a drawing of a whale, a loose tooth that had not yet fallen out but deserved daily updates.

Cassidy and Derek moved from occasional calls to a rhythm that felt less accidental.

Sometimes they sat on video after both girls were asleep, neither of them saying much, just sharing the company of someone who understood why silence could feel like work and relief at the same time.

The change in Derek became visible even to people who had known him before the loss.

His coworkers noticed he no longer flinched every time his phone buzzed from daycare.

The barista near his office stopped double-checking, with that particular look of concern, whether he was doing okay.

Helen told him during one call that Rosie’s face looked different now when she was in his arms.

‘She looks settled,’ Helen said.

Derek almost argued out of habit, then stopped.

She was right.

Rosie had begun falling asleep on his chest with one fist hooked in the collar of his shirt, trusting him with the full weight of her small body.

Eight months after the flight, Derek booked another ticket to Seattle.

This time it was not out of obligation.

Madison’s parents wanted to celebrate Rosie’s first birthday on the weekend before the actual day, and Derek wanted to go.

More than that, he wanted Rosie to know the people who loved her on both sides of grief.

He also sent Cassidy a message before he bought the tickets.

We’re flying in Saturday morning for cake, he wrote.

Harper and you free that afternoon? Cassidy replied in under a minute.

Harper says yes and wants to know if Rosie is old enough to appreciate sprinkles responsibly.

The airport felt different this time.

Derek still packed carefully, but the preparation no longer carried the feverish edge of superstition.

He fed Rosie at the gate, laughed when she dropped a cracker into his coffee, and boarded without his stomach turning to glass.

They were halfway through the flight when a sound from three rows ahead pulled him backward in time.

An infant had started crying—the relentless, escalating kind that turns heads.

Derek looked up and saw a young father in an aisle seat, maybe twenty-five, holding a baby girl against his shoulder with the rigid posture of someone trying to disappear while failing publicly.

The resemblance to his own face eight months earlier was so exact it made his chest ache.

The father bounced the baby too hard, then too lightly, then fumbled for a bottle with hands that were beginning to shake.

A woman across the aisle pressed her lips into a line.

Someone farther back sighed.

The father’s eyes went shiny with panic.

He whispered something into the baby’s hair that Derek could not hear but recognized anyway.

I’m trying.

I’m sorry.

Please.

Derek unbuckled before he had time to overthink it.

He crouched beside the row and kept his voice low so it stayed between them.

‘You’re not doing anything wrong,’ he said.

The young father looked at him the way drowning people look at shore.

Derek nodded toward the baby.

‘Want me to hold her for one minute while you breathe?’ The father hesitated, shame and instinct warring across his face.

Then he gave the smallest, most desperate nod Derek had ever