For the first few days after that night, the house felt like it had been rearranged without anyone moving the furniture. Nothing was physically different—the same hallway lights still buzzed faintly at the same hour, the same kitchen faucet still dripped once if you didn’t twist it tightly enough, the same baby monitor still blinked its soft green pulse on the nightstand—but everything carried a different weight, as if the air itself had learned a new language and nobody inside it had yet figured out how to speak.

Logan moved through the rooms like someone temporarily allowed back into a life that was no longer guaranteed to include him. He changed diapers when asked, not instinctively but carefully, like following instructions on a machine he was afraid of breaking. He spoke less, and when he did, his voice carried none of the casual entitlement it once had. There was no more joking about sleep deprivation, no more dismissive comments about how “women handle babies better anyway,” no more assumptions that someone else would step in where he failed.