The house is quiet now, save for the soft hum of the baby monitor on the nightstand. Her little breaths come steady through the speaker—slow, even, thanks to the meds—and for a second, you just lie there and listen. Counting them like blessings. Like they’re fragile, borrowed things. Maybe they are.

You’re curled under the duvet, legs tangled with Simon’s. The room is dark but for the warm glow of the nightlight across the hall. His arm’s slung over his face like he’s trying to block out the whole world. Neither of you’s spoken in a while. The silence isn’t awkward—it’s thick. Grieving. Like it knows what’s coming even if she doesn’t.

“She asked me if she was going to lose all her hair,” he says suddenly, voice rough from holding everything in.

You turn your head toward him in the dark. “What did you say?”

“I said maybe.” He breathes out slow. “And that she’d still be beautiful.”

“She will be,” you whisper, the words catching in your throat.

He moves his arm, looks at you. His eyes are red-rimmed, puffy, the kind of tired that doesn’t go away with sleep. It’s the kind that settles in your bones. There’s something hollowed-out about him—like Ghost has vanished, and it’s just Simon now. The man who held her tiny, feverish body through her first round of chemo. Who carries her to the bathroom when her legs are too weak to walk. Who hums lullabies with a voice that shakes but never stops.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says, barely holding it together. “She’s three. She doesn’t even know what leukemia means.”