Updated Apr 6, 2026 • ~8 min read
Chapter 15: Sage and Sage
Scarlett
Seven months. The baby had opinions. Specifically: opinions about Scarlett’s ribcage, which Wren treated as a percussion instrument at two-thirty a.m. with cheerful disregard for anyone’s sleep schedule. Also opinions about the position of the car seat, which Declan had read four different safety reviews about. Also, it turned out, opinions about the exact shade of sage green for the nursery wall.
Or at least Scarlett did, and she’d chosen to read the baby’s positioning on this particular Saturday as supportive.
“That’s too yellow,” she said.
Declan looked at the swatch in his hand, then at the wall, then back at the swatch. “This is literally called Sage Mist.”
“Sage Mist is the one that goes warm in direct light. I want Sage Whisper.”
“Scarlett. We bought Sage Mist because you said Sage Whisper was too blue.”
“I was wrong about Sage Whisper.”
“You were wrong about Sage Whisper,” he repeated, in the tone of a man who had driven to the hardware store twice in one week.
They were standing in what would be Wren’s nursery — the smaller of the two bedrooms in Declan’s loft, which he’d been converting with quiet and consistent determination over the last two months. The crib was still in boxes because they’d agreed to build it together. The mural of woodland detail he’d sketched on the south wall — small foxes, branches, something that looked like a wren in the upper corner that he claimed was a generic bird and she didn’t believe — was waiting for paint colors to be finalized.
She was holding paint swatches in both hands and trying to compare them to the sample section on the wall in the afternoon light. This was a technically complex endeavor because afternoon light shifted and the swatches were small and the stakes were — she was aware of how high-stakes she was treating this. She was aware that it was seven months and her ankles were slightly swollen and she had an opinion about sage green that had taken on the quality of a stance.
“I’m going back,” she said.
“To the hardware store.”
“To get Sage Whisper.”
“The store closes at six.”
“It’s four-fifteen.”
“You’re seven months pregnant and we’ve been standing on a drop cloth for three hours.”
“I can stand on a drop cloth for —”
“Sit down,” he said. Not unkindly. He pulled the footstool over — there was a footstool because he had purchased a footstool specifically for the project, which she’d told him was unnecessary and then used gratefully every time she entered the room. “I’ll call and see if they can hold a can. Sit.”
She sat. He handed her the sparkling water from the windowsill without looking and called the hardware store and said, with the easy confidence of someone who knew what he wanted, “Hi, I need a can of Sage Whisper mixed — yeah. Yeah, it’s Rush, I was in this week. Fifteen minutes? I’ll send someone.” He hung up and looked at her. “Sage Whisper will be ready in fifteen minutes. I’ll go.”
“You don’t have to —”
“I want Sage Whisper.” He picked up his jacket from the doorframe. “I think you were right about it.”
“I was right about it from the beginning.”
“You were wrong about it for three days and then right about it.” He pulled on his jacket. “I’ll get food while I’m out. What do you want?”
She thought about it. “That Thai place on Fell.”
“The yellow curry?”
“And the spring rolls.”
He left. She sat on the footstool in the half-painted nursery and looked at the wall, and at the small painted wren in the corner, and thought: this is what it feels like when someone makes space for you.
She had a good eye for design — it was part of her job, it was something she’d cultivated for years — and she could see what he’d done in this room. Not just the mural, not just the paint choices (which were good, even the Sage Mist, she was willing to admit, if you caught it in the right morning light). It was the way the room was organized around what she’d said she needed: natural light, south-facing for the morning. The storage he’d built along the east wall with exactly the dimensions she’d sent him. The small chair in the corner that matched nothing in the rest of his loft but matched the curtain fabric she’d found on a Tuesday night search-spiral.
He’d made the room for Wren. And in the process of making it for Wren, he’d been paying attention to her.
She put her hand on her stomach. Wren was still, for the moment — the percussion phase apparently on hiatus.
“He got Sage Whisper,” she said quietly. “I was right.”
He came back with paint and Thai food and they ate on the floor because both the good chairs were covered in drop cloths and the floor had a clean section and it was, objectively, the most comfortable floor option in a room they’d essentially dismantled.
She ate the yellow curry. He ate the green. They argued briefly about the merits of lemongrass, which she found overwhelming and he considered fundamental, and arrived at the conclusion they always arrived at — that their food opinions were irreconcilable and this was nobody’s fault.
Then they painted.
She was doing the trim. He was doing the main wall — Sage Whisper, which was, she was satisfied to note, exactly right in the late afternoon light, neither too blue nor too warm, just the specific quiet green of something living. The mural foxes and branches sat atop it like they’d always been there.
“When do you think we should build the crib?” she asked.
“Soon. Before she gets impatient.”
“She’s already impatient. She’s been kicking me since four a.m.”
“She gets that from you.”
“She gets that from me,” she agreed, because there was no productive counter-argument.
They painted in companionable quiet. The afternoon light went golden and then amber and they turned on the lamp in the corner. At some point he put music on — something low and instrumental she didn’t recognize but liked — and she stopped tracking the time. She just painted the trim and listened to the brush sounds and felt, with a clarity she wasn’t fully prepared for, that this was the most domestic afternoon she’d had in years.
She’d had domestic-adjacent afternoons. Apartments with Chad where she’d tried to build something out of shared space and discovered that sharing space with Chad meant adapting to his space, his preferences, his aesthetic and timeline. She’d been good at it. She’d been good at adapting, because she’d learned early that adapting was safer than wanting things.
This felt different. This felt like — the room was being built for someone, and she was part of the building, and there was no adaptation required. Just her opinion about sage green and his willingness to drive to the hardware store for it.
“Move in,” he said, from the main wall.
She turned. He was still painting, not looking at her.
“Temporarily,” he added. “Or — with an option to reassess. After Wren comes, having a newborn split between two places is going to be —”
“Inefficient.”
“Very. And my loft is bigger. The nursery is almost done. You’re seven months pregnant and your building doesn’t have a parking garage and I have —”
“Declan.”
He stopped. Turned. He was holding the roller and his expression was carefully neutral, the way it got when he was saying something he’d been thinking about for a while and was uncertain of the reception.
“I know it’s practical,” she said.
“It is practical.”
“You’re leading with practical.”
“I’m leading with practical because you’re going to poke holes in everything else first and I’d rather establish the logic before you get to the emotional objections.”
She looked at him. He looked at her. The nursery smelled like paint and Thai food and his jacket was over the back of the small chair and the wren in the corner looked over all of it from a branch that curved upward like something optimistic.
“Let me think about it,” she said.
He nodded. Turned back to the wall.
She watched him paint for a moment — the steady, deliberate strokes, the attention he brought to the edges, the same patience he seemed to bring to everything — and felt the shape of yes sitting at the back of her chest like something she’d been carrying for a while without naming it.
Practical, she told herself. It’s the practical decision.
She turned back to the trim and didn’t examine the other reasons.
Not yet.
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