0004. Four Years Too Late

ALICE’S POV

The days that followed had a rhythm I didn’t trust.

Benjamin came every morning. He actually sat at the table — something I still hadn’t gotten used to — and ate whatever I put in front of him. He returned every evening and stayed until Lucian’s eyes drifted shut.

Four mornings in a row, I set his coffee on the table and waited. Each time, I told myself I wasn’t waiting. Each time, I was wrong.

He read bedtime stories, chased Lucian around the yard, and one Saturday morning he attempted pancakes. The effort ended with flour in his hair and Lucian laughing so hard he hiccupped. I stood in the kitchen doorway, dish towel twisted in my hands, and watched.

Lucian’s allergy medicine was still on the counter. The laundry was running. I needed to call the healer before noon. I ran through the mental list while I watched them — because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t reaching toward what I was looking at.

Benjamin’s phone rang constantly all week. Lisa’s name flashed across the screen every time. He stopped answering. I noticed. I didn’t say anything.

~~~~

The hike was Lucian’s idea.

He’d found a trail map in the library and spent an entire week planning it, drawing his own version in crayon with landmarks labeled in large, determined letters: Big Rock. Fairy Tree. Secret Waterfall. The doctors had cleared gentle exercise as long as we didn’t push too hard. We had no reason to say no.

The trail wound through the forest at the edge of pack territory. The air was cool and clean, sunlight filtering through the leaves in broken golden pieces. Lucian walked between us the whole way, narrating everything — every bird, every squirrel, every cloud that looked like something else.

“Is that one a wolf?” He pointed at the sky. “A big one.”

“Definitely a wolf,” Benjamin said. “Might be your spirit animal.”

“I have a spirit animal?”

“Every wolf does. Even the small ones.”

Lucian considered this with the grave seriousness he brought to everything. “What’s yours, Daddy?”

“Also a wolf.”

“That’s boring. You can’t both be wolves.” He turned to me. “Mommy?”

“A bear,” I said. “A mama bear.”

“That’s perfect.” He took my hand and swung it once, decided. “You’re our mama bear.”

I kept my eyes on the trail ahead.

The path grew steeper. Lucian’s color shifted — a worrying grey tinge rising in his cheeks as his breathing grew labored.

“My legs are tired,” he said, “but I’m not stopping. The fairy tree is close.”

“We can rest.”

“I don’t want to rest.”

He had Benjamin’s jaw when he set it like that — the same stubborn line.

We kept moving. I stayed close, one hand hovering near his back, ready to catch him if he faltered.

I was watching him when my foot caught on a root.

The ground tilted. I threw myself sideways — away from Lucian — but strong arms closed around my waist, a solid wall of chest stopping my fall.

I looked up.

Benjamin’s face was inches from mine. His grip was firm. His eyes were dark, and for once I couldn’t read what was in them. Neither of us moved.

I could feel his heartbeat against my back. Or maybe it was mine. I couldn’t tell them apart anymore.

“Careful,” he said. The word came out rough, scraped raw.

My chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with falling.

“Mommy, you’re squishing me!”

Lucian’s voice shattered the moment. I pulled away too fast and nearly stumbled again. Benjamin’s hands dropped from my waist the instant I stepped back. Lucian was giggling, completely unbothered.

“Daddy caught you like a princess!”

“I tripped,” I said quickly. “It was an accident.”

Benjamin’s expression had already shuttered. Whatever had been in his eyes was gone.

“Always finding a way, aren’t you, Alice?”

It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation he’d been holding onto.

I met his gaze and took one steady breath.

“I tripped on a root,” I said evenly. “That’s what happened.”

I took Lucian’s hand and kept walking.

Benjamin was cold for the rest of the hike — warm and easy with Lucian in a way I’d rarely seen in the early years, but ice with me. I put one foot in front of the other and asked for nothing else.

We found the fairy tree at the top: a massive oak with a hollowed trunk wrapped in ribbons and wind chimes, the kind of magic that took years to accumulate. The look on Lucian’s face made the entire hike worth it.

He pressed his palm to the bark and squeezed his eyes shut so tightly his whole face scrunched.

I made a wish too. I didn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t stop watching him.

Please. Let the research be enough. Let him have time. Please don’t take my boy.

Lucian opened his eyes, shining with excitement.

“I’m not telling,” he announced. “If you tell, it doesn’t count.”

“Sound logic,” Benjamin said, warmth back in his voice now that Lucian was looking at him. “Secrets worth keeping stay kept.”

On the way back down, Lucian fell asleep against Benjamin’s shoulder before we’d gone a quarter mile. Benjamin carried him the rest of the way — carefully, as if he might break if he stopped paying attention.

Four years.

For four years, this man had walked past his own son without really seeing him.

I didn’t know whether to feel grateful or furious. I was both — all of it at once — and I had nowhere to put any of it.

Benjamin left after dinner. Pack business, he said, his voice already distant before the words were fully out. I stood at the kitchen sink and ran the hot water until the pressure in my chest stopped trying to become something specific.

I’d loved him once. Before the night that destroyed us. Before he started looking at me like I was something done to him.

The thing I’d been managing for four years wasn’t the absence of love. Standing there with the ghost of his heartbeat still pressed against my back, I finally understood. It was the presence of it — something I couldn’t afford and couldn’t kill, sitting inside my chest like a coal that refused to go out no matter how careful I was.

It didn’t matter.

I tucked Lucian in at bedtime. He stirred when I kissed his forehead.

“Mommy.” His small hand found mine in the dark. “Today was the best day.”

“I know, baby.”

“Don’t tell Daddy.” A long pause, sleep already pulling him under. “That was my wish. More days like today.”

I sat there until his breathing evened out.

More days like today.

He didn’t know that in twenty-three days, I was going to sign the papers and leave. That whatever he thought we were as a family had only ever been obligation dressed up as normal. He’d never been told any of it. He just wanted more days like this.

And I was the one who was going to end them.