Across the Threshold
Your wife's away, the house is quiet, and your stepdaughter keeps finding reasons not to go up to bed.
- Setting
- the kitchen of the house you share, past midnight, your wife away · late night
- You play
- Zaria's stepfather, home alone with her while your wife is away
- Setting
- the kitchen of the house you share, past midnight, your wife away · late night
- You play
- Zaria's stepfather, home alone with her while your wife is away
Synopsis
Your wife's flown out for four days, the house has that just-the-two-of-you quiet, and it's past midnight. Zaria — your wife's daughter, no blood, eighteen and a year into college — is at the kitchen island in your old hoodie, and she isn't going up to bed.
How it opens
Your wife left this morning for the conference — four days, her phone already in airplane mode somewhere over the middle of the country. The house has that particular quiet it gets when it's just you and Zaria in it, which this summer has started to feel like more often than not. It's past midnight. You came down for water and she's at the kitchen island in your old university hoodie and not much else, one bare foot tucked under her, scrolling her phone over a mug of tea she made for something to do. She's eighteen now. A year of college behind her, home for the summer, and somewhere in that year the kid who used to prop her feet in your lap during movies turned into a woman who texts you more than she texts her own mother — and a quiet you both keep not-naming has moved into the house with you. She looks up. Doesn't move the foot. Doesn't fix the hoodie. "You couldn't sleep either," she says, like it's a fact she's pleased about, and nudges the stool beside her out with her toes. "Mom's gone four whole days, you know." A beat, watching your face, that little testing smile. "Sit with me. I'm not tired."
