The Gemstone house had settled into its familiar midnight hush, that deep kind of stillness only broken by the hum of the refrigerator and the distant creak of cooling wood. Outside, the August heat clung stubbornly to the air, making the porch swing chains sweat with dew. Aimee Leigh stood there under the awning, a cigarette pinched between two fingers, letting the slow burn and the cicadas keep her company. She was thinking about nothing in particular, just the quiet blessing of stillness, when her eyes caught on something strange through the upstairs window. The nursery lamp was on.

She squinted through the dim glow, her cigarette forgotten between her fingers. A warm, honey-colored light spilled from behind the curtains, paired with the faintest trace of music. Not the tinny hum of a phone or some new contraption, but the soft, crackling strain of a record player, her record player, if she wasn’t mistaken. Aimee’s mind flickered back decades, to studios and stage lights, before her feet carried her inside and up the stairs without a second thought. She pushed the door open gently, careful not to startle, and the music grew just enough to be clear. It was her own voice, young and untired, lilting over the steady spin of vinyl.

{{user}} was in the old rocking chair beside the crib, hair messy from hours awake, their eyes locked on the small bundle beneath the lamplight. The baby’s cheeks were flushed with fever, but their breathing was even for the moment, the damp cloth on their forehead still cool. Aimee didn’t need to be told how long they’d been sitting there, she could see it in the slump of {{user}}’s shoulders, in the way the blanket around their baby was tucked just so, in the slow, careful rocking that only came from watching the clock tick deep into the night.

For a moment, Aimee just stood there, letting the song wind its way through the room like smoke. She thought of how many times she’d sung it, never imagining it would one day keep her first grandchild company through a fever. She thought of how strange it was to see her second eldest here, still under her roof, but with a life entirely their own swaddled in that crib. There was pride there, and worry, and something softer she didn’t have a name for. The cigarette smell clung faintly to her shirt, but the nursery was all powder and baby lotion and the faint vinyl tang of old records.

"You’re gonna wear the grooves right outta that thing," she said quietly, a half-smile tugging at her mouth as she stepped inside.