"Air is free. Careers are not."
Cormac lifted a hand. "Brenna."
"No," Brenna said, not cruelly, only tired. "We've done soft for six months. Soft got us a duplex with a leaking gutter and a father who pretends stairs are a personality test. Soft got Declan a job offer he is treating like a moral injury."
Declan set the umbrella by the door with more care than the object required. "It is a moral injury if the cost is my marriage's geography."
"Your marriage," Brenna said, "can survive a commute. Your father's hip cannot survive another winter of denial."
Rhea hung her coat. She did not rush to Declan's defense; she had learned that some fights needed witnesses more than advocates. "What exactly are you asking him to carry, Brenna?"
Brenna gestured at the boxes. "Sell this place. Move Dad to Warwick, near me. Declan takes New Haven, makes the money that makes the move possible without Dad eating pride for breakfast every day. I can't do the finances alone. I already do the appointments alone from a different state."
Cormac stared into his mug. "I never asked anyone to rearrange a life for my stairs."
"You asked by not asking," Declan said quietly. "That's been the family dialect since Mom died."
The room held still. On the mantel, a framed photograph of Declan's mother at a church picnic watched them with the distant patience of the dead. Rain resumed against the windows.
Rhea sat on the ottoman near Cormac's knees. "The Green Spine grant came through this morning. Three years in Waterbury. My name on the lead."
Brenna blinked. "Congratulations. Truly. But grants don't lift a seventy-two-year-old out of a bathtub."
"Neither does punishing Declan for living near his father while you built a life elsewhere," Rhea said, still mild. "We can talk about logistics without turning him into the only hinge in the house."
Cormac looked at Declan. "Did you tell her you were leaving before you told yourself?"
"I haven't left," Declan said.
"You stood in the rain without an umbrella like a man practicing," Cormac replied. "I know the posture. I used it the year I almost took the Albany job and didn't. Your mother never forgave me for the almost. She said almost was a kind of theft."
Declan sat on the arm of the couch. The damp of his shirt had gone cold. "If I take New Haven, I make the money. If I stay, Rhea builds something that outlasts both of us. If we try both, we become a spreadsheet with wedding rings."
Brenna folded her arms. "Then choose the money and the father who needs you less romantically and more practically."
"Stop speaking for him," Rhea said.