Will was feeling good. Really good. For all the hellish shit the last year (the last decade, even) had thrown at them all, he and his family were still standing, and it turned out that family was even bigger than he'd imagined. Nieces and a nephew. A great-niece. A child he'd come to love as his own. And her.
So alright, maybe he'd been lying to himself a little. Maybe the date on the calendar did mean something. It wasn't everything, but it was something. Because a year ago, his life hadn't had Clio in it, and today he couldn't imagine it without her.
Her voice sang out, buoyant and musical, and Will's mouth twitched into a smile.
It had been a job getting the bookcase in. It was a corner unit, built to fit in the small empty space between two of Clio's near-overflowing bookcases, which meant that between him and Art, they'd had to do a lot of unstacking and restacking to get the new one into place. Fortunately, he'd got all his measurements right: the three units fit together snug as you like. And the cherry wood had come up a treat, a light reddish-brown with a nice ripple to the grain. Made all the difference, a good quality hardwood. (Clio, he imagined, would probably agree, with a suggestive quirk of the brow, and the thought made his smile curl a little wider.)