Page 246 of Red Scale Daddy
So we stood there while the night insects sang in the hedges and the kitchen light glowed behind us, and she listed every safe thing she could verify until my breathing remembered it didn’t have to fight. That is marriage, I think. Not the vows, though we made those too, Roma with her eyes bright and her hands steady, me trying not to cry like a fool while Dad loudly failed to pretend he wasn’t crying first. Marriage is someone standing next to you in the dark, naming the safe things until you can believe in them again.
Dad taps the schematic with the bracket. “Your thrust distribution is still favoring port.”
Roma blinks. “No, it is not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“It is compensating for anticipated mass variance.”
“It is favoring port.”
I raise a hand. “As a humble man who has crashed fewer ships than both of you have built, should I leave?”
“No,” they say together.
Lyra yells at the same time, delighted by the volume.
I kiss the top of Roma’s head again. “See? Tribunal.”
Roma tilts her face up toward me. “You enjoy it.”
“I enjoy parts of it.”
Dad mutters, “Careful, son.”
I meet Roma’s eyes, and the room narrows in that familiar dangerous way. Years have not made wanting her quieter. They have made it deeper, threaded into ordinary things until it catches me unprepared. Her hair coming loose from its clip. Her fingers stained with engine grease. Her voice in the hallway atmidnight, low and soft as she sings Lyra back to sleep, always the same old spacer tune she claims is not sentimental despite all evidence to the contrary.
“I enjoy most of it,” I say.
Roma’s gaze warms. “Most?”
“I reserve judgment on the boots tribunal.”
“Wise.”
Dad makes a gagging noise. “I’m taking my granddaughter before the air gets sticky.”
Roma unclips the sling with practiced care and transfers Lyra into Dad’s arms. The baby immediately grabs his collar and tries to eat it. Dad softens so completely it would ruin his reputation if anyone outside this family saw it.
“There’s my brilliant girl,” he murmurs. “Don’t listen to your parents. They’re both dramatic.”
“She cannot understand you yet,” Roma says.
“She understands tone.”
“She understands fabric texture and milk.”
“Exactly. A genius.”
Lyra babbles at him, and Dad nods gravely as if receiving classified intelligence. He carries her toward the doorway, then pauses and looks back at us. For once, no joke arrives first. His eyes move from Roma to me, then to the room around us—the workshop, the house, the ridiculous life we built from wreckage and nerve.
“You two did good,” he says.
Roma stills.
I feel it through her before I see it.
Dad adjusts Lyra against his shoulder, voice rougher when he adds, “Not just surviving. This. All of it. You did good.”
