Page 56 of Cinder
“Comforting.”
“Rhodes mostly keeps me on days when he can,” he says. “Seven to seven.”
“Your chief schedules around childcare?”
“He schedules around keeping his firefighters functional.” His mouth flattens. “And yeah, he knows I’ve got a five-year-old and a village I’m already abusing the hell out of.”
My chest softens a little at that. “That’s good of him.”
“It is.” He blows out a breath. “But it’s not perfect. If there’s a big call, I go back in. If we’re short, I pick up. Sometimes I get held over or end up on a double, and then I’m scrambling like everybody else.”
“So that’s where I come in?”
His eyes come back to mine. “That’s where consistency comes in. For Elle. The guest house is yours, but if I get held over or called back in overnight, the third bedroom’s there.”
“That makes sense,” I say quietly.
And it does. I get why he’s doing this. It’s not about me, it’s about protecting the space that belongs to him and Elle.
But I still feel the quiet pang of being set gently on the outside. It’s familiar enough that I breathe through it carefully, telling myself it’s just a boundary and not rejection. It simply means I’ll have to prove I can be trusted, that I can fit into something that already exists without shifting it too much, or breaking it.
I walk a slow circle through the space again, noticing the newer trim around the windows, the slightly different shade of paint compared to the main house.
“This was built more recently,” I say, brushing my hand along the edge of the kitchenette counter.
“It was.”
I turn to face him fully, my curiosity getting the better of me. “Did you build it?”
“Mostly. Had a few people help.”
“For what reason?”
There’s a small pause.
“For Stacey.”
“Elle’s mom?”
“Yeah.” He exhales quietly, eyes fixed briefly on a spot beyond me, like he’s gathering the right words. “She struggles with addiction. We moved here originally to get away from the crowd she ran with in the city, thought it might help her stay clean. And it did, for a while.”
I hold still, listening carefully, not wanting to interrupt.
“But when Elle was barely one, she went back to Toronto for a weekend and ended up swallowed back up by it. She, uhh, kept coming back every now and then, saying she was getting clean,” he continues. “Third time, I thought if she had a space that was hers, close enough but not in the house, maybe it’d help.”
I glance around the room again. “And did it?”
“No.”
The word lands without any softness wrapped around it.
“She relapsed,” he says. “Sold half the furniture I put in here, brought guys back from Neverland I didn’t know. It stopped being safe. She was never here for long, but still managed to trash the place. When I hired Miss Mabel, she helped me fix it up after.”
There’s no bitterness in his tone at all. The way he’s talking is almost like he’s repeating something he’s memorized that didn’t directly affect him. As though he’s said it enough times that the emotion has worn from it.
“I won’t have that around Elle,” he adds firmly, as though saying it aloud anchors it again for him.
“No,” I agree gently. “And it sounds like you gave her chances.”
