The Three Of Us

Chapter 1

The night ambushed him with a relentless, percussive sound that startled him so thoroughly he tumbled clean out of bed, entangled in a treacherous nest of blankets.

"Damn," he mumbled, bleary-eyed, fumbling for his phone before—

The wailing began.

He exhaled, disentangled himself, and retrieved the cracked-screen device from the nightstand with the enthusiasm of a man defusing a bomb he'd planted himself. He silenced the alarm he'd neglected to cancel the night before and peered into the small crib to his right.

A baby —possessed of a modest wisp of chestnut hair— shrieked at full capacity while glaring at him as though he were the architect of every injustice ever visited upon the world.

Sayuri, his daughter, had woken up courtesy of his spectacular racket. He drew one long-suffering breath and scooped her up with all the tenderness he could muster at this ungodly hour.

"Okay, okay... you're alright," he said between yawns, already scanning the room for the bottle that would, naturally, be stone cold by now.

He swayed from foot to foot in a clumsy, pendulum-like shuffle —a valiant impersonation of the swings she so adored— while hunting for the floral bottle. When he finally located it, he scowled: empty. He exhaled the sigh of a man who had long since exhausted his dramatic reserves and pulled his daughter against his chest.

"I need to make more. Hold on," he whispered.

He settled her on the bed, fortified her with a barricade of pillows, and braced for calm. The crying promptly escalated to operatic proportions.

"Coming, just wait," he insisted, stumbling out of the bedroom and into the minuscule kitchen.

He poured the pre-boiled water, measured out the formula, and shook the pink floral bottle with grim determination until the powder dissolved. Then he set it in the warmer his cousin had given him months earlier — a gift he now considered deeply inadequate compensation for what his life had become. Sayuri screamed with renewed conviction. He yawned and raked a hand through his chocolate-brown hair, achieving a level of dishevelment previously reserved for natural disasters.

When the warmer chimed, he grabbed the bottle, tested the temperature against his wrist, and shuffled back to the bedroom.

"I'm back. Here we go," he murmured.

He positioned his daughter on the anti-reflux wedge he kept on the mattress and nudged her toward the wall. With one hand he held the bottle —which she seized upon without the slightest gratitude— and with the other he checked her nappy, blinking against the burn of sheer sleep deprivation.

Sayuri had, at this point, acquired sufficient autonomy to hold the bottle herself. He merely had to adjust the blanket so she tilted forward at the correct angle.

He propped a long cushion against the wall, lay her on her side, and she regarded him with frank curiosity through those amber eyes she had, mercifully, inherited from him. He lay down beside her and waited.

Gradually, the crying relented. Her eyelids grew heavy, then heavier still, until she sank back into that profound sleep he cherished with an intensity he reserved for very little else.

He eased the bottle away and left it on the nightstand beside his phone. He yawned enormously and draped an arm over his eyes.

He was wrecked.

He lit the phone screen and winced at the brightness. Four in the morning. In two hours, the machinery of his life would demand he rise and perform his daily repertoire:

Study. Work. Raise his daughter. Avoid total collapse.

Simple enough, surely.

He let the phone drop onto the mattress and rolled onto his side. He watched this small creature who, on occasion, he still struggled to believe was genuinely his — and smiled, against all rational evidence to the contrary, as he stroked her chestnut head.

"We're okay, Sayuri," he murmured, closing his eyes. "We're okay."