Chapter 2
Athena
10th June
The group chat had been going off for the past twenty minutes, her phone vibrating in lazy intervals across the kitchen counter while she tried to enjoy a quiet moment with her morning coffee.
Bobby was outside fiddling with the new herb garden he had convinced Buck to plant for them. Athena didn’t mind—it gave her a moment to herself, listening to the low hum of morning radio and the rustle of wind in the lemon trees just beyond the window.
She finally picked up her phone, unlocking it with her thumb. The screen lit up in a flood of messages:
Hen:
So, Karen and I saw this amazing cocktail thing on TikTok—
Karen:
Correction: she saw it, and now we own six types of bitters and a cocktail shaker.
Hen:
It’s called the Dragon’s Breath Margarita. It smokes. It bubbles. It glows.
Sue me, Mara is getting into dragons thanks to Jee
Chimney:
So I should just bring beer.
Hen:
Your palate is a crime against flavor.
Bobby:
Speaking of crimes, I’m experimenting with a new marinade for the ribs. Don’t let Chimney near it. He’ll add strawberry puree or something.
Chimney:
One time. I add one sweet element ONE TIME and I’m banned for life.
Jennifer:
Jee wants to know if Uncle Buck will be there to play dragons with her. She’s also made a new tiara for him.
Athena smiled at that one. She could already hear Buck’s resigned laugh as he let himself be styled into royalty by a four-year-old dictator. He’d wear the tiara. He always wore the tiara.
But his name sitting there, unanswered, made her pause.
She scrolled up through the earlier texts—there it was again. The subtle absence. A few emojis here and there the past few days. A “can’t make it tonight” last week. A “looks great!” in response to Karen’s cake photos. But nothing substantial. He hadn’t actually said anything in almost two weeks.
Just enough to not raise alarms.
But she saw it.
She always did.
Chimney:
Maybe Buck’s going full Buck 1.0 again. You remember that? Always out, always charming someone new, never turned up to anything.
I miss his slut era
Hen:
Remember his probie year, he showed up to your birthday party with a bruised collarbone and a stranger’s number in his shoe.
Chimney:
The legend.
Athena frowned. She tapped out of the group thread and opened a private message.
Athena:
Hey, sweetheart. Just checking in. You’ve been a little quiet lately. Everything okay?
She left the message and sipped her coffee, tapping her nails absently against the mug.
A few minutes later, her phone buzzed.
Buck:
Hey Athena. Yeah, I’m fine. Just… been kinda busy lately. Work’s been a lot.
And yeah. Eddie leaving has been rough. I didn’t think it’d hit me like this, but I’m managing. Promise.
Athena:
“Managing” isn’t the same as “okay,” baby.
There was a long pause. The little “typing…” bubble appeared, disappeared. Came back. Disappeared again.
Buck:
I know. I’m not trying to shut everyone out. I just… I don’t want to bring the mood down.
Therapy’s helping. It just wipes me out sometimes. I’ll come on Saturday, though. Jee gets her dragon.
Athena’s heart pulled tight in her chest.
Athena:
She’ll be thrilled. Apparently, she’s been trying to teach Mara how to knight people with a spatula.
You’re allowed to bring your whole self, you know. The tired parts, too. We love all of you, not just the version who makes everyone laugh.
Buck:
Thanks, Mama. Really. That means more than I can say.
She didn’t reply immediately. She sat there for a moment, watching the screen, wishing she could reach through it and ruffle his hair like she used to when he first joined the firehouse. So much heart in that boy. So much weight on his shoulders that no one seemed to see.
Back in the group chat, Hen was now arguing with Chimney about which skewers were superior—metal or bamboo—and Jennifer was threatening to show up with tofu dogs just to watch the chaos.
Athena scrolled up once more and reread Jennifer’s message.
Jee wants to know if Uncle Buck will be there to play dragons with her this time.
He’d be there. She didn’t doubt it.
But Athena also knew this: showing up wasn’t the same as being okay.
Karen
11th June
The soft hush of the late afternoon settled over the nursery like a blanket. Sunlight spilled through the half-drawn curtains, dust motes drifting lazily in the golden light. The room smelled faintly of lavender detergent and fresh paint—cozy and expectant.
Karen sat cross-legged on the thick cream rug, sorting folded onesies into stacks according to size. The clothes were all impossibly tiny, patterned with sleepy moons, giraffes, and pale-yellow ducks. She held one up—mint green with a little embroidered elephant—and smiled absently. It was hard to believe that a human could be small enough to wear something so delicate. She certainly doesn’t remember Denny ever being this small.
Across from her, Jennifer eased herself down into the rocking chair with a soft grunt, one hand instinctively braced against her belly. She moved slower now, each motion deliberate, the tired kind of graceful that came from carrying another life.
“Almost there,” Jennifer said, exhaling as she settled. “Feels like it’s dragged on forever, but also like it’s sneaking up on me.”
“You’re in the home stretch,” Karen said warmly.
Jennifer chuckled, fingers absently rubbing slow circles along the side of her stomach. “I remember doing all this for Jee. I oscillated between being totally calm, then suddenly I was a wreck—over-preparing, overthinking… In the end, I think I bought eight different types of baby bottle, and 3 different brands of formula. Buck helped a bit with things last time, and he was always checking in to see if he could do more.”
Karen smiled at that, pausing to smooth a romper against her knee. “That sounds like him. Has Uncle Buck been around to help out this time?”
She glanced up as she asked the question, expecting to see warm smiles or maybe fond agreement. Instead, there was a beat of silence—just a heartbeat too long.
Chimney, crouched over the half-assembled crib in the corner, glanced up with a smirk before Jennifer could answer. “Oh, he didn’t really help much last time.”
Hen, seated nearby with parts of the changing table spread around her, let out a laugh, eyes crinkling with amusement.
Chimney leaned back on his heels, picking up the manual. “Unless you count how he babyproofed the upper cabinets and windows last time. Like Jee was gonna Spider-Man her way up there before she could even walk.”
Hen chimed in between bolts, grinning. “Don’t forget the outlet covers in the bathroom. And he locked the junk drawer, for crying out loud.”
Karen let out a quiet laugh, more out of politeness than anything else, though it faltered at the edges. She caught the look that passed between Hen and Chimney—this shared glance, smug and self-satisfied, riding that line between harmless teasing and something a little more biting.
Jennifer shook her head with a soft smile, resting one hand on her bump. “He meant well. He just… gets a little overprotective. That’s Buck.”
“Well,” Chimney said, reaching for another piece of the crib with a stretch and groan, “he’s been moping around like a kicked puppy since Eddie left. Probably wouldn’t notice if we installed a trampoline on the roof.”
That made Hen snort with laughter, and Karen felt it—that quiet internal pull, a tightening in her chest.
She set down the onesie she was folding, smoothing the fabric slowly with her palms.
“I haven’t seen him around much,” she said, keeping her tone neutral, curious rather than confrontational. “Have you not asked him to help this time?”
Jennifer hesitated. It was subtle—a flicker of her eyes downward, the slight stiffening of her shoulders.
“He seems… busy these days,” she said, brushing a thumb along the seam of a blanket. “I figured he’d let us know if he wanted to be involved.”
Karen didn’t reply right away. The gentle creak of a bolt turning and the rustling of tissue paper around baby clothes filled the pause. But her mind was spinning, threading the pieces together.
Buck, who took his role as uncle more seriously than most take parenthood. Buck, who’d she knew had once tested every single corner protector on Jennifer’s coffee table to make sure they wouldn’t fall off. Buck, who now hadn’t even been invited to help put the crib together.
She pressed her lips together, swallowing the weight that had settled in her throat.
She didn’t believe that was the full story. Not when she'd seen how Buck had been slowly withdrawing over the past few months. How his text replies were more clipped, how he’d stopped coming around on Sundays. Not when Lily had told her that he’d been especially quiet lately. Not when she'd seen the crocheted matching baby blanket and hat set sitting in a bag at his house that he’d never given to anyone.
She glanced up, catching the tail end of a shared chuckle between Chimney and Hen as they continued piecing the furniture together.
“I’m sure when this baby comes, Buck will be under our feet…again. Sometimes he seems to have the unerring inability to know when he isn’t wanted.” Chimney muttered under his breathe.
Karen didn’t respond right away. Instead, she looked at the pile of tiny clothes and imagined Buck folding them with his sleeves rolled up and that soft, earnest smile on his face. She pictured him climbing up on counters to check cabinet latches, crawling around on the floor to make sure nothing sharp was within reach. Taking it all too seriously. Loving too hard.
And now—absent.
Karen pressed her lips together.
Busy, huh?
She didn’t call them out. Not yet. But the warm nursery suddenly felt colder. And as the others fell back into conversation, Karen kept folding clothes with slow, deliberate care—and said nothing.
But she’d noticed.
And she wasn’t about to forget.