"Yes, love," I said, swinging my legs out of bed and feeling the chill of the lino. "We're going up to the cottage. We have to wrap up warm, though. The autumn is biting today."

The house in Ty Sign was small, filled with the cluttered, beautiful evidence of a life built on second chances—wooden blocks, mismatched teacups, and Eira's drawings tacked to every available surface. As I moved through the morning routine—oatmeal on the stove, finding Eira's woolly hat, making sure I had enough spare nappies—my mind drifted to Peter's "strays" at the cottage.

Peter had been my bridge for a decade. He was the one who stayed when things got messy, the one who understood the specific, heavy silence of these valleys. And now he had these two seventeen-year-olds tucked away in his stone fortress. I'd seen them yesterday in Newport—babies themselves, really, carrying the weight of a world that was clearly trying to crush them. There was a fierce, desperate love between them that I recognized. It was the kind of love that grows in the cracks of broken things.

"Ready?" I asked, hoisting Eira onto my hip and grabbing my keys.

We stepped out into the crisp Risca air. The estate was quiet, the smell of Sunday fry-ups drifting from the open windows. We began the walk toward Crosskeys, the hills rising up to meet us like old friends. Eira chattered away about the ducks she hoped to see, her little legs swinging as I carried her part of the way up the incline. I was looking forward to seeing that cottage again. It had been a long while—too long—since I'd sat by Peter's hearth.

The cottage in Crosskeys felt like a place outside of time. It sat nestled into the slope, its stone walls covered in a pelt of ivy that was currently a vibrant, dying red. As we walked up the path, the door creaked open before I could even knock.

"About time," Peter grinned, leaning against the frame with a dish towel over his shoulder. "I was about to start the lunch without you, and you know I'm not good at portion control."

"You're not good at many things, Peter, but we love you anyway," I teased, stepping inside.

The air was warm, smelling of slow-cooked leeks and woodsmoke. Papa and Mama were already there, sitting by the window. They looked more rested today, the sharp anxiety of Newport replaced by a quiet, domestic ease. Eira didn't wait for an invitation; she scrambled down from my arms and trotted straight over to Mama, her shyness from the day before replaced by a toddler's relentless curiosity.

We took our lunch out into the small garden at the back. It was a clear, bright autumn day, the sun weak but steady. We sat on mismatched chairs around a wooden table that had seen better decades, eating thick bread and cawl while the wind rustled through the skeletons of the summer's sunflowers.