The Sunday sun lay across the Brown courtyard like a hand pressed gently on the world. It was late enough that the morning rush had surrendered, early enough that the day still felt pliant; the light had the soft, generous quality of a house that had learned to take care of itself. Tyler sat on the familiar wooden bench beneath the lemon tree, his small sneakers edged with dust, and let two months' worth of small things roll through his mind.
Two months. The number felt both enormous and ridiculous too long for some memories, too short for others. The first day at school, which had felt like stepping into a new country with ten different unofficial anthems, had straightened into a pattern. Noah still ran with the conviction of an emergency; Chris still told stories that grew three sizes between telling and retelling; Klein still found pebbles and treated them like geological miracles; Amaya was still the polite boy who remembered to offer half his snack; the girls still switched loyalties like seasons. Ms. Hana had learned, by degrees, to keep her coffee away from her palms and her shoulders away from the edge of panic. Toby still glowered at Tyler sometimes, but mostly he could be distracted by pastries. The classroom had settled into the messy, loud rhythm of children being children sudden storms of shrieks, random solemn councils about whether glue counted as a food group, an ongoing and inexplicable debate about whether clouds are cotton or lies.
At home the world had softened too. Melissa was lighter in her movements, her laugh coming easier in the dinner room, the worry in her eyes no longer a constant shadow. Viola moved through the house with a sharp, vigorous gentleness; she still had opinions about everything and a memory like a ledger. Richard's little shop had begun to hold a predictable hum customers who nodded, a few repeat buyers, a small pocket of steady. Steven had settled into his job with the kind of romantic melodrama only he could make of it: he left each morning reciting childhood heroics and came home full of minor conquests at the bakery. And Silas today, because it was Sunday and the world allowed a pause was home too, the newspaper under his arm, the deep, steady presence at the center of the small house.
Tyler let each of those calm facts sit in his chest like stones in a jar. He found himself measuring the jar against the memories he kept folded like secret maps in the back of his head. The things he'd lived before, the failures and the quiet catastrophes that had come from not seeing a single poisonous seed until it had already bloomed those images still hummed under his skin. He had promised that when the house reassembled itself into this little orbit of warmth, he would not let the old endings repeat without reason. But a promise and a design were different things; sometimes fate spread itself out like a weather map and refused to be rerouted.
A shout cut through his thinking like a knife through paper.
"STEVEN! RICHARD! COME HERE THIS INSTANT!"
Viola's voice was all punctuation short, precise, with just enough thunder to make furniture straighten. Tyler smiled despite himself. Some days were always the same; some lines always repeated. He knew that shout. He knew the cadence of Viola's indignation, the way she used it to move the air in the house. He folded his hands on his knees and rose, the slight creak of the bench sounding like stage scenery sliding into place.
Inside the kitchen the family already clustered like actors waiting for cue. Melissa was at the sink, humming as she dried a cup, Silas leaned against the counter with the paper folded under his arm and an amused tilt to his mouth, Steven looked mildly scandalized at being summoned, and Richard had a face somewhere between curiosity and concealed resignation. Tyler could see the small differences: Steven's shoulders were broader than they had been a year ago, and the impatient energy that had once been all show had softened into something more settled—he was twenty-eight now, which was the sort of number that felt heavy in the throat to boys who liked to pretend they were immortal. Richard at twenty-six had a steadier patience, the sort that came from keeping shop and counting exact change for hours at a time.
Viola stood with her hands on her hips, and her notebook the small, dangerous thing every family knew meant business—sat on the table like a bomb with a ribbon. She looked at her two sons as if peering at birds that should have flown from the nest long ago.
"You two are not getting any younger," she said, her voice softening only to become more merciless. "Twenty-eight and twenty-six. What do you think you are doing? Building an empire of single men?"
Steven opened his mouth as if to protest. "Mother, we're fine. I have friends"
"Friends will not iron your shirts nor soothe your in-laws when they come demanding vegetables," Viola cut in. "Do you plan to spend the rest of your lives gathering stamps and arguing over whose turn it is to buy bread?"
Richard, who rarely raised his voice, breathed out one small laugh and tried negotiation. "mother, work is busy. I can't"
"You can't?" Viola repeated, and then, leaning in so the accusation had the intimacy of a whisper, "Or you will not? There is a difference."
Silas set his paper down and folded his hands. He had that soft patience of a man who did the sensible things day after day. "What are you thinking, Mother?"
Viola's answer came like a verdict. "It's Sunday. The market is open Monday. I have spoken to Mrs. Nowak and Mrs. Parker and old Mrs. Gou There are girls' families here who would be good. Quiet families. Good cooks. Good hands. Respectable." She opened the notebook with a gesture, proof unfolding in ink. "I'll make a list. I'll plan visits. You boys will not stall me. You will behave like sensible sons and try them on."
Tyler watched the whole tableau, the little familial theatre he knew so well. The actors moved through their roles with the ease of repetition: Steven objecting with theatrical alarm, Richard trying the practical argument, Melissa smoothing things, Silas keeping his calm, Viola delivering her edicts like weather. He had seen this exact scene before, the same notebook, the same threatened resistance. The material details might shift names, ages, the exact phrasing of a joke but the structure was identical to a performance he remembered too well. He had watched it happen once and watched the thread unravel afterward: how a new face could tilt a household, how a polite acceptance could twist into jealousy, how one regret at the wrong time could split a family like brittle glass.
This time, a smaller ache folded into his chest that was not grief, but the faint, familiar foreknowledge of a domino falling. He did not feel eagerness; he did not feel righteous wrath. He felt the cool calculation of someone who knew the architecture of a tragedy and understood the purpose of every structural weakness. There was a logic to pain sometimes the brittle lessons that made later strength possible. He had learned, the hard way, that erasing one scar could sometimes dull the later strength that scar would force into being. Perhaps, he thought, some of what would come was the raw material the house needed to be stronger if they survived the fire. It was a hostage logic, ugly and honest.
Viola continued, the plan pouring out of her like steam. "If you would rather be alone, that is your choice. But if you want a proper life partner who will help you build it, then you must let me do this. I will not have you drift like men on a wind. Be sensible."
Steven, always the louder of the two, tried to bargain in the only currency he knew: performance. "Mother, what if I just meet someone casually? You don't have to… force it like a parade."
Viola's response was a soft snort. "A parade is better than a ruin. I will bring options. You will meet them. You will be polite. You will let me judge their soup. That is all."
Melissa approached Tyler and laid a hand on his shoulder in that instant, the motion unremarkable and full of warmth. "It'll be… good, Ty," she said quietly, as much to him as to herself. "New people. A bigger house, maybe. More hands. More laughter."
Tyler accepted the comfort without showing the small tremor the memory pulled at his ribs. He thought of Pamela and Vanessa the first smiles that would feel like sunlight and the slow corrosion that would follow and he weighed the choice he had made for himself in the silence of his head. He could stop this early; he could whisper into his grandmother's mind something that would shift her path. But he had promised, in a different language to a different self, that this life would be allowed to teach the family the hard lessons it needed. He had seen the way later years shaped people, had traced the geometry of cause and consequence. If he meddled now, the pattern might never resolve into the future strength he had seen, the alliances and the guilt and the small acts that would, in their own harsh arithmetic, make certain outcomes possible outcomes that would one day be necessary for something he could not yet admit he needed.
Silas, who had been silent, finally spoke. "If mother has found sensible families and the brothers meet them courteously, then we'll support it. But no pressure. No forced promises. We'll be gentle."
Viola narrowed her eyes at him in a way that suggested both appreciation and the desire to rearrange his spine by force. "Gentle but decisive," she said. "We will begin this week."
The words settled in the room like a low wind, promising change that did not yet look like a storm. Tyler rose from the bench and stepped into the house, sliding his hands into his pockets as if to steady himself. He placed the paper frog gently on the table where Melissa had left a cup to dry, a small, stubborn piece of child-sized order among adult plans.
As he moved into the conversation, as voices braided and the notebook opened to names and notes and tiny descriptors of suitability, Tyler kept his face plain. Inside, a small, firm plan took shape not to stop what would be, but to be there when it happened, to learn the seams and force the stitches tighter when the fabric tore. He had time, for the moment, to watch the first wind pick up the curtains and to remember the exact smell of how everything once burned.
The marriage mission had begun; the first line had been spoken. The house hummed with the soft electricity of it, the way a room hums moments before the thunderclap. Tyler sat and let the noise of domestic argument and negotiation wash over him; he would not be the center of this scene. He would be the keeper of its aftermath. For now, the day was Sunday and the light still lay warm across the courtyard like a hand. He closed his eyes for half a breath and promised himself quietly, sternly that he would hold this small, fragile peace as long as he could.
If the Brown house was a peaceful pond in the morning, by afternoon it had become a festival ground where every booth sold chaos. Viola had claimed the center of the living room, her notebook spread out across the table like the blueprint to a military operation. It was open to a page labeled very neatly, in her tidy handwriting "Potential Daughters-in-Law."
Beneath it, names were listed with tiny annotations:
"Good cook, patient"
"Quiet, polite, from a respectable home"
"Strong-willed (dangerous, investigate further)"
"Makes excellent lentil soup"
"Family attends Ignaros temple regularly-good morals"
Steven stared at the page as if it were a horror novel. Richard looked like he was attempting to make peace with the universe.
Silas sat on the edge of the sofa, hands folded calmly. His presence felt like a grounding wire for the room's electric tension. Melissa was beside him, trying (and failing) to hide her amusement. Tyler sat on the carpet, legs crossed, his expression politely blank but his mind very awake, watching the scene he knew far too well.
"Mother," Steven began, voice trembling with the effort of diplomacy, "don't you think this is a bit… fast? I mean, I just turned twenty-eight"
"That is EXACTLY why it is not fast!" Viola snapped. "Do you plan to turn thirty and have no one to share your life with except your pillow and your tragic excuses?"
Richard coughed. "I'm twenty-six. That's not"
"Yes. It is not too late for you," Viola said, patting his shoulder as if comforting a soldier heading to the front. "You still have hope."
Steven gasped. "What about me?"
Viola turned slowly, eyes narrowing. "You? You have stubbornness. Only stubbornness. And stubborn men must be guided."
Steven looked personally wounded. "I am NOT stubborn."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "Steven."
Steven pointed aggressively at him. "Don't 'Steven' me!"
Melissa burst out laughing, covering her mouth quickly. Viola ignored all of them and flipped to the next page of her notebook with the flair of a queen unveiling new land.
"Here," she said triumphantly, "are the top three candidates from our community."
Steven groaned. Richard rubbed the bridge of his nose. Tyler leaned forward slightly not because he was curious about the names, but because he remembered how the list would evolve, how one small choice would lead to a ripple that shaped the next decade of their family.