She'd started drawing again. Nothing formal, just sketches on the margins of Tima's feeding schedule, on the backs of hospital discharge papers. Birds in flight. The cottage garden. Tima's tiny hands. Her charcoal-stained fingers were back, and I'd never been happier to see the black smudges on the kitchen table.

"I'm going back to Gwent in April," she told me one afternoon while Tima napped in the Moses basket by the fire. "Not full time. Just two days a week. Lowri says there's a class on printmaking I'd love. Peter said he'll watch Tima on Wednesdays."

"Peter said that, did he?" I grinned, imagining the Old Man with a baby strapped to his chest.

"He volunteered," she laughed. "Said something about 'getting practice in case Steph decides to have another.' Which I'm pretty sure was a joke, but with Peter, you never know."

I was starting at Gwent myself in two weeks. Foundation year, art and design track. The international student fees were terrifying, but Peter had connected me with someone in Cardiff who needed weekend help with carpentry work. Between that and my Swedish student loan, I'd make it work. The cottage was ours rent-free as long as we needed it—Peter's one non-negotiable gift that he refused to discuss further.

"We're really doing this," I said, looking around the living room that had become our life. "College, baby, cottage in Wales. This is actually happening."

"It doesn't make the sense," she said, using my Swedish phrasing with a teasing smile. "But I don't care. This is the best nonsense I've ever lived."

On the first truly warm day of March, we decided Tima was ready for her debut in Crosskeys proper. Not just a car ride, but a proper walk—pram and all—down to the village and back.

Mama bundled Tima in approximately seventeen layers, despite my protests that it was actually quite mild. "She's tiny," Mama insisted. "And Welsh spring is a liar. It promises warmth and delivers rain."

Peter walked with us as far as the corner shop, his hands in his pockets, looking absurdly proud as he nodded to neighbors. "That's the little bird," he'd say to anyone who stopped. "Born in a blizzard, that one. Tough as old boots already."

The village received Tima like visiting royalty. Mrs. Davies from the post office came out to coo over the pram. The man from the fish bar promised to save us extra chips "for the new mum." Even the teenage boys loitering outside the Spar stopped their conversation to peer in at the tiny face beneath the blankets.

"Everyone knows her name," I marveled as we walked back up the hill.

"That's the valleys," Mama said, her face flushed from the walk and the attention. "You're not a stranger here. You're just family they haven't met yet."