Chapter 435: The Things That Never Changed

"I won’t run off."

"Liar," Sacha said, fond. She linked her arm through Mia’s and tugged her toward the doorway. "Come on. Let the man breathe for five minutes. He looks like he enjoyed that a bit too much to be useful yet. Poor me, getting all forgotten by you while Stan gets all the love..."

Mia didn’t refute this time, instead she only glanced at Sacha’s face as fondness rose with the embarrassment within her heart...

’I missed these teasing of yours... it’s been so long.’

The present thinned.

Sun. A backyard that had never needed to be large. Warm afternoon light on patchy grass and the fence that always leaned the same way. Cushions, cardboard boxes, old blankets dragged from the house and arranged into a lopsided "home" that little Mia treated as architecture.

She was Stan’s wife for the day, and she was serious about it.

Plastic dishes sat in careful rows. Water and leaves steamed in her mind as soup. She checked on him the way Mrs. Edith checked on people, soft, constant, important.

"Stan, are you hungry? I made soup... well, it’s just water and leaves, but it’s special soup!"

Little Stan sat where she told him to sit, calm even then, a small stoic with grass stains on his knees. He picked up the imaginary bowl with both hands.

"It’s good," he said, straightforward, as if taste were a fact he had decided to honor.

Mia’s face lit. "You have to sit properly at the table, okay? Wives take care of their husbands."

He straightened his back a fraction. Ate another invisible spoonful. Stayed close.

Nearby, a low table had become a shop. Paper drawings served as stock. Stan had spent a long time on the money, colored pencils, careful numbers, bills that looked, to two children, like the real thing.

He held one up.

"Look, Mia. I drew lots of money. See? This one is worth a hundred."

Her eyes sparkled. "It’s really cool... you can draw really well. The numbers look so real!"

His small chest puffed. "It’s easy. I can draw more for you if you want. Or I can draw you a house. A real one, with a garden."

On the porch steps, Sacha watched with a straight face and the dry patience of someone a few years older who had appointed herself staff.

After a while she said, "Mia, you love playing wife with Stan so bad. Stan, you too, do you two plan to marry each other when you grow up?"

Little Mia went red to the ears. Both hands flew to her face.

"Don’t say that... Sis Sacha!! That’s embarrassing!"

Little Stan turned to Mia, unaffected, earnest.

"Is it a bad thing to marry me?"

Mia’s gaze dropped to the grass. Her voice became very small.

"No... it isn’t..."

He took her wrist, gentle, firm, and tugged her toward the paper-money pile.

"Come, Mia. Let’s play shop. Sacha can be the shop attendant. I’ll be the dad buying food and toys for our house with my money. You can help me choose."

They pulled Sacha off the steps. She came with a sigh that did not hide how willing she was.

Mia inspected the drawn vegetables with grave authority. "This carrot is fresh. This one is... a bit tired. Don’t buy the tired one, Stan."

Stan handed over a hundred with great importance. "I need change."

"That’s not how hundreds work," Sacha said, and gave him a five anyway.

Mia decided they also needed a toy for "their future baby." The words were out before she heard them. Sacha’s eyebrow rose. Mia went scarlet and became very interested in a paper apple.

Stan, solemn, offered her a drawn flower. "Wives like flowers."

She accepted it with both hands and tucked it into her pocket like treasure.

Then came the argument about prices. Sacha overcharged them on purpose. The two younger ones protested in unison, outraged citizens of a shop that had betrayed them. Sacha did not lower the price. She charged them extra for "talking back."

They paid in hundreds and demanded a receipt she refused to draw.

Later, when the money was a messy little pile again, Mia leaned against Stan’s shoulder while they counted what was left. Sun on their hair. Laughter still loose in the air. The safe, endless feeling of an afternoon that did not know it would become a memory.

The backyard faded.

Mia stood in the doorway of the present, Sacha’s old teasing still echoing, and warmth spread through her chest, deep and quiet and certain.

’I really do... I want to marry Stan.’

She stepped back and gestured them in. "Come in. Don’t just stand there. Aunty will scold me."

They crossed the threshold. The house smelled like itself, old wood, something herbal from the kitchen, the faint sweetness of clean laundry. The hallway was narrow enough that three people made it feel full.

Sacha’s eyes sparkled. "You left us on the step so long I thought we’d become strangers. Very formal welcome. Very... thorough."

Mia’s ears went hot again. "I was opening the door."

"You opened Stan first."

"Sis Sacha—"

"I’m only saying. A week ago he was here, and still the hug lasted long enough to file taxes."

Stan walked a little behind them, calm, enjoying the familiar weather of the two women: Mia flustered and glowing, Sacha affectionate with a knife made of jokes. He did not rescue Mia. She would not have wanted him to, not really.

"I missed you," Mia tried, to Sacha, to the hallway, to both.

"I know you did." Sacha bumped her lightly with an elbow. "I also know who you missed with your whole body. It’s all right. I’m mature. I can share a doorway."

"It isn’t, I wasn’t..."

"Mm."

Mia covered her face with one hand for a step, then dropped it, smiling helplessly, the blush still there, the house opening ahead of them toward the room where Mrs. Edith would be, and the night that had only just begun.