Chapter 2: Forts and Ceilings

The girls were already building when I came through the door.

Sophie had a blanket over her shoulders and head like a general yelling commands about how Lily needed to do a better job building. Lily issued counter-orders from the couch with the calm authority of a child who had organized a coup and wanted it structurally sound.

Every cushion in the house was spread across the floor, and dining table chairs had been drafted to serve as walls. A sheet hung from the back of the sofa to the coffee table in a slope that wouldn’t have passed inspection, and they didn’t care.

“Beth!” Sophie emerged from the blanket, hair static-wild. “We are making a fort, and Dad said we have to wait for you because you are good at the roof.”

“That is the nicest professional feedback I have received all day,” I said. “I accept the commission.”

Mike came out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon and an expression that said he was having a hard time cooking and controlling the living room chaos at the same time. He kissed me like he had been waiting for me to walk in the door and solve the problem. Warm, open, and just a hint of desperation that indicated he was happy to finish the meal, but could I please handle the two little generals. It was also the kind of kiss that used to rearrange my knees. I kissed him back and waited for the spark to catch the way it used to.

It caught, just not in the same building.

“You look tired,” he said, thumb at my jaw, checking me the way he checked everything he loved. “Long one?”

“Long one. Nothing dramatic. I am here. I was promised tacos and architecture.”

“In that order if I can finish the meat before these two annex the dining table.”

Lily looked up. “The dining table is important to keep the structure together. We already voted.”

“I was not present for that vote,” Mike said.

“You were stirring,” Sophie said. “That is not the same as being here.”

He laughed and went back to the stove, leaving me to handle the furniture arrangements. I dropped my bag and got on the floor because the floor was cold. We used the couch as a back wall, two chairs as posts, and every throw blanket the house owned. Sophie wanted a tunnel. Lily wanted a window: a gap between two pillows with a flashlight aimed through it like a tiny lighthouse. I crawled in and out, trying not to let the plug announce itself every time I sat back on my heels. It announced itself anyway, privately and persistently, keeping me from devoting my full attention to the two ladies running the show.

“Dinner in here,” Sophie declared, once the structure had reached the official status of almost collapsing on purpose. “Flashlights only. No kitchen lights. It is a rule.”

Mike stood in the doorway with a skillet and looked at the living room as if it had become a safety hazard and then shrugged, because he is the kind of man who will eat on the floor if his daughters ask and will not complain about his knees.

“Flashlights only,” he agreed. “If I drop salsa on the good blanket, the good blanket had a good life.”

We ate inside the fort like people who had decided the ordinary world could wait in the hallway. Mike folded himself in with more grace than a man his size should have had. Sophie narrated the taco-building process as if we hadn’t all watched it happen. Lily corrected the topping order with scholarly concern. The flashlights made our faces strange and soft. I laughed until my eyes watered at nothing, at Sophie’s impression of the smoke alarm, at Mike pretending the salsa ingredients were a classified document given to him by the President himself. For twenty minutes I fit. I was the woman on the floor under a sheet, loved by a good man and two girls who wanted her for a roof, and the other life was forgotten.