She considered this. Her hand found Hoppy's ear and held it, the reflex that meant she was thinking, the grip that meant the thought was big.

"Can we go there?"

Papa looked at her. The question sat between them, small and enormous, the kind of question that a two-and-a-half-year-old asks because her world is still a place where distance is negotiable and geography is a matter of wanting, where can we go there means I want to see the place that made you and the wanting is pure and the place is far and the far is, for a child, simply a thing to be crossed.

"Someday," he said. "I'll take you someday."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She smiled — the small smile, the closing-down smile, the one that arrives at the edge of sleep when the face is too tired to produce the full version but the feeling is there anyway, contained in the corners, in the slight lift, in the eyes that were closing now, finally, the lashes meeting, the storm blue disappearing behind them.

"Night night, Tad."

"Nos da, daffodil."

He kissed her forehead. He kissed it again. He pulled the duvet up over both of them — Tima and Eira, side by side, the dark curls and the chestnut curls on the same pillow, Hoppy between them — and he stood, and he stood there, and he didn't move, because the moment was the kind that does not ask to be left.

Peter, in the doorway, said nothing. He sipped his tea. The house settled around them — the creak of pipe, the tick of stone cooling, the valley outside holding its breath between one day and the next.

Papa looked at Peter.

Peter raised his mug. The smallest gesture. The quietest toast.

Papa stepped out of the room, pulling the door almost shut, leaving a crack for the landing light to find its way in — the stripe of light across the floor that Tima would open her eyes to if she woke, the light that told her she was home, that the home was here, that the here was enough.

They went downstairs. The fire was low. The tea was warm. The night was beginning outside the windows, the valley arranging itself for sleep, the Ebbw singing its song to no one and everyone, the song that carries names and stories and the small, bright weight of a day that was ordinary and good and will not be forgotten.

Papa sat in the armchair. Peter sat in his chair. The fire between them, the silence between them, the silence that was not absence but presence — the particular presence of two men who have spent a day with the people they love and who need nothing from the evening except the evening itself.

"Same time next week?" Peter said.

Papa smiled. "Same time next week."

And outside, the valley breathed. And the river carried what it carried. And the light in the upstairs window stayed on.