Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 180

Xander’s POV

Dinner is quiet. The kind of quiet that means everyone is thinking about things they're not saying.

Margaret made the twins' favorite—chicken fingers and macaroni, but Nina just pushes food around her plate. Lisa eats methodically, counting bites under her breath. One, two, three, four.

Daphne picks at her own meal, one hand resting on her belly where Hope has been unusually still all evening. I can see the worry in the set of her shoulders, the way her eyes keep drifting to nothing.

We're all pretending everything is normal. That we're just a family having dinner on a Thursday evening, that we're not all holding our breath waiting for the next bad news.

Nina's voice cuts through the careful normalcy we've been maintaining.

"Mommy?" She sets down her fork, looks directly at Daphne with eyes too serious for five years old. "If the baby dies, will you still be our mommy?"

Daphne freezes, fork halfway to her mouth. The question lands like a physical blow.

"Of course, sweetheart." Her voice comes out strained. "I'll always be your mommy. Nothing could ever change that."

"Not if you'll be alive." Nina's face scrunches up, trying to articulate something complicated. "I mean... will you still be there? Because last time you were really sad, you forgot things."

The observation is brutal in its accuracy. I watch Daphne's face crumble slightly before she forces it back under control.

"What do you mean, baby?"

"When you were sad before." Nina's voice gets smaller. "You forgot to pack our lunches. You forgot about dance class. You forgot to be there even when you were right in the room."

I remember those months. The period after Gerald threatened them, after the restraining order, after everything fell apart and before Daphne and I rebuilt what we'd broken.

She was physically present but emotionally absent, lost in trauma the girls were too young to understand but old enough to feel.

They remember. Of course they remember. They were three years old and they remember their mother being unreachable. Lisa sets her fork down with precise care.

"Mommy cries an average of 4.7 times per day now. We've had eleven doctor appointments in the past eight weeks. There's a correlation between appointments and sadness levels—after each appointment, crying frequency increases by thirty-two percent for approximately three days."

Jesus Christ. My five-year-old daughter has been tracking her mother's grief patterns with statistical precision.

Daphne's face does something complicated—grief and guilt and love all fighting for space.

She stands, moves around the table, kneels between the girls' chairs despite her belly making the position awkward. Pulls them both close.

"Girls." Her voice shakes but stays firm. "You're exactly why I'll keep going even when I'm very sad. Being your mother is what will pull me through whatever happens. You're not something I'll forget. You're my anchor."

Nina buries her face in Daphne's shoulder. Lisa stays rigid for a moment before slowly leaning in.

"Even if the baby dies?" Nina's voice is muffled. "Even if you're the saddest you've ever been?"

"Even then." Daphne strokes Nina's hair. "You two are the reason I'll remember how to breathe, how to get up in the morning, how to keep going."

The girls seem somewhat reassured.

Dinner continues with forced normalcy. We talk about school projects and upcoming activities and all the mundane details that make up a life.

The conversation stays light, careful, avoiding the elephant in the room that's too big to address directly anymore.

But later that night, after baths and stories and tucking in, I pass the twins' bedroom on my way to check the locks and hear something. Not crying, but breathing that's too deliberate.

I push the door open quietly. Both girls are in Nina's bed, holding hands in the dark. Their eyes reflect the hallway light, open and staring at the ceiling.

"Hey." I sit on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress dip under my weight. "What's wrong? Why aren't you sleeping?"

Nina turns her head toward me. "We're thinking."

"About what?" Silence. Then Nina's voice, small and scared:

"What if everything changes? What if even though Mommy promises now, she can't help forgetting when she gets too sad? What if our family breaks into pieces we can't put back together?"

The fear in her voice cracks something in my chest.

"That won't happen."

"But it might." Lisa's voice is matter-of-fact, clinical. "Hope isn't a strategy, Daddy. You taught me that. And promises aren't data. They're just words people say when they want something to be true."

My heart cracks wider. My daughters are trying to armor themselves against loss by cataloging all the ways their world might shatter.

They're five years old and building contingency plans for grief that would break most adults.

I lie down between them on Nina's twin bed that's too small for three people. Feel them shift to make room, their small bodies pressing against my sides.

"Sweethearts." I put one arm around each of them, pulling them close. "No matter what happens with the baby, our family stays together. Even when it's hard, even when it hurts, even when Mommy is sad or Daddy is scared or everything feels broken."

"But how do you know?" Nina's voice wavers. "How do you know for sure?"

"Because that's what family means." I tighten my hold on both of them. "Staying through the hard parts, not just the easy ones. When things get scary and sad and confusing, we hold on to each other tighter. We don't let go."

Lisa's small hand finds mine. "What if Mommy can't help letting go? What if the sadness is too big?"

"Then we'll hold on for her." My voice is rough. "Until she can hold on again herself. We’ll take turns being strong when the other person needs to be weak."

Nina shifts closer, her face pressing against my chest. "Do you promise?"

"I promise." The words feel inadequate but they're all I have. "I promise we will stay together. No matter what."

Lisa makes a small sound. Not quite acceptance, not quite belief. Just acknowledgment that I've said the words she needed to hear even if her five-year-old logical brain knows promises aren't guarantees.

We lie there in the dark—three bodies crammed onto a bed meant for one small child.

My arms around my daughters who are trying so hard to prepare themselves for a loss they shouldn't have to anticipate.

Who are counting their mother's tears and building statistical models of grief and asking questions no five-year-old should have to ask.

Nina's breathing gradually evens out. Her grip on my shirt loosens as sleep finally takes her. Lisa stays awake longer—I can feel the tension in her small body, the way her mind keeps working even when her eyes close.

"Daddy?" Her voice is barely a whisper.

"Yeah, baby?"

"If the baby dies, will you cry too?"

The question hits me like a fist. "Yeah. I'll cry too."

"That's okay." Her hand squeezes mine once. "We can all be scared and sad together. Remember?"

I remember—the conversation in the car after the park. My daughter giving me permission to be human, to share the weight instead of carrying it alone.

"Yeah." My throat closes around the word. "We can."

Lisa finally relaxes, her breathing slows, deepens, slides into sleep. I lie there between my daughters in a bed too small for three people, feeling them hold onto me like I'm the only solid thing in a tilting world.

Maybe I am.

Maybe right now, in this moment, being the anchor they can grip while everything else shifts and breaks is the most important thing I can do. Not fixing it, not solving it, not making promises I can't guarantee.

Just being solid, present, being the thing they can hold onto when everything else feels uncertain.

Hope moves inside Daphne two floors below us. Or maybe she doesn't. Maybe she's already slipping away and we just don't know it yet. Maybe we're all holding on to something that's already lost.

But my daughters are breathing steady against my sides, warm and alive and trusting me to keep them safe in a world that's proving unsafe in ways I can't control.

So I lie here, let them use me as their anchor, let myself be the solid ground beneath their feet even when my own foundation feels like it's crumbling.