Chapter 5: The Blueprint
The smell of fresh-cut pine and sawdust had become the new scent of the apartment. It layered over the motor oil and lavender, something crisp and promising. The exposed beams of the loft now framed a space in transition. A crib kit, its pieces neatly stacked, waited against one wall. A small bundle of sanded shelves, their edges smooth to the touch, sat beside a stack of children’s books Malakai’s sisters had dropped off.
Jade sat cross-legged on a stack of lumber meant for a closet, a pencil tucked behind her ear and a rolled-up blueprint—really, just a sketch on the back of a parts invoice—spread across her knees. She tapped a line on the paper.
“That shelf is too high on your drawing. I can’t reach it. And I want the closet rod lower so I can hang your shirts without a step stool.” She grinned up at him, all mischief and command. “This nest needs to be functional for the short person.”
Malakai, kneeling on a drop cloth with a tape measure in hand, didn’t look up. “The short person is currently the size of a plum. By the time it needs shelves, it’ll have me to reach things.”
“I’m the short person now,” she clarified, her voice playful. “The plum and I are a package deal. Lower the rod.”
He made a note on the wood with a carpenter’s pencil. “Yes, ma’am.”
She watched him work, the muscles in his back shifting under his thin cotton shirt as he stretched to mark a stud in the wall. His concentration was absolute, a furrow between his brows. This was his language. Building, fixing, making things solid. For weeks, he’d moved with a focused energy, turning the vague idea of a nursery into something real. It was his version of nesting.
“You know,” she said, tracing the grain of the wood beneath her. “Your mom called again this morning. Wants to know if we’ve picked names.”
“What’d you tell her?”
“I told her we’re leaning towards ‘Thunderbolt’ if it’s a boy. ‘Megatron’ for a girl.”
A smirk tugged at his mouth. “She believed you?”
“She paused for a really long time. Then she said, ‘Well, it’s unconventional, but you have to follow your hearts.’”
Malakai snorted, a short, warm sound. He set the tape measure down and reached for the circular saw. “We are not naming our kid after a transformer, Jade.”
“Spoilsport.” She unrolled the sketch again, feigning deep study. “What about the middle name? After your dad? Hal is a good, solid name.”
He paused, his hand on the saw’s trigger. He looked over at her, his expression softening into something vulnerable. “You’d want that?”
“I’d want our kid to have a piece of your family. The good part.” The part that welcomed her without flinching. The part that smelled like rosemary and acceptance.
He nodded, once, his throat working. Then he turned back to the board, lining up his cut. “Then we’d have to use your mom’s name for a middle name if it’s a girl,” he said, his tone deliberately casual.
The air in the room chilled by a degree. The playful mood evaporated. Jade’s smile faded. She stared at the back of his head, at the slight tension in his shoulders. He knew what he’d done. He’d tossed a stone into still water, waiting for the ripples.
“No,” she said, her voice flat.
“Just a thought.” The saw whined to life, biting into the pine with a screaming roar that filled the loft. Sawdust sprayed. When it ceased, the clean, severed piece fell to the cloth. The silence it left was heavy.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
He set the saw down and turned to face her, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Do what?”
“Test me. Push to see if I’m still broken about her.” She folded the blueprint carefully, her movements precise. “I’m not giving her that. Not a memory, not a name. She doesn’t get a piece of this.” She placed a protective hand on the gentle swell of her stomach, now just visible beneath her sweater.
He rose and walked over to the lumber pile. He stood before her, smelling of sweat and sawdust. “I’m not testing you. I’m asking you to decide. To choose what stays and what goes. You’re in charge of that, Jade. All of it.”
“I chose. She goes.”
“Good.” He reached out, not for her hand, but to pluck the pencil from behind her ear. “Then it’s settled. No family names. We’ll pick something new. For the new thing we’re making.” He twirled the pencil in his fingers. “Now, about this closet rod. You want it lower. How much lower? Give me a number, boss. My back’s killing me.”
The tension broke, receding like a wave. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. This was how they did it now. They brushed up against the old wounds, acknowledged the sting, and then deliberately turned back to the present, to the pine boards and the practical problems.
“Here,” she said, sliding off the lumber. She walked to the wall, stood on her tiptoes, and stretched her arm up. “My fingertips brush here. That’s my max. So put it… here.” She lowered her hand a few inches.
“That’s gonna make all my shirts drag on the floor.”
“Then you can hem them. Or grow a pup who can reach the high rod by age two.” She patted her stomach. “We believe in you.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling again. He marked the spot. “You’re a tyrant.”
“You love it.”
“I do,” he said, simply, and the truth of it hung in the dusty air between them.
He went back to cutting, and she began sorting through a box of old hardware, looking for hooks. The afternoon sun slanted through the loft window, painting gold stripes on the floor. For a while, the only sounds were the rasp of the saw, the clink of metal, and the distant hum of traffic from the street below the shop.
“I got a call today, too,” Malakai said later, as he was screwing a shelf bracket into the wall. His voice was carefully neutral.
Jade’s fingers stilled on a drawer knob. “From?”
“The prosecutor. Cole’s lawyer is pushing for a plea deal. Manslaughter. He’d serve maybe seven years with good behavior.”
The drawer knob slipped from her hand, clattering onto the floorboards and rolling under the half-built crib. Seven years. It was a lifetime and no time at all. Her mouth went dry. “What did you say?”
“I said I’d discuss it with you. But that we weren’t inclined.” He put the drill down and looked at her. “It’s your call. If you want it over, if you can’t stand the thought of a trial… we consider it. If you want him to answer for what he did, for attempted murder on top of everything else, we go to trial. It’ll be harder. They’ll dig into everything. The past. Your medical records.”
She thought of the bloodstain he’d sanded away. The phantom ache in her ribs. The way she still sometimes flinched at a slamming door. She thought of the plum-sized life inside her, a life he would never, ever get to threaten.
“No deal,” she heard herself say. The words were clean, sharp. “He doesn’t get to bargain his way out of what he did. I’ll stand in that courtroom. I’ll say what he did.”
Malakai watched her, his eyes searching her face. He saw no hesitation, no flicker of the fragile creature he’d brought home months ago. He saw the mother of his child, rooted and fierce. A slow, proud smile touched his lips. “Okay. Then that’s what we do.”
He picked up the drill again, firing a screw into the bracket with a firm, decisive zzzt.
The sound was a period on the sentence.
Later, when the light was fading and the new shelves were braced and level, he pulled her into the finished closet space. It was just a frame, open to the room, but he stood behind her, his chin resting on her head, his arms wrapped around her. “See? Room for tiny hangers. Room for everything.”
She leaned back into him, feeling the steady beat of his heart against her spine. She looked at the empty space, and instead of shadows, she saw possibility. Little shoes on the floor. stacks of soft blankets. It was a cavity waiting to be filled with a future.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered.
Outside, the first few raindrops began to tap against the window. The smell of wet asphalt and pine sawdust filled the room. He turned her in his arms, his hands coming to rest on the curve of her hips. He didn’t kiss her. He just held her there, in the threshold of the space they’d built together, while the world outside darkened and the rain came down, washing everything clean.