Page 273 of Wild Card 13

Oliver, from two feet away, nodded. “It’s okay.”

The toddler pressed the brake with one tiny shoe, then looked stunned by her own power. She smiled at me with frosting on her cheek.

Dottie licked the air hopefully.

“No,” Lucy said from behind me.

Dottie’s shoulders dropped.

I looked over my shoulder. “You didn’t even know what she was asking.”

“I know my dog.”

“Our dog of opportunity.”

Lucy froze. It was tiny. Half a second. A caught breath. A stillness around her mouth.

The word had slipped out with the kind of ease that belonged to another life. A kitchen life. A couch life. A life where Dottie’s fur was on my pants because Lucy and I had already stopped pretending I did not belong near the dog.

I stood slowly, giving her room to turn the moment into nothing if she needed to. “Your dog,” I corrected gently.

Lucy’s hand tightened on her glass. For one second, I thought I had ruined the whole fragile afternoon. Then she looked at Dottie, who had abandoned shame and was leaning her entire body against my shin. “She is not acting like my dog right now,” Lucy chuckled.

The relief moved through me so fast I almost laughed. “Shared custody pending review.”

Her eyes came back to mine. Something like wanting, buried under discipline. “I’ll take it under advisement,” she said.

Then she walked away before the sentence could become too much.

The afternoon loosened after that. People ate too much sugar. The kids ran laps around the yard until Reed declared a hydration break with the authority of a man who had parented through worse conditions. Freya made Bea put her feet up, then somehow got Alois to sit beside Bea instead of standing guard behind the chair like furniture with trauma. Bento returned to Alois’s lap and fell asleep there, apparently finished with his campaign of disruption.

Bobby sat on the grass near Alois’s chair, stick across his knees, talking to Reed’s oldest about tape jobs with the seriousness of a veteran equipment manager. Every few minutes, Alois looked down at him. Every few minutes, Bobby looked up like he already knew.

No big moment.

No speech.

No explanation.

Just a man who had made himself responsible without announcing it, and a kid who had learned to trust the shape of that responsibility.

I thought about the coffee deliveries. The hospital. The threshold of Lucy’s office. I had been trying to understand what showing up meant when nobody clapped for it.

Alois had understood it easily. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not softly. But steadily.

Lucy appeared beside me again near the shade of the maple tree where I had retreated with my second glass of lemonade and a cookie I had stolen before Marco could claim the last one.

We stood a few feet apart, watching Bea open gifts she was not allowed to lift. Rafa handled tissue paper like it contained state secrets. Ezra stood behind Lo with one hand at her back, his face openly soft now as Bea held up a tiny sweater and immediately pressed it to her mouth.

“It’s not my story to tell in the middle of a party.”

“I figured.”

Her shoulders lowered a little. “He matters to Alois.”

Lucy watched me for a long second. I did not know what she saw. I wanted to. Wanting had never been my problem.

“You’re different with kids,” she said.