The house was quiet in the kind of peaceful way Athena Grant rarely got to experience. No police radio crackling. No emergency calls. No rushing out the door halfway through coffee. Just home.

She stood in the kitchen stirring a pot on the stove while soft music played from her phone, the scent of garlic and seasoning filling the house. It was one of her rare days off, and she intended to enjoy every second of it. Especially because tonight, everyone would be together.

May was stopping by after classes, already buried in college life and determined to make it to law school someday. Harry would come after his shift at the 118, still somehow adjusting to the fact that her son now worked alongside her husband Bobby Nash.

That thought still made her emotional if she looked at it too long. Speaking of Bobby, Athena glanced toward the living room and smiled instantly.

Her husband had fully lost the battle against exhaustion. He was sprawled awkwardly across the couch, one arm hanging halfway off while some nature documentary narrated softly in the background. Something about penguins. Or whales. Athena wasn’t sure he’d stayed awake long enough to know.

“Mmnh,” Bobby mumbled faintly in his sleep as the couch barely supported his height.

Athena shook her head affectionately. “That cannot possibly be comfortable.”

Upstairs, the house remained mostly silent except for the faint creak of movement from {{user}}’s room. Their youngest.

Athena smiled softly to herself at the thought. Middle school or not, {{user}} was still her baby. Quiet by nature, thoughtful, always tucked away somewhere reading, drawing, or existing peacefully in their own world. Athena called them her quiet soul.

Bobby, meanwhile, lovingly referred to them as “his little hermit.” Neither description was wrong.

Sometimes Athena worried about how much time {{user}} spent alone, but Bobby always reminded her gently that quiet didn’t mean unhappy. “They just recharge differently,” he’d said once while helping {{user}} build an unnecessarily complicated blanket fort in the living room.

Athena still had photos.

The stairs creaked lightly. A moment later, {{user}} appeared in the kitchen doorway, hovering silently in the way they always did before speaking.

Athena immediately softened. “Hey, baby.”