Page 22 of About to Fall

“Nico.”

“I’m okay, maman. I promise.” I reached across the counter and squeezed her hand. “I’m not where I was. I’m doing the work. I have my therapy appointments, I’m taking my medication, I’m sleeping better.” Mostly true. True enough. “You don’t have to watch me like I’m going to break.”

“I’m your mother. Watching you is my job.”

“I know. But I need you to trust me too. We talked about this.”

She nodded slowly, picking up the knife again. “We trust you. We just love you more than we know what to do with sometimes.”

The guilt nearly undid me.

“Maman, I’m fine. Really. It’s been a good transition.”

She didn’t push. But I could see the effort it cost her, the words she was swallowing, the questions she was sitting on. This woman who had found her son at his lowest point and somehow managed to stand back up and keep going.

I wanted to tell her everything. Wanted to put my head in her lap the way I did when I was small and let her smooth my hair and promise that everything would be all right. But so much of my world was beyond even my own control, there was no use adding to her worry.

Margaux burst back into the kitchen wanting to show me a video of Captain on my mother’s phone. The first clip was her astride a giant black horse with light blue ribbons braided through its mane. She looked tiny and adorable in her little riding outfit and helmet.

She was loud. Demanding. Taking up every square inch of space in the room without a shred of self-consciousness. I watched her and felt something complicated twist in my chest.

I had been an only child until I was thirteen. For years before Margaux, my parents had tried for another baby. The miscarriages were never discussed openly but I'd known. I'd heard my mother crying behind closed doors. Seen my father's face go carefully blank at pregnancy announcements. Watched them orbit each other with the particular gentleness of two people holding a grief they couldn't put down.

And then, when I was twelve, my mother fell pregnant again. This time it held. But the pregnancy was brutal—bedrest for the last three months, two scares that sent her to the hospital, my father leaving work early every day with a look on his face I'd never seen before. Fear. Real, adult fear, the kind that my parents couldn’t completely shield me from.

That was when I learned to shrink.

Not on purpose. Not some conscious decision I could trace back to a specific moment. It was more like—I looked around and saw two people who were scared and hopeful and barely holding it together and I figured out that the most useful thing I could do was stop adding to the pile. Stop having problems. Stop asking for help. Stop demanding their attention. My parents were carrying something fragile and the best thing I could do was make sure they never had to carry me too.

So I did. I arranged to ride with Sabrina to practice. Théo’s mother dropped me off in the evening. Made my own meals when my father was at the hospital. Kept my grades up. Threw myself into skating with a focus that Renaud mistook for passion and rewarded accordingly.

And then Margaux arrived. Tiny and furious and needing everything, all the time. The newborn stage swallowed my parents whole. Then the toddler stage. Then the endless, joyful, exhausting reality of raising a small child while their older son quietly handled himself in the background.

By the time anyone thought to check on me, being easy wasn't something I did anymore. It was just who I was.

“Nico, you're not watching!” Margaux shoved the phone closer to my face. “This is the part where Captain trots!”

“I'm watching, I'm watching.”

She settled against me, satisfied, and I wrapped my arm around her and held her close. This fierce, loud, demanding little person who had never once in her life made herself small for anyone.

I hoped she never felt the need to.

“Uncle JP says I should try skating,” she said casually, scrolling for another video.

I looked up from the screen, brow furrowing but she was too busy watching the video play. “Do you want to try skating?”

“I don’t know. He says I’d be good at it.”

Of course he did. Of course my uncle was already scouting his next project. This Fontaine was defective so on to the next.

“You’d be good at anything,” I said, keeping my voice light. “You’re already great at tennis and riding. Coach Sarah said you could do a tournament in the spring, right?”

“Yeah.” She was already distracted by the next video. “And Captain did a jump yesterday. Like a real jump. It was so cool.”

“That’s way cooler than skating.”

“Way cooler,” she agreed and the moment slid past without incident.