Page 91 of Smoke Signals

He freezes again.

The wind moves through the trees above us, and Hartley looks from the house to the yard and then back at me.

33

HARTLEY

I don’t answer him right away.

Move in with me.

The words stay suspended in the air between us, steady and impossible to ignore.

Stellan doesn’t rush me. He just stands there with his hands loose at his sides, watching my face like he’s trying not to push too hard and failing to hide how much this matters to him.

I turn to head back into the house and he follows; we pause, staring at one another in the kitchen. I look past him, because looking at him directly feels like too much right now.

The backyard stretches wide behind him through the window. Grass, fence line, and the first hints of shade from the trees beyond it.

The sink is bigger than mine, the counters are wider, and there’s space for dishes.

My chest tightens.

Not because I don’t want it.

Because I do.

Alaska comes running back into the kitchen, breathless and bright, a burst of movement and grabs my hand with both of hers. She points down the hallway, then toward the stairs, then back outside, her face lit up in a way I haven't seen a whole lot.

She likes it. Of course she does.

There’s room here to be loud, to run…room to just breathe.

I swallow hard.

Stellan crouches to her level. “You finding good stuff?” he asks.

She nods so hard her hair bounces, then points toward the back window again and then presses herself against my side.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I saw the yard too.”

Home isn’t just walls. It’s where she feels safe enough to run ahead of me.

“I need a minute,” I say.

Stellan nods immediately. “Okay.”

He doesn’t follow when I step out onto the back porch. He doesn’t ask what I’m thinking. He just stays inside with Alaska, giving me the space.

The porch boards creak under my weight when I lean against the railing. The yard stretches out in front of me; broad, quiet, and almost too open after a year of sidewalks, alleyways and traffic outside my windows at all hours. A bird cuts across the sky above the trees. Somewhere far off a dog barks.

I close my eyes.

Lance comes back the way he always does when I’m standing at the edge of something that matters. Not as a body in a hospital room this time, or as the call that changed everything. Just Lance alive and laughing, one boot half untied, standing in the kitchen with Alaska on his hip while he steals food from whatever pot I had on the stove.

You worry too much, Hart, he’d say in that easy, teasing voice he always used when he thought I was taking life too seriously.

Maybe I do.