Chapter Six: The Fix
“Do you know how to fix things?” Noah asked.
Sebastian looked at him directly.
“What kind of things?”
“Liam’s remote control car. The wheel came off. Mama tried to fix it, but the piece is really small and she said her fingers are too big.”
He said this without any implication that Elena had failed. Just a neutral reportage of fact.
“I can try,” Sebastian said.
Noah got up from the armchair. Disappeared down the hallway.
Came back with a small red remote control car and a wheel that had separated from its axle.
He handed both to Sebastian. Then sat on the couch next to him — close but not touching — and watched.
Sebastian looked at the car.
He had never fixed a toy in his life.
He had, in his lifetime, overseen the reconstruction of a three-hundred-million-dollar infrastructure project. Negotiated the merger of two of the largest logistics companies in the country.
He had no idea how toy wheel axles worked.
He looked at it carefully.
He turned it over.
He identified the small plastic pin that needed to reseat into the wheel housing. He pressed it carefully with the pad of his thumb.
Felt it click.
He handed the car back to Noah.
Noah turned the wheel. It spun freely.
He looked at Sebastian with those old, careful eyes. Something in them shifted. Not warmth exactly, not yet. But the specific quality of a child who has updated his assessment of a person based on new data.
“Thank you,” Noah said.
“You’re welcome.”
That was the moment Elena — standing in the kitchen doorway with a coffee cup in both hands — turned away so neither of them could see her face.
Sebastian stayed two hours and fifteen minutes.
He did not notice when the hour mark passed.
He was on the floor building something architectural and increasingly unstable out of wooden blocks with Chloe. Liam provided a running critique of the structural integrity. Noah sat beside Sebastian — close now, shoulder almost touching — operating the fixed remote control car along the perimeter of the block structure.
When Elena said quietly, “Guys, it’s getting close to dinner time,” there was a chorus of protest.
Sebastian felt it land somewhere in the center of his chest like a fist.
“Can he stay for dinner?” Chloe asked.
“Not tonight, baby.”
“But why?”
“Because he has things to do. But he can come again.”
Chloe turned to Sebastian with the absolute, unfiltered directness of a four-year-old.
“Will you come again?”
“Yes,” Sebastian said. No hesitation.
“Promise?”
He looked at her. This child with Elena’s nose and his stubbornness and her mother’s total inability to accept a non-answer.
“I promise.”
At the door, Elena handed him his jacket.
They stood in the small entrance for a moment. The noise of the children in the other room behind her. The stairwell behind him. Nothing between them but five years of silence that neither of them knew how to break cleanly.
“They like you,” Elena said.
She sounded like this surprised her. Like she hadn’t decided yet how to feel about it.
“Liam’s reserving judgment.”
“Liam reserves judgment on everyone. He’s been reserving judgment on our mailman for two years.”
She paused.
“Noah let you fix his car.”
“Noah supervised while I fixed the car. There’s a difference.”
Something crossed Elena’s face that was so close to a smile it hurt to look at.
Then it was gone.
“Sebastian. The lawyer. I want this to be civil. I don’t want a war.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then we need to go slowly. For them.”
“I know.”
“And you need to understand —”
She stopped. Started again.
“The decisions I made. I had reasons. I know you’re angry. I know you think —”
“I don’t know what I think yet,” he said honestly. “That’s the truth. I’m not ready to have that conversation. But I know I need to have it.”
He met her eyes.
“Soon.”
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
Then she nodded once. Stepped back. Closed the door.
