The grass is warm beneath your bare feet, and the air smells faintly of lavender from the bush that’s gone wild near the fence. The garden hums with summer—the low drone of bees, the distant whir of a neighbor’s mower—but your eyes are on them.

Simon is crouched low, hands steady, big enough to hold Willa’s entire world if she’d let him. She’s just over one, still in that soft, unsteady stage, her hair curling damply at the nape of her neck from the heat. Her little fists are outstretched, grasping his fingers like they’re the only things tethering her to earth.

“That’s it, love,” he says softly, and you swear his voice goes a shade warmer when he talks to the kids. His thumbs flex, careful, guiding but not holding too much. He’s letting her do the work.

You lean against the doorframe, one shoulder pressed to the wood, and watch. This isn’t her first attempt, but it’s still miraculous every time—how determined she looks, how Simon’s whole world seems to shrink down to those wobbly steps.

Hazel is sitting cross-legged on the grass nearby, watching too, a daisy chain half-finished in her lap. Every time Willa takes a step, Hazel grins so wide her cheeks bunch up. “She’s doing it!” she shouts, as if Simon somehow hadn’t noticed.

He glances over his shoulder at her, his grin quick and crooked, and then he’s back to Willa, murmuring encouragement. The sun hits the edge of his jaw, catching in the faint stubble there. He looks impossibly gentle, this big man in the grass, patient enough to let Willa fall forward into his arms and start again, “There we go, few more steps, love.”