears. Not because she believes Ilya—but because she knows he doesn’t, either. This boy, she thinks, aching and fond and a little bitter all at once. This boy, who carries more ghosts than anyone, and still stands here telling her to let hers go. This boy, she thinks, with a kind of helpless, overflowing love. God, all this love she carries for them—for her boys, for David and Shane, and Luka and Ilya. It feels too large for one body, too heavy for time to contain. If love alone could make her live forever, Yuna thinks she would still be afraid of the clock, still listening for it in the quiet, still certain it was running out on her faster than she could bear. Forever would not be enough. “Mama Yuna, listen to me,” Ilya goes on, boyish in a way that feels almost like command—a young captain stitching together family and faith, speaking with a conviction so steady it dares the world to contradict him. “Luka loves you. You love him. That is not small thing.” He shakes his head once, firm, when she opens her mouth, as if clearing the table of everything else. Ilyaa continues: “You think he is counting that love? What you gave, what you didn’t?” A faint huff escapes him, almost a laugh. “He still struggles with apples, Mama Yuna. My son is a genius, yes, but—” a small shrug, crooked at one shoulder, “—not so good with numbers.” Yuna can’t help it, even if she’s aware of what Ilya is doing—a breathless chuckle slips out of her as she wipes her nose one last time with the crumpled napkin, the sound thin but real. She doesn’t answer. This, at least, she cannot argue with. Her son watches her for a moment longer, something easing in his expression, though it never quite softens all the way. Then comes the quiet exhale through his nose—almost a scoff, but dulled at the edges, meeting her fragile laughter halfway. “Bad babushka,” Ilya mutters, not unkindly, the words threaded with a tired sort of fondness rather than reproach. He tilts his head just slightly, as if the truth should be plain to her, simple as breath. “He just loves you.” A small pause, his eyes steady on hers. “That is everything, yes?” Yuna smiles; if only love could be enough, she almost says. But she lets the words die where they rise. She doesn’t hide her tears—not from Ilya, who keeps his own locked tight behind his eyes—and she does not give voice to the grief that might wound him, either. She knows better. Knows how much he already carries, how it lives beneath his skin, thin and fragile as a napkin worn soft from too many tears, one more weight away from tearing through. Yuna doesn’t want to add anymore to it. So, beneath the starless night, with their family in the room over, she meets Ilya’s gaze—too sharp, too knowing, too familiar with the quiet ruin of mothers who carry too much regret— and understands it changes nothing. He sees her. She sees him. And still, there are things that will not be said. They let it stand. Luka didn’t like broccoli. He used to, when he was six—Yuna knew that—but he’s seven now, and his loyalties had shifted to broccolini and asparagus. What she hadn’t known was that he would make exceptions—for Shane, for anyone he liked enough, really. That he would take a bite from his father’s fork without complaint; that he might even enjoy it, might love anything set in front of him—smashed Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, all of it—so long as he believed it was what was expected of him. “Let’s play pretend,” Ilya had said, easy as a cheat, adding a scoop of the wild rice Yuna had already argued against. “It’s an important dinner, Luka. We’re businessmen.” Yuna had nearly risen then, already composing the replacement plate she’d bring him when he inevitably balked at the mix of it: the grains, the bits, all of it touching. But Luka had surprised her—straightening on his place in Troy's lap, whom he refused to be parted from, peering at his father through his glasses with sudden, intent curiosity. “Businessmen?” he’d asked. “Yes, businessmen. We’re fancy. We eat with forks and knives.” Luka lit up, a grin breaking across his face. Across the table, Harris—who had already taken a hundred pictures—made a show of lifting his napkin and tucking it into his collar. Ilya followed suit, clearing his throat and aligning his utensils with exaggerated care, back straight, expression solemn. “Ah, yes, business,” he declared, cutting into his food with gusto, as though he were seated at a formal dinner with important guests and unfamiliar dishes—the kind Luka had attended for years with his fathers, in Vegas, in New York, in a dozen cities that blurred together, where it had never been an issue before, because Luka wasn’t— Luka wasn’t picky. Not even selectively so. Not when you didn’t pin him into it. He ate everything. Yuna watched her grandson nod along as Ilya and Zane talked about investors and margins, pretending to understand, his pinky lifted delicately whenever he drank from his cup. Everything vanished from his plate—chickpeas, avocado, broccoli, all of it. All the things Yuna had never been able to get him to eat before, not when the tears threatened to come and apprehension become too much for both of them, and she had gave in with a soft, Yes, honey, we can have yogurt. Just yogurt. Just eggs—until the headshake came, the plate pushed away once more, and Yuna was left floundering again, feeling her way through it until the cycle righted itself. Until she could pretend—for another day, another week, another year—that she knew her grandson at all. Yes, yes. Good business, Luka had said gravely, squinting one eye shut as Shane leaned between Troy and wiped his mouth with a napkin—and Yuna had never done that—not with a dry napkin. She had tried once, when he was four, and Luka had cried, so she had never tried again. Not after that. Not when it might make him uncomfortable the way it had Shane at the same age. Instead, she remembered and kept her purse stocked with wet wipes and antibacterial gel, just in case—always just in case. Across the table, Ilya caught her gaze. And suddenly, all Yuna wanted was to shout: Why can’t love be enough? Why can’t the ache in her arms from carrying him all these years, the blood they shared, all the love crowding her chest—why can’t it be enough for her to understand Luka? Why hadn’t love taught her that the same little boy—who didn’t believe in imaginary friends at all, who’d only pretended to have them so he wouldn’t be the strange one without—might be coaxed into eating if she’d only reached for one more story, one more small pretend? Why hadn’t it given her the same grace it gave Ilya, whose life had begun again and again, and who met each turn with open arms and a stubborn, unspent hope? Why hadn’t it given her Shane’s endurance—the way he could grit his teeth, eyes bright with tears, and keep trying until something finally gave? Why didn’t it make her steady like her husband, who woke each morning to work toward a future he knew he won’t never see, and still smiled at the thought of it—who spoke of legacies and signed life insurance policies with an easy sort of faith, as if it were enough to know his family would be cared for, no matter what he left behind? Why couldn’t Yuna be the same? Why did love sharpen in her instead? Why did it make her grasp, make her desperate, make her panic? Why did it all frighten her so much? Why can’t love be enough? Luka did not say goodbye to her that night. When dinner ended and the conversation softened beneath the steady hum of the dishwasher —when Wyatt made his rounds with easy hugs and David stepped outside to get the car— Luka did not move. He stayed exactly where he was, folded into Troy, fingers knotted tight in the fabric at his back. Shane tried once, gentle at first. “Luka—” “No,” Luka said, already shaking his head before the word had fully formed. His voice was thick, uneven, catching on itself. He pressed his face harder into Troy’s shoulder, as if that might make the rest of the room go away. “No, I—no.” Shane stilled. The shift was immediate—subtle, but there, a tightening through his frame, like he was bracing against something he couldn’t quite see. Ilya reached over without looking at him, set his hand at the back of Shane’s neck, and squeezed twice. Grounding. Enough. “Forgive him, Mama Yuna,” Ilya said, his tone even, edged faintly with something dry but not unkind. “Luka and Barrett had a small incident earlier. He’s… not recovered from it yet.” Yuna understood. Of course she did—she had to. “Right.” She cleared her throat, steadying it, folding her hands together so they would not reach. “Goodnight, Luka,” she called, keeping her voice soft, sweet. Luka did not answer. Luka did not look up. His face stayed turned into Troy’s shoulder, breath evening out, as if the rest of the room had already ceased to exist. Nothing came back.

The days passed quietly over the week. Yuna had never suffered from anything as clinical as depression—not like Ilya, not in the way she imagined Irina had. The closest she had ever come were those months after giving birth, decades ago, when she had felt hollowed out, scraped clean—and still unable to hold what had been taken from her body in her arms without imagining it—him—dead. It had been a private kind of terror, one she had never named out loud, not even to David. Something sharp and constant that lived just beneath her ribs, quiet enough to ignore so long as she kept moving. And she did keep moving. There were meetings to be attended, contracts to review, commitments to coordinate, appointments to make. Her days arranged themselves into neat, manageable pieces, each one demanding just enough attention to keep her from lingering too long on anything else. She moved from one task to the next without pause, without silence. She booked an audiologist for her husband after he’d asked her to repeat herself twice at breakfast. Scheduled colorectal cancer screenings for both of them, practical and overdue. Ordered senior vitamins—she stared at the word for a moment longer than necessary, something in her chest tightening at the implication, before clicking confirm anyway. She did not think about it. She did not let herself. Because the moment she slowed, the moment there was space enough for it, something in her chest began to hum—low, insistent, familiar in a way she did not want to recognize. So when the first call came, it caught her unprepared—like fabric snagging on an unseen hook, yanking her back into a reality she had been quietly trying to smooth over. The ringtone she had set specifically for Shane cut cleanly through the quiet of her office. Yuna reached for her phone before it could ring a second time. “Hey, honey, everything okay?” she asked, the words automatic, her attention split—half on the call, half on the form in front of her as she filled in her information for a mammogram appointment she had scheduled later that week. “Hi, Mom.” Shane’s voice was steady on the other end—flat as always, composed in that careful, deliberate way of his. “Everything is fine.” Name. Date of birth. “That’s good, sweetheart,” she said, clicking into the next field. “How’re Ilya and Luka?” “Fine.” The answer came quickly—too firm to settle anywhere reassuring. Family history? Yuna didn’t think breast cancer ran in hers. “Ilya’s fine. At practice with Luka. But, uh—” A small pause. Did it, in David’s? She didn’t know. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk about, if you have the time.” Yuna clicked submit. A confirmation page loaded, bright and clinical. She tucked the phone closer between her shoulder and ear, reaching for her planner to write it down. “Of course, I do, honey. What is it? Is everything alright with practice? He didn’t fall again, did he? I told you those skates looked a size too big—” “No, it’s not that," Shane exhaled, quiet but audible. “He’s fine. It’s just—after dinner. The other night.” “Dinner?” she echoed. “It was nice, wasn’t it? He did so well.” “Yeah,” her son agreed. “He did. But I meant after. When he—” He hesitated, like he was choosing the wording carefully. “When he hit Troy. On the nose.” Yuna flipped to the right week, pen hovering as she tried to decide where best to fit the appointment between everything else. Tuesday was full. Wednesday, maybe. “What about it? He didn’t mean it—it was an accident, and Troy didn’t care at all. We made sure to tell him that,” she said, still scanning the page. “Is he still stuck on it?” “He says he isn't,” Shane said. There was something tighter in his voice now, something that didn’t quite match the words. Yuna clicked into the next box. Insurance provider. She frowned slightly at the blinking cursor, trying to remember whether she’d updated it last year. “Well, he felt very bad,” she considered. “But that’s a good thing, Shane. It means he understands he did something wrong. Empathy is important.” “I know that,” Shane said, too quickly, his voice close and thin through the line. “I’m not saying it isn’t. I just—” A pause. She could hear him exhale, like he was trying to sort the thought before it slipped. “Did it seem like… too much to you?” Yuna hummed, her eyes already moving down a list of providers. “Too much?” she repeated, turning the words over against all the others she had tried and discarded for her grandson— sensitive, not sensitive at all; methodical, spontaneous; how cautious could become courageous. Difficult had lingered, yes—but it had never become ‘too much.’ “No, I wouldn’t say so. He’s always been an empathetic, kind boy.” She checked a box. Unchecked it. Checked another. “It's good, Shane. You were like that too, at his age. Do you remember how you cried the first time you knocked someone in 12U? When they started introducing body-checking drills?" “But I don’t agree,” Shane interrupted, sharper now—the kind of tone that made Yuna straighten in quiet alarm; her son almost never sounded like that. “This isn’t just… feeling bad. He keeps replaying it. Over and over. That’s not normal. He asks the same questions— like Troy’s going to end up in the hospital if he doesn’t check, every day, that he’s okay.” A faint rustle on his end; something tapping, restless. “He won’t drop it. He can’t sleep. He doesn’t want to talk about anything else without circling back to it. It’s like—” He broke off, breath catching with frustration. “It’s like once it’s in his head, it just stays there. That’s not just being empathetic, or sensitive, or whatever word you’re reaching for. It’s… it’s too much. For him.” Shane didn’t say anything after that, but he didn’t have to. Yuna heard it anyway, threaded through the silence, quiet and unmistakable— It had been too much for me. Something in her stilled—a breath that wouldn’t come or go, snagged somewhere deep. Like a loose thread tugged too far, unraveling a whole scarf. Like the last tear that doesn’t soak in, but breaks clean through, leaving a hole in the paper-soft ruin of a napkin. Oh, is all Yuna could think of. Oh. The paper in front of her blurred, the neat columns of names and coverage tiers flattening into something unreadable. Her pen hovered where she’d left it. For a moment, she forgot what she had been looking for at all. When Yuna speaks again, it is through the ringing in her ears— Mom, I need you to know that I really did try. Mom, I need you to know that I really did try. Mom, I need you to know that I really did— The words loop, insistent, unfinished. She wants to apologize. She needs to—again and again, as many times as whatever remains of her life will allow. But what leaves her mouth is something else entirely. It comes automatically, her voice slipping into place without her, practiced, smooth—unchanged. “What…” she asks, the word catching before it can fully form. “What… what do you think you’ll do?” The words came out right—gentle, measured, shaped like the voice of a considerate mother. Yuna wasn’t sure they had come from her at all. They couldn’t have. Not from someone who hadn’t known how to be one when it mattered. When her laptop went idle and the screen dimmed to black, it caught her reflection mid- stillness. For a moment, it fractured her—layered her face over itself, something doubled and slightly out of place. She looked at it, at herself suspended there, and for one brief, unsteady second, Yuna couldn’t tell which side of it she belonged to— closer to death or closer to life; more a good mother than a bad one; someone her grandson would remember, or someone who would fade into being told about. When she dies, Yuna wonders, will Luka feel the hurt Shane will never speak about—and know it came from her? Will he remember her well enough to know she had never meant to? On the other end, Shane was still speaking—something about a meeting, about the school psychologist, about getting ahead of it—but the details slid past her, unanchored, slipping loose before they could settle into anything she could hold. “Mhm,” Yuna murmured at the right intervals. “Yes, that sounds good.” A pause. “I think that’s the right step, honey.” Her voice knew where to go, even if she didn’t. There was a soft exhale from Shane, something loosening in it. Agreement, maybe. Relief. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll—yeah. I’ll let you know how it goes.” “Of course,” Yuna replied, already nodding though he couldn’t see her. “Call me after?” “Yeah. I will.” A brief pause. Then the quiet click of the line going dead. Yuna remained where she was, phone still pressed to her ear, pen poised above the page, as if the conversation were still unfolding somewhere out of reach. Always just out of reach. Yuna doesn’t sleep well that night, nor the one after. By the third and fourth, even David’s lemon balm and skullcap tea fails to quiet her. On the fifth, he watches her a little too closely before asking, soft and careful, “Yuna, please—what’s wrong?” She cannot find a way to answer. There are no words, she thinks, that can hold what she feels. No name wide enough for the regret in her chest, the fear that won’t loosen its grip, the urgency that presses against all of it —too much to carry, too much to set down, too much to survive being spoken aloud. This—this grief, this love—Yuna knows, is something no label will ever hold. It is four in the morning, and her husband is still awake. She can feel it in the way the mattress holds him—careful, as if even now he is trying not to disturb her. He has always loved her like that: gently, from the edge of things, as though her rest mattered more than his restlessness. She should be used to it. After all these years, she should be. But it still makes something in her chest ache, slow and deep. It makes Yuna want to turn into him, to hide her face in the hollow of his shoulder the way she did once, when her body was lighter and her believing came easier—when she let herself think, just for a little while, that being chosen could be permanent. David has always chosen her. Even when he shouldn’t have. Even when she gave him reason not to. Even when staying meant carrying things neither of them ever named aloud, only learned to live around. They will be eighty soon. The marital bed they share has outlasted houses, arguments, silences that stretched for weeks. There is no part of her life he has not witnessed—no version of her he has not, somehow, made room for. No one knows her the way he does. Not even the parts Yuna wishes had remained unknown. So she turns her head into the pillow, eyes open to the dark, and speaks before she can lose the nerve. Her voice comes out smaller than she means it to—thinned by years he likely remembers more clearly than she does—but it comes, and that has to count for something. David has always said it does. “David,” she murmurs, “how do you live with regret?” For a moment, her husband doesn’t answer. The quiet between them is not empty; it never has been. Then the bed shifts. Slowly, with the stiffness of age, he turns toward her. His hand—warm, familiar, mapped with veins she could trace even now—comes to rest against her cheek. He presses a kiss there, to skin folded and softened with time, as tender as if it were the first time. “Same way I lived with everything else,” he says. “With you beside me.” There are many things in her life Yuna regrets. Small things—haircuts that never suited her, vacations chosen poorly; the quiet, persistent refusal to get a pet because she could not bear the thought of ruined couches or chewed corners. Things said too quickly, or not said at all, because the moment had not felt right and then had passed without asking her permission. These were easy to name, easy to hold at a distance, like objects misplaced and long since replaced. And then there were the others; the larger things, the ones that did not soften with time. The ones she would never speak aloud, because there was no one left to understand them and no shape of apology that could reach backward far enough to matter. She had not understood her father as well as she might have. She had not forgiven her mother while forgiveness was still something that could be given and received. Those regrets did not sit neatly. They did not stay where she placed them. Regret, Yuna came to understand over the winter, was not a single feeling but a permeating one. It did not arrive cleanly, nor did it stay contained. It spread. It seeped into everything else, touching even the memories that should have remained untouched, like mold blooming slowly across the surface of an old photograph. It did not erase what had been—it altered it, dimmed it, made it harder to look at without seeing what had gone wrong. And yet, even within that, there were things she would not change. Her life beside David was one of them. She would not undo it, not for anything—even when she could not help the quiet wish that threaded through it. That they had met earlier. That they had been given more time before life had complicated itself, before responsibilities and losses had shaped them into who they were by the time they found each other. That they might have been younger together, freer, allowed a beginning that felt less like something already in progress. That Shane might have come sooner. That Luka might have come sooner still. That she might have had longer—with all of them. Yuna mourns, persistently, the nights it took her too long to gather the courage to hold her son; for the years in which she had failed to be soft when it mattered, too rigid where she should have bent, too blind to see how often she mistook distance for strength. She thinks of the praises she swallowed, held back out of some misplaced discipline—because she had decided her son should be humble, because she believed management would shape him better than indulgence. She thinks of the risks she discouraged, the small leaps she never let him take, because she had already narrowed Shane down with words like "shy" and "reserved," as if naming him was the same as knowing him. How much hurt had Yuna caused her son, pressing those labels into him, pinning them in place like the careful preservation of a butterfly in a glass case—something once living, now made still for the sake of being understood? How much of Shane had she stilled in the process? And how much hurt had she already begun to pass forward, quietly, almost without noticing —trying to do the same to Luka, catching herself mid-thought, mid-word, reaching for needles when she should have simply reached for him? How many moments had she already lost that way? Yuna doesn’t know. Even so, she finds it difficult—impossible, really—to gather all of it into a single, condemning word. Regret feels too large and too imprecise at once, too blunt for something that shifts depending on where she looks. Because how can she regret everything, as if it were whole and settled, when so much of it rests on chance? One change—just one year—could have altered everything that followed. If Shane had been born a year earlier, two, three—would he still be himself in the same way? Would he have become the man he is now, made the same choices, followed the same path? Would her Shane have found his Ilya—in the same place, at the same time, under the same fragile set of circumstances that allowed them to become who they are together? And if even one of those things had shifted— would Luka exist at all? Nothing, Yuna knows, would ever be worth risking that. Not a better version of herself. Not a softer past. Not a life with fewer mistakes, fewer silences, fewer things left undone. Nothing. Because whatever Yuna failed to be, whatever she misunderstood, whatever she cannot undo—somehow, it still led here. Maybe love had not been enough to make everything gentle. But it had been enough to bring her here. To them. Her boys.

For the first time in a week, sleep finds Yuna.

The winter blizzards melted late, but the early April rains were beginning to coax every flower she had paid a gardener to plant into bloom early—so beautifully that her husband stood staring at them, as if wishing, just this once, that he had ever learned to tolerate gardening. In the most selfish way, Yuna thinks it is the lament in his expression that steadies her more than any of his sweet words—the quiet, flickering wish for something he never gave himself. It loosens something in her, softens the long, gray melancholy she has carried from season to season, like a scarf pulled too tight, like a noose she forgot she could take off. By the time the summer sun returns—burning the memory of Irina Rozanova back into her son’s skin more than thirty years after her suicide—Yuna Hollander can finally admit it to herself: She is terrified of dying. Yuna has a husband who will never stop teaching her who she is, and a son she only learned to love for who he was—not who he believed she needed—when time had already begun to close its hand around them; she has another son who came to her like a wind-blown mercy in the middle of unbearable heat, unexpected and life-saving, and a grandson who laughs like wind chimes—bright, fleeting music she fears she may never live long enough to hear deepen into a song the whole world will hum. But the music is playing now, Yuna realizes. It’s lively, close—sometimes even for her. It comes in the small, careful victories: when she remembers to warm Luka’s blankets on the nights he sleeps over, when she gets the order of tucking him in just right; when she can guess which Pedialyte he’ll reach for after practice, which snack he’ll split with the friends whose names slip through her fingers by evening. It plays each time Luka looks up at her and grins—sun-bright hair that turns lighter with every summer, brown eyes, wrists still thin no matter how much she feeds him—and says, Dedulechka, ya tebya lyublyu, Dedulechka. Time might not be enough. Yuna, aging a little more each day, may never see him drafted. She may not watch him grow into something else entirely, may not learn the shape of his teenage years or the weight adulthood will lay across his shoulders. Perhaps she will fade for him, soften into a fond memory—something a yogurt cup might stir, briefly, before it passes. But— a symphony does not need to be finished to endure. A handful of notes is enough to be loved, half-hummed in passing, carried quietly through the rest of a life. It lingers. It is felt. It is passed on, like a story told from one mouth to another. Yuna Hollander may not live to know everything her grandson becomes. She may never find the right words to name his future, to imagine it clearly. But who Luka grows into—whatever shape he takes—matters less than this: she is here, now, beside him. Ya tebya lyublyu, Luka. On the evening Shane’s phone call resurfaced, Yuna was reaching for her heaviest coat when David stopped her. “Honey, I think your sweater will do today,” he said. “It isn’t very cold out.” He was right. The drive to Ilya and Shane’s house was easy, the air gentler than it had been, softened enough that Yuna cracked the window and let it drift in. By the time they pulled into the driveway, Shane was already outside. David chuckled, shaking his head as Shane hurried over, opening Yuna’s door and offering his hand to help her out. Yuna couldn’t help but smile along with him. The phone call slipped from her mind entirely. Any lingering thought of it vanished the moment a sharp, excited screech rang out from inside the house. She looked up just in time to see Luka and Ilya pressed against the window, faces flattened to the glass, both of them grinning as if David and Yuna didn’t visit every weekend. “Babulechka! Dedulechka!” her grandson shouted, loud enough to make Ilya wince—loud enough that even his accent seemed to rattle through the window, sharp and bright, until Shane cut in, steady and practiced, Inside voice, Luka. Inside voice. Luka immediately tried—he always did—but the joy didn’t shrink with it. It just found new ways to spill out: in a grin so wide his eyes nearly disappeared beneath the soft plumpness of his freckled cheeks, in the way his small hands curled tight against his chest, trembling with excitement, in the soft, fluttery little squeaks that slipped from his throat no matter how hard he held them in. Yuna didn’t need to be close to know exactly what that sounded like. Luka’s happiness was her favorite sound in the whole wide world. The door opened before they reached it. Her grandson collided with her first—fast, all elbows and momentum, arms tight around her middle before darting just as quickly to David, then back again, orbiting, unable to settle. Ilya lingered in the doorway, smiling, one hand braced against the frame as if holding the moment in place. Inside, everything moved quickly. Jackets were taken, shoes nudged aside and replaced with slipperes. The kitchen was warm, and the dining table already loud in the way of a house that never quite held still—pots shifting, something simmering, the low overlap of voices that never fully resolved into one conversation; Ilya and Shane’s flirting, Ilya and David’s bantering, Luka threaded through it all, a constant presence at the edge of everything and nowhere for long—at Yuna’s elbow, then gone; perched on a chair, then under the table; speaking, interrupting, circling back, his thoughts looping and bright and insistent. Babulechka, did you know I scored the most points at Mama Irina’s foundation game today? Dedulechka, did you know it’s okay if I can’t count that well because I’m going to be a famous hockey player—very, very famous? Babulechka, Dedulechka, Babulechka, Dedulechka— Did you know? Did you know?” Yuna didn’t—wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t told her. But she could listen. She could gather every bright, breathless piece of Luka he offered— tucked into giggles and half-tangled words—and hold them close to her chest, one by one, until her own heartbeat began to follow their rhythm—and then let them go just as gently, like little butterflies lifting into the air, free to find their way. Maybe she and David could take up gardening to pass the time—fill the yard with thimbles of milkweed and buddleja, lavender and sunset-warm coneflowers that would be ready to bloom by the coming summer and each one after; something that would take root and last, something that welcomed soft, wandering things and let them come and go as they pleased. Something beautiful, like a quiet kind of legacy. The thought made her smile. Dinner came together in pieces, the way it always seemed to with them—never quite orderly, never quiet, either,. Plates passed from hand to hand, still warm; chairs scraped softly against the floor as people shifted closer and closer, hands reaching across one another in easy, familiar overlap. Luka ate the way he did everything else; completely, without holding anything back. He stood for a moment to say something important, then sat, then twisted halfway around in his chair as if his thoughts needed more space than stillness allowed. He talked through bites, words tumbling out around mouthfuls of food, doubling back mid- sentence to fix a word, to get it just right. No, wait—like this, he’d insist, correcting himself carefully, wanting it to land exactly the way he meant it. He watched their faces as he spoke, checking, making sure he was understood, that he had said it right. Ilya answered him with an ease that made it all feel effortless: he never rushed Luka, never cut him off—just met him where he was, again and again, as many times as it took. Russian folded into English without pause, French catching here and there where Shane and Luka carried it forward, and where language thinned, touch took over. A kiss pressed absently to the back of Shane’s palm when the conversation softened just enough to allow it, sacred and instinctive. A steady foot braced against the back of Luka’s chair, grounding it each time it tipped a little too far, a silent correction that didn’t interrupt the flow of anything else. A presence that said I’m here without needing to be spoken. Forty-year-old Ilya’s smiles came easier than they ever had at twenty; more settled, too, than they’d been at thirty—soft, patient things that didn’t flicker or strain, that simply stayed. Even when Luka stumbled over a word or circled the same point twice; even when Ilya had to repeat himself a third time because Shane was too busy watching their son to catch it the first two. His eyes followed every attempt with the same quiet serenity, never dimming, never asking for less or more, as if each word, however it came, was exactly worth the wait. There was no edge of impatience in him anymore, no subtle tightening in his jaw or absent brush of his thumb for comfort—only that steady, open warmth that made room for everything his family was, everything they did. There was so much contentment in him it almost felt tangible, something that settled into the space and stayed there—warm, unshakable, and certain as breath. Watching it, Yuna found herself believing it: That love, when it looked like this—messy and layered and patient, spoken in three languages and a hundred small gestures—really could be enough. Love could be everything. Yuna watched it pass her by—a future full of possibility, alive, just slightly out of step with her own. But there were still dishes to be done, so she did them. Water ran, steady and low. Plates stacked in careful, familiar rhythms, and clean utensils found their places the way Shane had always preferred—the way Luka was beginning to as well, small hands deliberate as he lined the o-hashi beside the forks, just so, beside the spoons. He paused to adjust them, once, then twice, intent on getting it right, before the focus slipped softly from him. The house began to soften at the edges, sounds dulling, movements slowing as the day settled into their bones. Luka, suddenly heavy with it, lingered where he stood, his words trailing off mid-thought, sentences left unfinished as though sleep had reached up and plucked them gently from his mouth. His body followed, tipping just slightly before he caught himself, blinking as though trying to stay with them a little longer. Shane noticed it first. He glanced at Ilya, and that was all it took. Ilya stepped in, lifting Luka easily against his chest, one arm secure beneath him as their son instinctively curled closer, fitting there so naturally it made the three of them feel like one shape. Shane moved ahead, guiding them up the stairs. Yuna could envision it perfectly, a rundown of every night; by the time Ilya stepped inside, Shane would be at the bed, pulling back the covers, holding them open. Ilya would lay Luka down carefully between them, and together they would tuck him in—Shane smoothing the blanket up, Ilya removing Luka’s glasses, the ease of a lifetime spent together. The protests would come as they always did—soft, ritual more than resistance. Just one more bedtime story, Papa. One more sentence. One more minute. One last goodnight kiss, please, Daddy? Each request blurred by a yawn, by heavy eyes, by the complacency of being exactly where he wanted to be. Then, at last, the quiet thud of a door closing. Lights dimmed one by one, the house exhaling into stillness, holding the last warmth of the day close. By the time Shane came back downstairs, Yuna and David had settled in the living room. He lingered at the edge of the room for a moment before speaking. “I talked to the school psychologist,” he told them. It took Yuna a moment to place it—to follow the thread back to where she had let it drop in the winter. “Oh?” David prompted gently. Shane exhaled through his nose. “They brought up some things. Observations.” The word settled between them. Yuna felt it land with a strange familiarity. She had spent a lifetime trusting words like that— observations, patterns, the careful gathering of details that led, inevitably, to something named, something understood. Under normal circumstances, she would have welcomed it. But it sat differently now, set beside Luka’s name in someone else’s voice. Not hers. Not family. An outsider, claiming the first pass at definition. Shane glanced down, then back up. “They think he should see someone else. A specialist. They want him evaluated.” Evaluated. Yuna’s spine straightened on instinct. There were only so many directions that word could go, and none of them felt neutral. “What, exactly,” she asked, already—absently—thinking of the family lawyer’s contact information, “do they think they’re observing?” Shane’s mouth tightened slightly, like he was trying to choose the version of it that would sound the least like something was wrong. “They said it’s… inconsistent,” he started. “That’s the word they used. Conflicting.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, then dropped it. “Like—he’s ahead in some things. Way ahead. They said he picks things up fast, notices details other kids don’t, remembers everything. But then—then he’ll get stuck. On small things. Instructions, changes, something not going the way he expected.” Yuna said nothing. “He can sit through something for hours if he cares about it,” Shane went on, quieter now. “But if he doesn’t, or if something feels off, he just… can’t. They said he’ll drift, or he’ll ‘fixate’ on something else entirely. Not letting something go once it’s in his head; looping, I guess. Like he’s there and not there at the same time.” A faint, humorless breath left him. Yuna wonders, not for the first time, if Shane will ever learn to forgive himself for all the things she had failed to embrace in him. “And socially—” her son hesitated. “He’s not… struggling, exactly. He talks. He participates. But it’s…” Shane exhaled. “It’s like he’s following a different rhythm, that’s what they said. He’ll miss the turn in a conversation, or answer something no one else asked. Sometimes he reacts like something mattered more than it did, or like it meant something else entirely. And sometimes it upsets him more than it should. And then other times he’s—completely fine. Better than fine.” He stopped. “They’re not saying anything definite,” Shane concluded, and there was something almost helpless in the way he said it, like the lack of certainty made it worse, not better. “Just that it doesn’t line up cleanly. That it’s… enough of a pattern they think it’s worth looking at properly. But—” The inconsistency. Even the obvious things, Yuna recalled thinking, refuse to settle with Luka. Silence stretched, thin and careful, waiting to see who would break first. Then Shane turned to her. Not just a glance—not the easy, passing look of a son checking for reassurance—but fully, deliberately, as if he had decided that whatever came next had to be placed in her hands, even if it burned her to hold it. His eyes locked onto hers, steady, unflinching; so unusual it rooted her in place. He never did this. Never held her gaze like that. Not for long, even if she pleaded and cried, Honey, look at me. Yuna had always believed she understood Shane. That she had known him completely—every emotion, every thought, every quiet shift before it ever became visible. That she had been the kind of mother who could anticipate need before it formed, who could smooth the world ahead of him so he would never have to stumble blindly into it. She had built herself around that certainty, worn it like proof of something good, something right. But she hadn’t. And she didn’t. And she knows it now, in the way she cannot read him—cannot name what burns behind his eyes as he looks at her. Is it a plea? A request, quiet but urgent: believe me this time, even if you didn’t before? Or is it something sharper—something edged with all the years between then and now: why didn’t you see it when it was me? “Mom,” Shane says, and all the names she has ever held for him—honey, sweetheart, my boy —fall suddenly out of reach, useless in her mouth. He doesn’t raise his voice. If anything, he grows quieter, more certain for it, holding her gaze as he says, “Luka isn’t sensitive. I think something’s wrong.” Yuna Hollander was fond of labels. A label, when it was done right, felt immediate. It cut through ambiguity—it put things in their proper place, and kept everything from slipping into unnecessary complexity. It didn’t need further explaining when done correctly: whatever was labeled simply stayed what each singular letter designated as a whole. A single, well-placed word could accomplish what most people spent entire conversations— entire interactions, entire years of knowing—struggling to express. All it took was a glance. One look, and Yuna knew what something was for, whether it mattered, and what should be done with it—keep it, file it away, discard it, revisit it later. The answer was there, already settled. There was no need to linger over it, no need to wonder. Yuna had never wondered when she looked at Shane. She had decided what he was to her long before it had even been a he. A geriatric pregnancy meant risk; it meant the quiet, constant possibility of never having him at all. Having him became tangled with losing him, and losing him meant she could not afford to get attached. For six months, she lived inside that belief—that her son would leave her, would simply stop breathing and disappear for reasons science could not name and God would not explain. But Shane had stayed. And because he stayed, he was hers. Yuna loved him the only way she knew how—like everything else she had ever loved before him. Not as something separate, but as something continuous. An extension. Her heart, lifted out and set moving in the world. Breathing with the same tight lungs she had always carried, feeling only what she herself knew how to feel. It seemed inevitable that he would inherit more than her eyes, more than her face in certain lights. That Shane Hollander would move through the world along the same narrow, tight corridors she had learned to navigate even if his surname softened what her inheritance could not. Carefully. Watchfully. Always aware of where he stood and how he was seen. Because in Yuna’s mind, the world came arranged in a certain way: quiet expectations, small humiliations, and the steady work of making yourself smaller so you could pass through it without resistance. Yuna grew up in the space between labels, after all. Never quite fitting the ones she was given, never able to keep the ones she chose. Languages that never quite settled, pronunciations that shifted at the edges depending on who was listening. What passed in one place became too much in another, and she learned early how quickly a person could be misread—how quickly a person could be renamed—too loud, too much, too visible—when the tongue changed but the curvature of the eyes did not. So she learned to endure without drawing notice, to correct herself before anyone else could —filing each misstep away, renaming it, containing it. To stay within what would not invite scrutiny. It became instinct: anticipate, adapt, contain. A label. And if she did it well enough—if she was careful, if she was excellent, the very best—the world would not press too hard against her. Not anymore; not again. It would let her move through it without question, without pause, without looking too closely at the parts of her that did not quite belong, even when those parts had always been there. Yuna had loved Shane with that same survival instinct: because he was hers, because he survived each night she lay awake beside him, afraid he might not. She clung to the ways he resembled her—the shape of his eyes, the soft flyaways, the small, undeniable proofs that he was made from her—as if they could anchor him there. Because she had never been allowed to remain soft and still be loved. Not until David— Not until his love, in her, became a child. Yuna had never meant to hurt her little boy. It had never felt like harm, or like narrowing. It felt like protection—a careful shaping of Shane into someone remarkable, someone acceptable, someone children could admire. The world had edges, and she was only trying to show him where they lay, so he wouldn’t cut himself on them later. She was guiding him toward a life where doors would open instead of close, giving him the right words for himself early, before the world could choose harsher ones. Yuna told herself she was helping her son become good. She never noticed how often Shane went quiet instead of speaking—how he checked himself before every answer, as if something inside him needed correcting. How he learned to swallow thoughts before they could take shape. And how, in the process, he was learning something else from her entirely: that there was something in him that had to be managed. That whatever came naturally was already suspect—too much, or not enough. That he should feel it rise, then press it back down until it stilled. Until it disappeared—because that was what Yuna had done her entire life. She thought she saw herself in him. She didn’t realize he was becoming a smaller, harsher version of everything she had never forgiven in herself. Something to monitor. Something to fix. Something that could always be wrong, simply because it had always been different. Mom, I need you to know I really tried. I tried so hard, but I just can’t help it. Until that moment, Yuna had never thought to ask where Shane had learned that there was something in him he shouldn’t be able to help. Until that day, all those years ago, she had never wondered why, for Shane, trying always sounded like an apology. It had never crossed her mind that he might have learned it from the way she loved him. She believed she knew what hurt her son because she knew what had hurt her. She believed she knew what he needed because she knew what she had needed. So she loved him accordingly—closely, completely, without ever asking who he might have been if she had let him name himself. She had never meant to hurt him. Not once. But she had. And that is a regret she will carry for the rest of her life—through the slow dimming of her days, through summers that will come and go without asking what she would keep or undo. It will not leave her. It will sit with her, quiet and patient, as constant as memory itself. And still, it is hers. Not something to turn away from, not something she can name and set aside. It belongs to her the same way her fear once did: knotted together with love, inseparable from it, impossible to untangle cleanly. Because she had loved him. She had loved him in the only way she knew how, even when that love had pressed too hard, even when it had asked too much. Even when it had hurt him. And if love cannot be everything to her the way it was for Ilya—if cannot soften every edge, cannot undo what has already been done—then she will not ask it to. She will ask something else of it. She will ask it to remain. To sit beside the regret without trying to erase it. To make space for what cannot be changed. To hold what is broken without looking away. Enough to forgive. Enough to learn. Enough, at last, to let the people she loves go where she cannot follow—to years she will not be there to witness, to versions of them she will only ever have to imagine. And if it is not everything, if it never was, then Yuna will still make of it what she can— something steady, something enduring, something she can leave behind in place of herself. Something that, even now, is enough. David was buckling Luka into his booster seat when her son came to stand beside her. The buckle clicked once, then again, and Yuna watched as David gave it a small, habitual tug before smoothing Luka’s jacket flat against his chest—long enough that she almost missed Shane at her side. They both watched as Ilya leaned in through the open door, one hand braced on the frame, the other cupping the back of Luka’s head as he kissed him goodbye. He spoke to him in soft, besotted Russian, his voice dipping and rising in a rhythm that felt almost like a lullaby. His grin lingered, warm and a little helpless in the face of it, as if he couldn’t quite stop himself from saying one more thing, and then another—long enough that Shane had learned to say goodbye first. Luka answered each reminder with impatience, his sneakers tapping lightly against the edge as he swung his legs, nodding hard enough to knock his hair out of place—yes, Papa, he’d call before bed; yes, Papa, he’d be good for Babulechka at bath time; and no, Papa, he would not cry when it was time to brush his teeth, even if the toothpaste was mint, even if it burned — even if you say it’s okay. Still, his fingers curled into the fabric of Ilya’s sleeve as he promised it, holding on for as long as he could—caught between the urgency to go and the quiet pull to stay just a little longer. Yuna watched from where she stood, her hands folded loosely in front of her, smiling to herself. They didn’t know about the strawberry toothpaste tucked away in her bathroom, pushed to the back of the cabinet and saved for nights like this—for small conspiracies kept between grandmother and grandson. She could already picture it: the quiet trade, the smile Luka would give her, the way he’d lean in close, as if they were sharing something important. And as if he did know, Luka turned to look at her from the back seat. His face lit up, immediate and unguarded, all delight and trust—the kind that came from knowing he was held on every side, that there was nowhere he could fall that someone would not catch him. “I’ll miss you, Papa,” he said, leaning forward as far as the seatbelt would allow, “but we have to go now!” Ilya laughed under his breath and pulled him in again, wrapping both arms around him in a loose, easy hold, pressing two quick kisses to the side of his head before lingering there a moment longer. David’s hand came up to rest at the back of Ilya’s neck, thumb brushing once, absentminded and familiar, before dropping away. It was in that small, crowded moment—hands overlapping, voices softening, affection given without hesitation—that Shane spoke up beside her. “Hey, Mom?” Yuna turned. Shane stood close, shoulders drawn in just slightly, as if he were trying not to take up too much space. He had always done that, ever since he outgrew her as a teenager— folded himself down around her without thinking, as if he could make himself easier to hold. Her little boy. “Yes, hon?” she asked, her voice gentler than she intended. She pressed her lips together after, as if to keep anything else from slipping out. Shane nodded once, then again, like he was setting himself in place. His hands hovered for a second at his sides before one lifted, rubbing briefly at the back of his neck. “When we set it up—when we go in to talk to someone—” He paused, eyes dropping to the ground, then flicking back up to her. For the first time since dinner conclude, the careful structure of his voice loosened, just a little: “Can you come with me?” Yuna didn’t answer right away. Not because she didn’t know what to say—she would do anything her boys asked, without needing to know more than that it was what they wanted— but because something in the way he asked it caught in her chest. Not the question itself, not the logistics—but the structure of it, the way it reached for her: Not can you watch Luka tonight? Not can you help us with this? Can you come with me? Her baby, asking her to stand beside him—for his baby. Her hand lifted before she could think better of it, coming to rest against Shane’s cheek. Her thumb brushed once along his skin, slow and grounding. Ever since he was little, he had responded the same way—leaning into it without hesitation, turning his face slightly into her palm. His eyes met hers—brown, steady, still so unmistakably her own—and for a moment he looked very young again. “Yes,” Yuna said, softer now. “Of course I will come.” Shane let out a breath he hadn’t seemed to realize he was holding. His shoulders dropped a fraction, the tension easing out of them. “Okay,” he said, nodding once, then again. “Okay. Good.” The evaluation center sat back from the road behind a low iron fence, its grounds spilling over with early bloom—tulips in carefully planned rows, pale pink magnolias opening like careful hands, and clusters of daffodils nodding in the breeze as if they had been waiting specifically for this week. The air carried that damp, green scent of thawed earth and rain, something soft enough to be mistaken for calm. Yuna did not feel calm. “David, I told you we didn’t have time,” she said the moment the car door shut a little too hard behind her. The words came out sharper than intended, clipped at the edges, already fraying with the tension she hadn’t managed to hide since morning. David rounded the front of the car, still smoothing the front of his suit jacket with one hand, the other holding a small paper bag—a vibrant eyesore, unmistakably from a toy store. “We made it,” he said, as if that settled anything. “We’re not even that late.” “We are late,” Yuna corrected immediately, already moving toward the entrance, heels striking the pavement with brisk precision. “Five minutes is late. Ten minutes is unacceptable. First impressions matter, David—especially in places like this.” “They matter less than a child walking in empty-handed,” he replied, lifting the bag slightly, not defensive—just steady, as he always was. Yuna exhaled sharply through her nose, not quite looking at him. “He doesn’t need a prize for showing up, David. He needs support. Encouragement. Not to be spoiled.” “He’s seven, Yuna,” David said. “There’s room for both.” That—infuriatingly—slowed her half a step. Not enough to concede. Not enough to agree. But enough that her irritation had to shift shape, folding inward instead of outward, where it became something tighter, less manageable. Nerves, she would have called it—if she allowed herself the indulgence. Instead: “It sets a precedent.” David smiled faintly, the kind that had survived decades of her certainty. “So does showing up supported.” Yuna didn’t answer. She adjusted the strap of her handbag instead, fingers smoothing over the leather with unnecessary care, grounding herself in something tangible, something orderly. The doors opened with a soft hydraulic hush, letting them into air that smelled faintly of disinfectant and something floral—manufactured, nothing like the real bloom outside. Yuna didn’t slow. She gave a thin smile to the receptionist, polished and immediate, and said: “Good morning. Luka Hollander-Rozanov. Nine-thirty. Sorry we're late.” “It's alright,” the receptionist replied, already reaching for the sign-in sheet. “If you could just —” “You,” Yuna continued under her breath, not looking at David as she took the pen, “are overdressed.” “I am prepared,” he corrected. “You are in a three-piece suit.” “It’s a two-piece.” “Don’t split hairs.” “I’m not,” David said amicably. “I left the vest at home.” Yuna paused—briefly—pen hovering over the line. “That was your compromise?” she asked, incredulous. David’s mouth twitched. “Of course, honey.” She signed her name with a touch more pressure than necessary. “Unbelievable.” The receptionist cleared her throat, polite but faintly amused. “You can head down the hall to the left—the children’s waiting area. They’ll call Luka shortly.” “Thank you,” Yuna said again, already turning. David moved in beside her, keeping close to her shoulder. “Thank you,” he echoed, warmer this time, as though a shade more civility might tip the balance of the morning in their favor. They walked on together. Once they were out of earshot, Yuna lowered her voice. “You look intimidating, David. What if Luka thinks something’s wrong? You’ll make him nervous.” He glanced at her, already reading what lay beneath her words, and gave a small, knowing smile. “I look competent.” “No.” She shook her head, a flicker of embarrassment surfacing—there was something quietly mortifying about remaining so transparent, even to the person she had loved for most of her life. “You look like you’re about to cross-examine a child psychologist.” David only hummed. “If that becomes necessary—” “It won’t,” she cut in, sharper than she intended. Then, softer, as if trying to smooth it over— just in case they really did need to tip the morning in their favor—she added, “Everything will be fine.” They turned the corner. The waiting area was more luminous than the front, yet gentler on the eyes. Light filtered through the wide windows in a warm wash, softening the edges of everything it touched. Beyond the glass, the same blooming magnolias stretched from corner to corner, their colors spilling inward like a quiet, leaking rainbow—as if the outside world had followed them in and brushed its hues across the built-in bookshelf along one wall. There, blocks were stacked by size and color, puzzles slotted neatly into place; soft figures gathered in companionable clusters, and fairytales and National Geographic picture books were interspersed throughout. Worn leather armchairs, creased and softened by years of use, were scattered for the adults, set beside petite, whimsical ottomans shaped like flowers and clouds. Beneath everything, a rug of oversized puzzle pieces fit together in rounded, symmetrical edges. Cheerful hand- painted murals stretched along the walls in soft pastels, their shapes and colors chosen to soothe rather than demand attention. It was a room designed to reassure without ever quite admitting the effort, down to the neatly framed photographs of smiling families and the faint, persistent trace of lavender in the air. But Yuna’s attention didn’t linger on any of it. Her gaze caught instead on the small table near the corner of the room, drawn there with immediate, unarguable certainty like a magnet—toward the crayons scattered in loose, cheerful disarray beside sheets of paper already claimed. Claimed, unmistakably, by two very large men. Her two very large, very grown boys—and their own slightly-too-tall-for-his-age son. All three unmistakable. All three— In suits. Coordinated suits. Not just similar—no, that would’ve been reasonable. They were identical, scaled down in neat, deliberate stages by height: Ilya in sharp black, all clean lines and severity; Shane in softened charcoal, the same cut rendered a shade more mellow; and Luka between them, a smaller echo in miniature tailoring, every detail faithfully reproduced as if someone had simply reduced the pattern and stitched it again. Because they had. Painstakingly—because that’s what Yuna had paid for. Because those were the exact suits she had ordered for them—custom-made, meticulously fitted, chosen after far too many consultations and fabric samples—for their Hall of Fame induction. Not for this. Not for— Crayon wax. Glue sticks. Not even properly sealed glue sticks—tacky at the edges— With Glitter. Glitter. For a brief second, Yuna simply stared. The suits had been expensive—expensive enough that she’d hesitated even as she approved the final invoice. Meant for polished floors. For camera flashes. For history being made. Her brain, helpfully, supplied the cost: the timeline, the fact that the backups were still at the tailor’s because she’d said yes, take your time, we won’t need them until— No. No, no, no— Beside her, David didn’t say a word. Her husband just looked at her, then lifted a hand and gave a small, elegant flourish—like a magician who’d just pulled off his greatest trick. See? “Oh,” Yuna said, the word thinning as it left her, “Jesus.” Shane glanced up at the sound, expression shifting with quiet relief. “Oh, you made it.” “Of course we did, honey,” she said automatically. Then, sharper, turning— “Ilya.” Her son-in-law, seated in one of the too-small chairs, long legs awkwardly folded, looked up from where he’d been coloring. “Mama Yuna.” “You too?” she couldn't help but ask, gesturing—vaguely, but pointedly—at his suit. “Really?” Ilya blinked once, like the question itself didn’t quite track. “Well,” he said, as if it were obvious, “this is important.” “Yes, but—” “Like immigration,” he added contemplatively. Yuna stared at him. “That is not—” she began, and then stopped, because there were too many ways to argue and none of them would survive contact with her very European, aggressively well-dressed, catastrophically unconcerned-with-cost son, who would—without hesitation—solve this by saying, Then we buy more suits. I can afford. You think I'm poor? Ha! My husband is Shane Hollander! “This is not immigration,” she finished instead, flat. Ilya considered that. Not for long—just enough to be polite about it—then gave a small, conceding nod. “No,” he agreed. “But still important. Is respectful.” David made a small, satisfied sound beside her. “Exactly,” he said, entirely unhelpful. Yuna closed her eyes. Tried not to think about her suits—her very expensive, professionally pressed, irreplaceable-on-short-notice suits—and opened her eyes again, slowly, like she might find a different reality waiting for her if she gave it enough time. She did not. Yet beside her, David slipped off his jacket and held it out. Not smug now, just offering. Something in her irritation—in the fine, strung-tight edge of her nerves—loosened despite herself. Yuna hesitated, just long enough for the reflex to refuse to surface and falter, and then she took it. “Don’t,” she murmured, already slipping it over her shoulders, settling it into place with practiced efficiency. “Say anything.” “I wasn’t going to,” her husband said, though the small curve of his mouth gave him away. Yuna ignored it. She smoothed the lapel flat, precise as ever, aligning the seam with careful fingers, pressing it into order as if that alone could quiet whatever still moved beneath her ribs. The fabric was warm from him. Familiar. Steady. There was no reason to be afraid—Yuna let the breath in, slow and deliberate, held it there for a moment as if to prove she could. The same way I lived through everything else, she told herself, the thought settling into place as neatly as the jacket on her shoulders. With you beside me. That was when Luka finally noticed them, perking up in his seat with a bright, sudden grin— and Christ, it really did look like someone had run her grandson through a copy machine, the way those sports magazines liked to joke. Ilya’s gelled-back curls seemed miniaturized and set neatly onto Luka’s head, while Shane’s coloring had been lightened a shade, the ink turned down just enough for this smaller, softer version. Copy, scale, repeat, Yuna thought, just as her grandson—at full volume, loud enough to make Ilya wince—shouted, “Babulechka! Dedulechka! Look what Papa and Daddy and I made!” He sprang half out of his chair as he said it, dress shoes squeaking against the floor, one knee still caught on the seat as he stretched the drawing up as high as his arm would go. The paper wobbled, bent slightly where his fingers pinched too tight— —and clipped, with a star centre's precision, the only open glitter container. It tipped. Yellow shimmer hit the air first—an explosive, granular burst of light that hung for a heartbeat like spring pollen, dancing as it spread, before settling in a slow, glittering fall over the boy’s hair and clothes. It fanned across the table with a soft hiss, clinging to wood and fabric and skin. “Oh!” Luka said, looking down at himself. Fine flecks had already sunk into the fabric like tiny jewels, catching the light with every shift. They gathered in the creases of his trousers, clung to the nap of the cloth, embedded themselves in the tacky streaks where glue had transferred from his fingers. He sighed— small, long-suffering—as if this were a minor inconvenience and not, Yuna’s mind supplied with sharp immediacy, a catastrophic nightmare. Then her grandson pushed himself upright. His chair legs scraped. One shoe stuck briefly in a thin smear of glue on the floor before peeling free with a soft, reluctant sound. His hand, still faintly sticky in a way that would've made him cry at four years old, caught the edge of the table as he steadied himself, leaving behind a ghostly print dusted in shimmer. Yuna did not move. Could not, in fact, as her personal sleep paralysis demon—warm, adorable, and faintly smelling of Elmer’s glue—collided with her leg. There was the soft thump of impact, the immediate press of small arms around her knee, fabric brushing fabric— —and the unmistakable transfer. Glitter. Glue. The soft drag of something not entirely dry against wool that had no business encountering any of this. “Look, Babulechka!” Luka said, beaming up at her, rising onto his toes as the paper fluttered between his fingers. It was a crowded little menagerie—three misshapen, ill-proportioned animals rendered with the careful intensity only a seven-year-old could manage. Heads skewed large, limbs stubby, everything arranged by a child’s sense of importance rather than scale. The effort showed in the waxy ridges where he’d gone over each line again and again, pressing color deep into the page. The bug had too many legs—some thin, some thick, a few trailing off midair—and a bright green body shaded unevenly from dark to light in a determined attempt at a gradient. Careful stripes ran along its back, then crossed over themselves, as if Luka couldn’t decide which pattern mattered most. Yuna recognized that same earnest overworking—the instinct to get it perfect—in every layered stroke, something that tugged at a memory of Shane’s childhood drawings. But the wings hovered just off-center, one larger than the other, and there was none of the frustrated scribbling that had once marred Shane’s efforts when he couldn’t make something come out right. So she decided, tentatively, that it was all right. A small bear cub sat beside the bug, the largest of the three despite being the smallest in life. Round and solid, with a lopsided head and mismatched ears, it was colored in the heaviest overlapping browns, deepening nearly to black where he’d pressed hardest. The face held the most attention: two wide eyes behind blue circles meant to be glasses, one set slightly higher than the other; a careful oval snout; and a smile stretched just a bit too far, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure it read as utterly happy. Above them hovered a bee like a tiny, personal sun, as if it existed just to keep them warm— bright with yellow glitter and a soft, fuzzy outline. Its stripes wandered in and out of alignment, and its wings—far too large for its body—were filled with quick, translucent strokes that barely stayed within the lines. The stinger had been softened into something almost decorative, more suggestion than threat, and the whole little figure leaned toward the others, as if drifting down to gather them into a quiet, affectionate hug. Around the animal family, Luka had filled every spare inch: a crooked line of grass, a scatter of floating shapes that might have been flowers or simply color for its own sake. The names above each animal were neat, even if their forms leaned more Cyrillic than Latin. He’d even switched crayons to write them in rainbow order: Shanebug, Lukabear, and Ilyabee! The exclamation point had torn faintly through the page, but it had been mended—a small red heart drawn over it, lopsided and overfilled, unmistakably like the ones Ilya tucked into lunchbox notes and the not-entirely-normal love letters to Shane she periodically found magnetized to the fridge. “Oh,” Yuna said, very calmly, each word placed with deliberate care so her voice wouldn’t betray her; whether from the prickle of panic or the sudden, overwhelming swell of love, she couldn’t quite tell. “This is—fantastic, sweetheart. Thank you for showing me.” “Of course, Babulechka!” Luka said, nodding once, quick and solemn before he hurried on, words tumbling over each other. “I would draw you and Dedulechka too, really—but Miss Plouffe said only Papa and Daddy, because that is who I live with. Even though I asked about Anya, because she lived with us a very, very long time—” Yuna’s eyes flickered at the edge of that word—of that loss—turning, almost without thinking, toward Ilya. But he was only looking at his son, as if quietly astonished that something so small could hold so much love—never mind that it had come from him in the first place. So Yuna only nodded, following along as Luka spoke. Here, in the evaluation center, none of it was hers to trace anymore. That old instinct—to name, to measure, to preserve, to gently but firmly guide things into safer, neater shapes—had no place here. It hovered at the edges of her still, familiar as breath, but she did not reach for it. She had one role, she knew now. Not labeler. Not conservationist. Not manager, anymore, or referee, or assessor— Something older than all of those. Something Yuna had never studied, never perfected, never managed to hold without leaving fingerprints on it. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever been allowed to be. The most dangerous, too— the thing that had kept her alive through those quiet, sleepless nights all those decades ago, when the hours stretched thin and shapeless and she had learned to measure time by breathing, by waiting, by the small, fragile certainty that morning would come. It stayed bound beneath her skin like veins, constant and unseen, carrying something forward even when the rest of her had gone dim, when everything else in her had felt stalled or emptied out, as if she were only the structure left behind to keep something smaller, more vulnerable alive. Her heart had not belonged solely to her in years. It had been lifted, long ago, placed outside of her with trembling, deliberate hands—set loose into the world like something fragile and winged. Like a butterfly, maybe: bright, impossible, alive in ways she could not control. She could watch it, reach for it, worry over every gust of wind that might carry it too far—but she could not fold it back into her chest without breaking it. And still, it was hers. Even now. Even like this. It was the simplest role, in the end. The most obvious one. The one she had always had, whether she had understood it or not, whether she had done it well or poorly or somewhere in between. Yuna reached out, her hand steady despite everything, and took Shane’s. He looked down at her immediately, as if he had been waiting for it—craning slightly, his expression softening into something open, something uncertain and hopeful all at once. There was still that trace of nervousness in him, that carefulness she knew too well, but there was something else threaded through it now, too. Something warmer. Freer. Beautiful, she thought, with a sudden, almost unbearable clarity. The most beautiful thing in the world. “Thank you for being here, Mom,” he said quietly. Yuna closed her fingers more firmly around his hand. This, she understood; this she did not have to wonder at, or measure, or get right. Just this. Mother.

If there was any label that might outlast the rest—the careful ones, the necessary ones, the ones she had spent a lifetime choosing and enforcing, even the need to label at all—Yuna hoped it would be that one.

Outside the Ottawa Children’s Mental Health Centre, Luka lingered by the low iron fence, his fingers curled loosely around the bars as he peered out at the small garden. Tulips and pale pink magnolias dotted the grass, their colors bright against the muted afternoon. He had already announced—firmly, more than once—that he didn’t like the daffodils, but the tulips held his attention in a way nothing inside had. Not even Dr. Plouffe’s soft, practiced voice as she asked if he could show her, with his hands or his face, what it looked like when a worry started to feel too big. Shane stood a few steps back, eyes fixed on the documents in his hands, as if the answers to everything might be hidden somewhere between suspected Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Ilya was too busy watching him—those patient, all- knowing hazel eyes fixed gently on Shane—to notice anything else. Neither of them saw Luka’s fingers tighten around the iron bars. Didn’t see the way his shoulders drew in, small and sudden. Didn’t catch the moment his face changed—quick, sharp, like something inside him had slipped loose and then caught, all at once. Yuna did. She moved before the sound came. By the time Luka’s mouth opened, by the time the first breath hitched in his chest, she was already there, pulling him close, gathering him up against her as if he had always belonged in her arms. “Oh, baby, it’s okay,” she murmured, soft and steady, as his chest began to heave. Luka clung to her, the first sound breaking out of him in a sharp, startled sob, as if it had surprised him too. When Ilya and Shane turned at the same time, startled into attention, Yuna only lifted one hand and waved them back without looking up. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she murmured to her grandson again, one hand smoothing over the back of his head, unbothered of the places where glitter still clung stubbornly in his hair. “I’ve got you.” Luka shook his head against her, breath catching, small fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeve. “The—” he tried, and then again, more urgently, “the flower—Babulechka, the flower—” Yuna followed the direction of his gaze. There, just beyond the fence, among the neat, upright tulips, one had been bent nearly in half. Its stem was creased, not quite broken, but enough that the bloom sagged low toward the dirt. Petals were missing; one hung loose, bruised dark along the edge, as if it had been stepped on or caught by a careless hand. It was a small thing. Easy to miss. Easy to dismiss. Luka made a soft, broken sound. “It’s hurt,” he said, voice trembling, as if the conclusion had only just occurred to him and was already too much to bear. “It’s—it’s not supposed to be like that—” His chest hitched again, grief arriving all at once, disproportionate and overwhelming and entirely real. Yuna tightened her hold on him, one hand firm between his shoulder blades. “I see it,” she said quietly, not rushing, not correcting. “I see it, sweetheart.” “It was fine,” Luka insisted, pulling back just enough to look at her, eyes wet and shining. “All the other ones are fine, but that one—” His voice cracked. “Nobody helped it.” “No,” Yuna agreed, her voice soft with sympathy, edged with a quiet guilt—and steady enough for him to hold onto all the same. “Nobody did.” Luka buried his face back into her shoulder, the crying coming in earnest now—no longer caught, no longer held back. The words came to her, out of habit, out of years—explanations, reframings, the careful softening of sharp things into manageable ones. It’s natural. It happens. It will grow back. It’s not really hurt. She could feel them, lined up and ready, precise as tools in her hands. But Yuna did not tell him it was only a flower. She did not say it would be replaced, that new blooms would come, that by the end of the month they would all be gone anyway. She did not say it didn’t matter. She only adjusted her hold, one hand rising to cradle the back of his head, guiding him gently into the curve of her shoulder as his small body shook. Around them, the garden stayed bright. The other flowers stood tall, untouched, indifferent. But Luka had seen the one that wasn’t right—the small, hurting thing that existed now, in front of him, and nowhere else. The rest could wait. That grief from the future could wait; the explanations, the quiet cycles of things fading and being replaced, of losses too small to name and too constant to count. Another season could carry those. Another winter, another spring. For now, there was only this: holding her grandson as he cried for something that hurt in the present, and nothing else. Her hand moved slowly along his back, steady and unhurried. The other rested at the base of his skull, keeping him close when his breathing faltered, when the sobs came too fast. She did not pull him away from it. She did not try to lessen it. She stayed with him inside it. “I know, Luka,” she murmured, softer now—not to quiet him, but to meet him where he was. “I know.” The flower remained in the garden—bent, bruised, out of place among the others. Unfixed. Unexplained. Yuna didn’t look at it again.

At the restaurant, Luka refused to eat his dinner even when Yuna tried to bargain with him, lightheartedly invoking contracts as if that might sway him. The businessmen had been laid off, Ilya had joked, and under different circumstances—if it had been winter, perhaps—Yuna might have found it in herself to feel something sharper about it. But it was spring; the air had softened, the light lingered longer, and each breath came easier without winter’s bite. Summer would arrive before she had quite figured out how to appreciate the quiet persistence of April showers, but Yuna was trying. Trying meant failing, sometimes—but it meant this, too. When she ordered yogurt as a last resort, Luka beamed up at her with that all-sun smile and said, with bright delight, Spasibo, babulechka!—as if it were the best thing he had ever tasted. Yuna wondered how she had ever doubted that love could be enough. Inside the restaurant, Ilya and Shane lingered behind, caught up taking pictures with fans. Outside, the evening carried the low hum of passing cars, and the darkening sky was dotted with the first stars beginning to show. The pavement still held a faint warmth from the day. Yuna lingered beside the open car door, one hand resting against its frame, watching. David was half-crouched by the backseat, steady and unhurried, guiding Luka into his booster seat. Her husband tugged the strap flat where it had twisted, fingers working with practiced ease. Luka squirmed, only mildly resistant, more interested in the small, brightly colored toy clutched in his hands—the promised reward for being brave. He turned it over, pressing at its buttons, absorbed in the soft clicks and flickers of light. “Arms up,” David said mildly. Luka obeyed without looking. “It does this,” he announced, pressing something that made it whirr. “And this.” “Very impressive,” David murmured, fastening the buckle with a firm, practiced click. Yuna watched for a moment longer than she meant to, something quiet and fragile holding her there before she stepped closer. “Sweetheart,” she called. Luka’s head lifted immediately, his attention snapping toward her, the toy forgotten mid- motion. He recognized the word at once—eagerly, instinctively—something familiar, something that belonged to love, that meant something good would follow. She glanced down at her hands without thinking—dry, clean—then rested one lightly against the edge of the door. “Honey,” she said, gentler now, “did you understand what Dr. Plouffe did today? Why it was important for you to see her?” Her grandson shrugged, one shoulder hitching as his fingers drifted toward his chin. “She’s a doctor… and doctors help, right?” he said, the last word lifting uncertainly. He hesitated, then added more quietly, “Miss Plouffe said I’m kind of different. Is she gonna help me not be like that?” Different. She had always hated that word. Even when it was meant kindly. Even when it was true. It echoed too easily, too clearly—her own voice, years ago, softened into something she had believed was gentle. You’re just not like the other little boys, Shane. You’re special. But children did not hear the difference. Not really. Special and different both carried the same quiet distance. The same sense of being set apart, of being looked at instead of simply known. Yuna would not make that mistake again. “Luka, look at me,” she said softly, reaching out to tip his chin upward when his gaze slipped away. It was brief—just enough for their eyes to meet before his attention drifted again—but she didn’t hold him there. Didn’t press, didn’t insist. The not-looking, the fidgeting—those, too, were part of him. Part of the way he moved through the world. Even if they weren’t the brown eyes she should have learned to understand first, all those years ago. It was fine. None of that needed fixing. Not anymore. Luka blinked up at her, attentive for that small, passing moment. It was enough. “It means,” she began, slower this time, choosing each word with care, “that your brain works in its own way. Sometimes that way is a little different from how other people’s brains work.” Luka’s brow creased slightly. “Different how?” “Like… sometimes you might notice things other people don’t notice,” Yuna said. Her thoughts caught, unbidden—of Shane as a child, ripping up drawings, holding his breath until his cheeks turned red, saying Mom, I really tried when it should have been her trying first. “Or you might think about things in a way that makes perfect sense to you,” she continued, gentler now, “but other people need a little help to understand.” He watched her closely now, the toy lying forgotten in his lap. “And sometimes,” she added, softer, "it also means there might be things that feel harder sometimes. Like knowing what someone means, or figuring out what to say, or sitting still when your body doesn’t want to. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do them. It just means your way there might look a little different." Luka’s fingers curled slightly into the edge of his seatbelt. “But that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you,” Yuna said at once, the words coming with a clarity she did not second-guess this time. Not every regret was given the chance to be answered. She would not miss this one. “It means your way is your own, Luka—the way you think, the way you feel, the way you notice things. All of it belongs to you. And sometimes people won’t understand it right away. They might need things explained differently. They might need more time. But that’s not because you’re wrong.” Her hand rested lightly against the side of his seat, close enough to be there, not insisting. “It just means they haven’t learned how to understand you yet,” she explained, softer now. “And they can. They’re supposed to.” Her grandson was quiet for a moment, thinking, the sounds of the street drifting around them. “ “And I’ll have it forever?” he asked, his head tilting back. Yuna swallowed, setting something into place inside herself. Then she smiled—not to soften it, not to make it easier to hear, but because it was true, and she was finally letting it be. “Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s part of who you are. You’ll be Luka forever.” He considered that, his face tightening in concentration—working it through carefully, the way he did—and then it eased. “That’s good,” he decided at last. “I like being Luka.” Something in Yuna’s chest gave way, loosening at last; the final tight thread unspooling into something softer she didn’t have to hold together anymore. “Oh, honey,” she said, a small, unguarded laugh slipping through—relief, and something deeper she didn’t try to name. “That’s perfect. It’s my favorite thing in the world, too. Do you want to know why?” Her grandson looked at her, brown eyes wide and expectant. “Why?” “Because being Luka means being loved forever,” Yuna reminded him. She reached out then, smoothing a stray piece of hair back from his forehead, her thumb lingering. “Exactly as you are. There’s nothing you have to change for that. Nothing you have to fix first. It’s already true.” He held her gaze for a moment, as if turning her words over in his mind—not doubting, just finding a place for them among all the small, bright pieces that made him who he was. Then he broke into a grin—wide, certain, a little amused. “Of course, Babulechka,” Luka said, giggling softly. “What else would it mean?” Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!