and closing against the tray in panicked little jerks.

A sippy cup lay on its side near the base of the island, and milk had spilled across the glossy floor in a white ribbon.

Opposite them stood Lillian Cross, Adrian’s new wife, holding a dish towel in one hand.

Her posture was rigid, her face set in a hardness he had never seen so clearly before.

“Look at this mess,” Lillian said, her voice low and sharp.

“Do you know how expensive this flooring is?”

She was looking at Harper, not at the crying baby.

That detail struck Adrian first.

Not the milk.

Not the towel.

Not the irritation.

The direction of it.

Harper’s chin was quivering, but she did not step aside.

She kept herself between Lillian and Miles as if instinct had pushed her there before thought had time to catch up.

“It was my fault,” she whispered.

“Please don’t be mad at him.”

Adrian stepped into the room.

He did not raise his voice, but the words landed hard enough to cut the air in half.

“Mad at who?”

Lillian turned.

For one suspended second her face stayed exactly as it had been, and in that one second Adrian saw more than he had ever allowed himself to see.

Irritation.

Contempt.

A flash of annoyance at being interrupted.

Then it vanished beneath surprise and practiced elegance.

“Adrian,” she said.

“You’re home early.

Harper spilled the cup and upset the baby.

I was handling it.”

But Harper was already moving.

The moment she heard her father’s voice, her courage collapsed into need.

She ran to him, wrapped both arms around his leg, and pressed her face into his coat as if contact alone could keep something terrible from happening.

Adrian bent at once, one hand on her hair, the other reaching for Miles.

Up close he noticed details that made his stomach turn.

Miles’s bottle sat on the counter, still full and untouched.

His dinner tray held smears of dried applesauce as if he had been sitting there longer than he should have been.

His cheeks were mottled from crying, and the skin beneath his eyes had the puffy look of a child exhausted past comfort.

Then Harper lifted her face.

Her eyes were too old.

There is no other way Adrian would later describe them.

No six-year-old should have looked at him with that mixture of hope and panic.

She glanced over her shoulder at Miles, then back at her father, and in a whisper so small Adrian nearly missed it, she said, “Daddy, please don’t leave again.”

Everything inside him went still.

He picked Miles up from the chair and settled the baby against his shoulder.

Miles clung immediately, curling into Adrian’s neck with the desperate relief of someone reaching safe ground after a long fright.

Adrian felt Harper’s fingers tighten around his hand.

Across the kitchen, Lillian exhaled impatiently.

“This is exactly what I mean,” she said.

“They get dramatic the second you walk in.

Harper knocked the cup over.

Miles started screaming.

I was trying to teach them not to turn every little thing into chaos.”

Adrian looked at her for a long moment.

“Where is Marisol?”

A pause.

Barely noticeable.

But it was there.

“I sent her home,” Lillian said.

“Too many people