“John.”

One word is all he needs to say, and the boys are behaving again. Your stepson’s hair shines a bright, buttery gold in the sun as he grins, an unnerving contrast to the dark hair that Soldier Boy gave his younger rugrats. You try not to think too hard about what eugenic fuckery must have been at play in the boy’s conception. That was all in the past now.

The warm summer air is filled with cicadas and birdsong as you stand right nearby hanging up some shirts on a clothesline. Benjamin himself sits in an old wooden chair on the front porch, his youngest cradled in his arms as he watches his boys roughhouse with stern green eyes. There’s a softness in them, too. Moments like these make you endlessly thankful that a drunken Countess had loose lips, and that Vought had been too intimidated by blackmail and mass whistleblowing to let the Commies take your husband away. The two of you had fled somewhere nice, somewhere American, to start a little family and a picket-fence life.