But peace has a texture.
It is the sound of setting down a glass without bracing for complaint. It is reading in bed without listening for footsteps. It is making tomato sauce in the same kitchen where he hit you and realizing your hands no longer tremble at the stove. One evening, while you’re helping Emily color a poster for school, she starts humming to herself at the table and it dawns on you that she hasn’t done that in months.
Michael comes by often, but not excessively.
He fixes the back gate. Brings a toolbox. Takes Emily for ice cream. Says very little about Daniel unless you bring him up, which is another kind of mercy. The morning after the hearing, he replaced the facedown fairground photo on the windowsill with one of you and Emily at the zoo, both of you laughing at something off camera, and never mentioned the swap. You cried over that too when nobody was looking.
