Page 88 of Single Mom's Daddies
VICTOR
The violin restsagainst my shoulder like it remembers me.
The faintest press of wood to collarbone. It hums when I draw the bow across the strings—just air at first, no weight, no sound. Then pressure. Then tone. Then breath.
The notes I play tonight aren’t written anywhere.
They rise out of muscle memory, from the smallest twitches of my wrist and fingers. G, swelling into a C minor, lilting to a low D that sighs more than it sings. It’s not a song, not really. Just flow.
The parlor is dim except for the fire, casting amber across the hardwood floor. Shadows stretch long and slow over the Persian rug. The scent of beeswax, firewood, and the faint, crisp edge of disinfectant hangs in the air—the house smells like new furniture and medical-grade cleanliness now.
A new heartbeat lives here. Ivy. It’s been twenty-four hours, but it feels as if she’s always been here.
She’s curled under a flannel blanket on the settee. Small, still, barely breathing, her pulse monitor flashing gently on herfinger. The kids are in bed already—Ivy wore them out, trying to learn Russian in a day. Melanie’s downstairs changing shifts with the other nurse. Roman and Nik are in the west wing. Saffron went to shower.
So it’s just us. Ivy and me. And the violin by her request. I hadn’t picked it up in days. She looks like she needs a lullaby. So I give her one.
Her eyes are closed, her face soft in sleep. Her curls spill across the pillow like vines, wild and unbothered. One foot peeks from under the blanket.
Delicate bones. Shaky lungs. A heart that betrays her. But her spirit—that’s carved from tempered steel. She’s held out longer than most adults could. And somehow, she smiles through it.
A fighter. Like her mother.
I let the bow glide low, slow. A long, warm note that carries into silence. I don’t move right away. I let the silence settle between notes. That’s where the soul lives—in the pause, not the sound.
The door creaks open. I know it’s her before I see her. Saffron. I keep playing. I don’t look up.
She crosses the room quietly, barefoot, wrapped in one of her robes. Her hair is damp from the shower, curling at her temples. She smells like almond soap and clean linen and something faintly floral—whatever lotion she used. She sits beside Ivy, careful not to jostle her, and watches her breathe for a long moment.
Then her eyes flick to me, and I let the bow go loose in my hand so I can hear her.
“She’s always loved classical music,” she whispers. “Even as a baby. I used to put it on when she had trouble sleeping. She’d stop crying the second the strings came in.”
“Kids are…their own people. They have their own tastes, their own likes. We think they’ll be carbon copies of us when they’re young, but no.” The thought makes me smile a little.
“She’s always been her own person.” Saffron nods and folds her hands in her lap. Her nails are short, clean, unpainted. She watches Ivy sleep, but I can feel her attention on me too.
So, I shift to a different passage—soft double stops, layered thirds. Something Brahms-like but less rigid. My fingers dance easily. The violin responds like it’s glad to be held again.
“Ivy says you’re the quiet one,” she murmurs, still looking at her daughter.
I raise an eyebrow. “She’s not wrong.”
“She also said you made her laugh today.”
“She’s easy to make laugh.”
Saffron glances at me then, eyes catching the firelight. “Not usually.”
There’s weight in those two words. Years of hospitals, alarms, exhaustion, and bargaining packed into a simple correction.
The fire crackles softly beside us. Outside, wind brushes the windows, but the house holds steady, warm and sealed tight.
“I was never into music,” she says after a long pause. “I liked it, but it was background noise. Ivy made me listen. She’d pick out instruments, make me guess what they were. She loved when I got it wrong.”
I smile faintly. “She’ll be impossible to fool soon.”
“She already is.” Saffron shifts her weight, one hand going to Ivy’s curls. “She likes soft things. Fairy tales. Glass animals. She thinks everything can be fixed if you just try hard enough. I don’t know where she learned that.”
