Chapter 9
Saturday morning arrived with a cool autumn rain drumming a steady, melancholic rhythm against the roof. Inside, the heavy tension that had gripped the house all week seemed to have shifted into a fragile, exhausted truce. Sarah had spent the previous evening talking late into the night with Elena at the kitchen table, their voices muffled and low, away from Arthur and the children. Whatever had passed between them in those midnight hours had changed the dynamic; Sarah was no longer hostile, though a deep, guarded sorrow remained etched in her eyes.
Arthur found himself standing in the hallway outside Leo’s temporary bedroom. The door was ajar. Inside, the eight-year-old boy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, carefully arranging a set of old, beat-up plastic toy soldiers that Arthur recognized with a jolt of nostalgia. They were the exact same brand of soldiers Arthur had played with in his own childhood bedroom before his world fell apart.
“Mind if I come in?” Arthur asked softly, knocking gently on the open door.
Leo looked up, his big hazel eyes assessing Arthur for a moment before he nodded. “These were yours, weren’t they?” the boy asked, holding up a green plastic sergeant with a missing rifle.
Arthur stepped into the room and sat down on the edge of the twin bed. “Yeah, they were. My uncle gave them to me when I was about your age. How did you know?”
“Mom kept them in the bottom of her trunk,” Leo said simply, turning the plastic figure over in his small hand. “She said you used to make up stories about them fighting dragons instead of other soldiers.”
A quiet chuckle escaped Arthur’s throat, thick with emotion. “I did. I hated the idea of them fighting each other. I always thought there should be enough room for everyone to win.”
“Life doesn’t work like that, though, does it?” Leo asked, looking up with a maturity that felt entirely misplaced in an eight-year-old face.
Arthur swallowed hard, feeling a lump form in his throat. “No, Leo. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we make mistakes, and people get hurt, and you spend years trying to fix things that can’t be un-broken.”
“Mom says you didn’t know about me,” Leo said quietly, his gaze dropping back to the toys. “She said if you knew, you would have come back.”
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“I would have,” Arthur swore, his voice fierce and steady. He reached out and placed his hand gently on Leo’s messy light brown hair. “I would have walked across the country barefoot to find you, Leo. I just... I didn’t know.”
Downstairs, the front door opened, and Sarah’s voice called out, breaking the heavy emotional current. The rain outside continued to fall, washing away the dust of the old world, leaving them standing in the damp, uncertain soil of a new beginning.
