Chapter 154 Packing

Chapter 154 Packing
Sofia laid the suitcase open on the bed two days before game six, unable to wait any longer, even though the trip's exact departure date still hinged on a hockey score she couldn't control. She'd learned, over the years, that packing early was less about practicality and more about a small private ritual, proof to herself that the trip was real before it actually arrived.

The last time she'd packed a suitcase for Cape Town, a year ago, almost to the week, she'd done it alone in this same bedroom, Emma already asleep, trying not to let herself believe too fully in a wedding that still felt, even days before it happened, like something that could still slip away if she looked at it too directly. This time she packed without any of that old bracing. The trip was real, the way ordinary good things in her life had slowly become real over the past two years, without the constant low hum of waiting for them to be taken back.

Rebecca had asked to help, arriving Saturday afternoon with a bottle of wine and an opinion about every item Sofia pulled from the closet.

"Not that dress," Rebecca said, watching Sofia fold a navy shift into the case. "You wore that to the Harrisons' dinner last spring. Wear something new. It's an anniversary, not a work function."

"It's comfortable."

"Comfortable is for the flight. This is Cape Town, Sofia. You're standing on the same beach where you married that man. Wear something that knows it."

Sofia laughed and set the navy dress aside, reaching instead for the green one she'd bought in April and never worn, still with tags on in the back of the closet, bought on impulse during a lunch break and forgotten about until this exact moment. Rebecca nodded approval before Sofia had even held it up fully.

"That one. Obviously that one."

They worked through the rest of the case together, Rebecca folding with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd traveled for research trips her whole career, Sofia trailing behind with smaller things, sunscreen, the paperback she'd been meaning to finish for two months, Emma's travel notebook already packed separately for the week she'd spend with Danny and Valentina while Sofia and Tyler were away.

"How's Emma taking the sibling news?" Rebecca asked, not looking up from the case.

"Better than I expected. She's drafting a formal resolution. Asked whether she'd get consultation rights on the name." Sofia smiled at the memory, still warm days later. "She told Tyler she'd been anticipating it for weeks. Apparently the paint smell gave it away."

"She's a sharp kid. Always has been." Rebecca finally looked up, something careful in her expression. "How are you feeling about it? Not Emma's reaction. Yours."

Sofia considered the question carefully, the way she'd learned to over three years of Rebecca's careful, patient work with her. "Good. Scared ordinarily, not the old way. I used to be scared that wanting something meant it would get taken from me the second I admitted I wanted it. This is different. This is just normal fear, the kind everyone probably feels wanting something this big."

"That's a real distinction. You should hear yourself say it."

Rebecca had told her something similar once, years ago, in that same conference room downtown, and Sofia had not believed it applied to her, not really, not for a long time afterward. Hearing it now and simply agreeing, without the old need to argue herself out of good news, felt like its own small quiet proof of how far the distance actually was.

"I do hear myself. That's new too." Sofia folded the last of Emma's clothes into the smaller bag, set it by the door for Danny's arrival Thursday. "I used to need someone else to point out the difference before I could see it myself. Now I catch it happening in real time, mostly. Not always. Mostly."

"Mostly is enough. Mostly is more than most people manage." Rebecca zipped the main suitcase closed, sat back on the edge of the bed, and looked around the room with the satisfaction of a job properly finished. "You built a whole life since I first met you in that awful conference room downtown. I hope you let yourself notice that sometimes, not just when a suitcase forces you to look at the evidence directly."

"I notice more than I used to." Sofia sat beside her, the suitcase between them, packed and ready and waiting on nothing now but a hockey score three states away. "I think that's the actual measure of it, if I'm being plain about it. Not whether the fear is gone. Whether I notice the good things loud enough to hear them over it."

Tyler called that evening from the team hotel, voice tired but easy, game six still two days out. "Suitcase status?"

"Packed. Rebecca supervised. I'm wearing the green dress on the beach, and you're not allowed an opinion about it until you see it."

"Wouldn't dream of having one early."

"Good instinct." She sat on the edge of the bed, phone against her ear, looking at the closed suitcase and the yellow room's door standing open just past it, both of them waiting on their own separate timelines for the same fixed date to arrive. "Two more days, Tyler. However it goes. We're getting there."

"We're getting there," he agreed, and for a moment neither of them said anything else, just held the quiet certainty of it between two phones, three states apart, closer than distance had any right to make two people feel.

After they hung up, Sofia stood in the doorway of the yellow room a while longer before bed, the packed suitcase waiting by the front door, Emma's smaller bag beside it, everything in the apartment arranged and ready for a departure that existed, for now, only as a possibility on the other side of one more hockey game. She thought about how much of this year had been exactly that shape, good things arriving just past a threshold she had to trust rather than control, and found she didn't mind the waiting nearly as much as she once would have. Waiting, it turned out, was only unbearable when you didn't trust what was coming. She trusted this completely.