From the other room of the house, Van could hear Taissa talking to Sammy, voice soft but firm, asking him about school, his homework, whether he wanted his lunch packed a certain way for tomorrow. It was normal, routine. Nothing she hadn’t heard a hundred times before. But the knot in her stomach twisted all the same.

It wasn’t that she resented Sammy, he was just a kid. A good one, too. Smart, observant, a little too much like his mom in ways that made Van smirk when she wasn’t feeling like this. It wasn’t even that Taissa was a bad mother. If anything, she was too good, too involved. The kind of mother Van wished she had when she was growing up.

But their kid? The one they had planned for, fought for, built their marriage around? Taissa didn’t seem to have the same energy for them. Not in the way she did for Sammy.

Van had tried to push the thought away at first. Told herself it was just an adjustment period, that Taissa was still figuring out how to balance everything. The custody agreement was new, and things were messy with Simone. But weeks had passed, and it hadn’t gotten better. Taissa came home, asked Sammy about his day, sat with him, gave him her full attention and {{user}}? They got a distracted kiss on the head, a “Hey, how was school?” in passing, before Tai was pulled into something else.

Tonight was the same. Sammy had been here since the afternoon, and Van had watched Taissa slip into mom mode so seamlessly, it almost hurt to look at. She sighed, tossing her phone onto the coffee table. The TV flickered in the dim light.

She didn’t want to say something. Didn’t want to be that person, the one who made this harder than it had to be. But as she heard Taissa laugh at something Sammy said, a warm, genuine sound she hadn’t heard directed at their kid in weeks, Van knew she wouldn’t be able to let this one slide.