I sat before I laughed.
The movement pulled at the brace, and pain flashed through my right palm.
I set the stuffed wolf in my lap and waited for the spasm to pass.
Felix noticed.
His hand stopped above the kit.
He left the wolf and the brace untouched.
“Do you want me to hold the toy or the wall?” he asked.
“The wall. Quinn can hold the wolf.”
Quinn tucked the oversized animal under one arm and pointed at Felix with the authority the sign had given him.
“Uncle F holds here. Auntie E puts in the peg.”
Felix planted his right palm against the cardboard.
I guided the wooden peg through both layers with my left hand.
His sleeves were rolled again; a fleck of blue paper clung to the dark hair on his forearm.
I brushed it away before thinking.
He looked up.
For a moment neither of us watched the peg.
“The wall,” Quinn reminded him.
“You’re letting go.”
The wall held.
“Other side,” Quinn ordered.
We moved around the table.
Felix tried to fold the roof with one hand, misread the tab, and trapped his own sleeve inside the cardboard.
Quinn stared at him.
“You put yourself in jail.”
“Temporary containment.”
“By a box.”
“A badly designed box.”
I laughed before I could flatten the sound.
A real one, sharp enough that two parents at the next table looked over.
Felix’s eyes lifted to my face.
His smile came late.
He looked almost startled, as if laughter were a sound he had been guarding for and had never expected to hear.
Then the cardboard roof collapsed over his wrist.
I laughed again.
“This is a hostile structure,” he said.
Quinn climbed onto his knees.
“No. You’re bad at crafts.”
Felix accepted that verdict more quietly than he accepted most security reports.
The final tab required the base to stay flat while Quinn pushed the roof into place.
My right hand could not hold pressure.
Felix moved his hand toward the base, then waited.
“Hold it,” I said.
His palm went down beside my left one. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
Not over it.
Together we kept the floor square while Quinn forced the roof home.
The peg clicked.
The crooked den held.
Quinn wrote TEAM QUINN on the paper flag.
Beneath it he added three uneven initials: Q.
E.
F.
“It needs all three,” he said.
I steadied the roof while he planted the flag.
Felix’s crooked sleeve was caught in the photograph Quinn insisted we take.
At the food stall he used his last token on one full-moon waffle and broke it into three pieces himself.
Syrup ran over his fingers.
He gave Felix the piece with the most powdered sugar.
Felix took one bite and went completely still.
“You hate sweet food,” I said.
“This is operationally excessive.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Quinn pushed the syrup bottle toward him.
“More?”
Felix looked at the child, the crooked den, and the sugar already coating his black sleeve.
“Apparently,” he said.
Powdered sugar had caught at the corner of Felix’s mouth.
I pointed to it.
He wiped the wrong side.
“Your other left.”
“I was trained under difficult conditions.”
I handed him a napkin, laughing.
When he smiled back, I forgot the people passing our table.
Noah passed the corridor with Ivy a step behind him.
A limited-edition wolf sat in his arms.
The first-place bag still hung on his shoulder.
He stopped dead when he saw the two ordinary baskets and the cheap wolf under my elbow.
He did not move for a long breath.
His gaze shifted to Quinn’s flag, Felix’s sugar-covered sleeve, and the smile still on my face.
The fear in his scent arrived before the tears.
He had not found me posing for a camera.
He had found a small life continuing without him.
Then he ran.
His face was wet before the first word came out.
“Come back!” he cried.
“You never laugh like that at home.”
I crouched until our eyes were level.
The limited wolf was crushed between his chest and my knee.
“I won’t live with Dad again,” I said.
“You could. We could all go. Aunt Ivy too.”
His arms locked harder around the toy.
He shook his head so hard his hair stuck to his tears.
“She has to stay too.”
I wiped a tear from the corner of his mouth.
My fingers remembered doing it with the hem of a breakfast towel.
“I know you want it all the way it was.”
“Please.”
“Noah, I can’t.”
I stayed crouched until he looked at me.
Then I eased my coat out of his fists and stood.
“Caleb. Take him.”
Caleb’s scent flooded the corridor with chaotic, suffocating pine—the smell of a wolf torn between the crying pup it had to protect and the mate it was watching walk away.
Felix stayed one full step back the entire time.
He did not answer for me.
He did not reach for Noah.
Caleb’s hand closed on Noah’s shoulder.
Noah still clutched the first-place backpack and the limited wolf as he was turned toward the exit.
At the last second he twisted, eyes locked on the second-prize ribbon on Quinn’s wrist.
I waited until Noah and his father reached the doors.
My hand was still damp from his tears.
Felix brought my bag over.
“Ready?”
Quinn was packing the crooked den into its box.
Beyond him, the food stall was washing syrup from the counter.
An ordinary afternoon was still waiting to be finished.
“Coffee,” I said.
Felix glanced toward the stall.
“Here?”
“Tomorrow. After my appointment. Somewhere you haven’t personally poisoned the machine.”
He looked at me, then smiled slowly.
“I know a place.”
On the way out, I asked him to send me the picture of the paper house.
He sent both pictures.
I saved the one with all three of us in it.