“You know you’re attached,” she remarked.
“To the dog?”
“To the whole situation.” She lifted one eyebrow. “You’re driving to the farmhouse twice a week, your kid is making holiday cards for a newborn who isn’t related to us, and there is dog fur on the sofa that you pretend to hate while buying specialized brushes for it.”
Ethan looked over at Ellie, who was asleep on the carpet with Ranger’s head across her knees. “It’s temporary,” he said weakly.
Nora snorted. “Everything is temporary. That doesn’t answer anything.”
What it answered, eventually, was that temporary can still be formative.
Hope’s first Christmas was modest and uneven and, in its way, beautiful. Chloe was still too raw for crowded family gatherings, so Jenna hosted a tiny dinner at the farmhouse with just the essential people: herself, Chloe, Hope, Noah for a cautious hour, Ethan, Ellie, Nora, and Ranger, who alternated between guarding the front door and lying under Hope’s bassinet. Snow came down late that evening in fine hard grains that clicked against the windows. Ellie insisted on reading a picture book aloud to Hope even though Hope slept through most of it. Chloe cried only once, quietly, when Jenna unwrapped a framed photograph of Thomas Bennett holding puppy-aged Ranger on a porch years before.
“Dad would have loved her,” Chloe said, looking at Hope.
Jenna touched her shoulder. “He would have loved you both.”