Chapter 10 – Room for Four
“Four,” Nate said.
The landlord glanced at Maya’s belly, then smiled.
“One still on the way?”
“Yes. And our son is six.”
She wrote down the details. It was an ordinary question with an ordinary answer, and Maya had to look toward the window for a moment.
They checked the rent against the budget again before agreeing. The deposit used more of their savings than they liked. The small kitchen would mean choosing which things stayed packed. But neither adult had to explain why Eli counted.
They brought him to see the house before signing the final papers.
He stood in the smaller bedroom and looked at the empty walls.
“Is this for the baby?”
“This one’s yours,” Maya said. “The crib will be in our room to start with.”
Eli turned toward Nate.
“Where’s Grandpa’s house?”
“The same place it was before. We can visit when we plan a visit.”
“But this is where I sleep?”
“Yes.”
He walked to the window. There was a patch of grass outside and a fence low enough to see over. After a while, he asked whether his dinosaur poster could go on the wall.
Maya said they would check how the landlord wanted things hung. It felt good to answer a small, solvable question.
They booked the new delivery themselves. Tom came back with another driver on Wednesday. Nate and Maya confirmed one destination, together, before anything was loaded.
The blue boxes traveled beside the white ones.
When Tom carried Eli’s toy box through the new front door, he asked where it belonged. Eli looked at his mother first.
“Can I show him?”
“Go ahead.”
The boy led the way to his room.
That evening they ate sandwiches on the living-room floor because the table legs were still wrapped in moving blankets. Nate took a photograph for themselves: Eli holding up a crooked dinosaur poster, Maya tired and smiling behind him.
There would be paperwork after the move. They settled the actual moving costs, arranged the end of their tenancy with Ruth in writing, and collected the belongings still in the dry rooms on Willow Court. Some arrangements took more than one call. They kept records of the payments and confirmed the handover date together.
Ruth sent several messages about how much work she had done. Nate acknowledged the practical help and kept the same boundary about the family decisions she had made without them.
Maya went to her follow-up appointment. Eli returned to the same school. The old car stayed old.
On their third night in the new house, he asked Nate to leave the bedroom door open a little.
“Of course.”
“I want to hear when you read to the baby.”
Nate sat back down beside his bed.
“You’re allowed to be there too.”