The next week, Robert arrived with a ridiculous stuffed giraffe almost as tall as the crib.
Marisol approved.
“He’s learning.”
Robert and Logan were learning too.
They started having breakfast together twice a month.
Their conversations did not always go well.
Sometimes Logan returned frustrated.
Sometimes Robert became defensive.
But neither disappeared afterward.
That was progress.
One Sunday afternoon, I found them assembling a bookshelf in Logan’s apartment.
Robert was holding the instructions upside down.
“You’re a surgeon,” Logan said.
“I am not a carpenter.”
“It says Part A goes into Part B.”
“In medicine, letters are rarely this judgmental.”
I stood in the doorway laughing until they noticed me.
Logan looked embarrassed.
Robert pointed at him.
“He lost one of the screws.”
“I did not.”
“It rolled under the sofa.”
“That means temporarily misplaced.”
Ethan slept against my shoulder.
For a second, the scene before me felt impossibly ordinary.
