The church bell tolled six. The sound was soft, thick with dew and a weary holiness, but Charlie was already awake. He hadn’t slept. He never did, not anymore—not since the twins were born, not since the triplets began crawling, not since your breath began syncing with the infant cries at night like a whispered hymn.

Your breath still came slow, mouth slightly open, lashes twitching like reeds in wind. He watched you from the wooden chair beside the bed—your gold-colored blanket rising and falling. It clung to your hips like reverence, like a saint's robe on an altar before the sacraments.

Your skirts were folded at the foot of the bed, plain, proper. You were always neat, maddeningly neat. Even in chaos. Even in childbirth, he remembers—your hands trembling not from pain but from the unbearable wrongness of blood on your frock. He had kissed your palm then, slow, deliberate. A benediction. A promise.

He stood, careful not to wake you, and padded across the old wood floor. The twins—Christopher and John—stirred in the corner cradle. A string of rosary beads hung from the peg above their heads, and Charlie frowned at it. He reached up, removed it silently, and placed it instead in his coat pocket. You'd dropped it during a panic attack last week. He’d watched the beads clatter like bones across the floor and thought, Yes. Even saints panic.

The triplets were in the next room. Tegan was already chewing on the leg of her stuffed giraffe. Scott was drooling into his brother’s shirt. Alisha was biting her thumb, brow furrowed like her father’s. All three looked at him like confused apostles.

He lit the incense stick in the chipped holder. The church gave them that—the incense, the bread, the quarters. All relics of a faith Charlie no longer served. The smoke curled like his voice did when he murmured into your neck.

“Wake up, dove,” he said now, soft, over your shoulder. You flinched even in sleep—small, instinctive. Always did. That old fear in you. It thrilled him. It made him kneel.

You stirred, bleary. “What time is it?”

“Time for your yoga,” he said, brushing your hair back. “Your little communion with the sun. I’ll watch the triplets.”

“I didn’t brush my teeth.”

“I’ll kiss you anyway.”

“I haven’t brushed—”

But he kissed you. Open-mouthed, reverent, your breath sweet with sleep and something sacred. He didn’t press for more. Not yet. That would come later, like vespers.

The children began to wail in chorus. You groaned. “God—”

“No,” he said, rising. “Not anymore.”

He went to the corner and hoisted Scott to his chest. The boy looked at him with wide, watery eyes and gurgled. Charlie kissed his forehead, marked him like he would mark a congregation. You had given him this. This chaos. This temple of flesh and small, sacred screams.

Outside, the komodo dragon scraped against its cage. A beast named Magdalene. You’d picked the name. “She’s misunderstood,” you’d said. “She wants warmth. Don’t we all?”

Charlie opened the window a little. Let the morning pour in like wine in a chalice. Sunlight gold as your favorite color.

You shuffled past him in your long frock, hair tied back, yawning. “Don’t let Alisha eat crayons again.”

“No promises.”

You stretched on the mat beside the window. The fabric of your skirt clung tight as you folded forward. He watched. Always watched. A theologian of your every movement. The sound of children, incense, and your sighs—it was liturgy. It was the closest thing he had to heaven.

He should have left the Church. But you had made it unnecessary. You were his church now. His gospel of gold and sweat and five noisy disciples in diapers.

He whispered a silent prayer:

Let me stay damned if it means I get to wake beside her. Let me rot in this sanctified ruin, so long as she never leaves it.

And as the komodo dragon thumped in rhythm with the cries of your youngest sons, he smiled—tired, blasphemous, utterly blessed. As the children quiten down, he crossed to your and his room to watch you do yoga.