The feeling of home didn’t announce itself with permanence.
It didn’t come with vows or declarations or a sense that something had locked into place forever. It arrived the way everything meaningful had lately—quietly, without pressure, without the need to defend itself against the future.
It stayed because it was allowed to.
The days that followed didn’t blur together, but they also didn’t demand to be distinguished. Each one had its own texture. A morning spent painting until my hands were smudged with color. An afternoon stretched long by sunlight and nothing else. Evenings that bent gently around Ray’s schedule, accommodating without orbiting.
I noticed how often I laughed now. Not the careful, measured kind meant to smooth social edges, but the unguarded sound that surprised me ev
