The thing about the Celebrini-Smith household is that it never really sleeps, not completely, because even in its quietest hours there is always some small sign of life tucked into the corners: a hockey stick abandoned by the front door, a dog sprawled dramatically across the hallway, and a backpack left open on the kitchen floor because somebody swore they would unpack it later and then immediately forgot.
From somewhere upstairs, one of the kids yells that they cannot find their hoodie, and before Will can even answer, another voice follows, louder and far more distressed, announcing that they are going to be late for school.
Will, who is standing at the counter packing lunches, does not even look up.
“The closet where you left it.”
There is a brief silence, then a sheepish, “Oh” and Will smiles to himself as he folds a little note into one of the lunchboxes before sealing it shut. Every morning, without fail, each kid gets one. Sometimes it is a joke, sometimes it is a doodle, and sometimes it is just a reminder that they are loved, slipped between apple slices and neatly packed sandwiches like a secret meant to be found halfway through the school day.
A few feet away, a tray of cinnamon rolls cools on the counter, and when one of the kids wanders in and announces that Dada says they count as breakfast, Will answers, without hesitation, “Dada is wrong.”
The kids cackle like this is the funniest thing they have ever heard, which, in fairness, is usually how most conversations about Mack in the kitchen tend to end.
The science fair project currently occupying half the dining room table is evidence enough that Will takes parenting competitions far more seriously than any sane person should. Three nights earlier, he had taken one look at the assignment rubric and opened enough browser tabs to crash a laptop. Now a carefully crafted model volcano sits in the middle of the table, surrounded by glue sticks, construction paper, and the unmistakable wreckage of Will’s sleep-deprived devotion to making a fourth-grade project look like it was made to win.
“We’re totally gonna win” their eldest says proudly, pointing at the carefully labelled diagram.
“We better” Will mutters, adjusting one of the labels for the fifth time.
Across the room, Mack looks up from tying a skate lace and squints at him.
“You’re talking about a fourth-grade science fair like it’s Game Seven.”
Will does not even blink. “It is Game Seven.”
Mack stares at him for a moment, then shakes his head.
“Funny,” Will says, deeply unimpressed, “I don’t remember you complaining when I was planning our date nights three months in advance.”
The kids, naturally, dissolve into laughter.
Cooking lessons become a regular fixture after that, mostly because Will makes it his personal mission to ensure their son can survive adulthood on more than takeout and frozen pizza baked in the oven with the cardboard still underneath. He stations him beside the counter with a mixing bowl and wooden spoon while Mack lingers nearby pretending not to eavesdrop.
“Now remember,” Will says solemnly, guiding their son’s hand through the batter, “everyone should know how to cook.”
“Even Dada?” their son asks.
Will pauses, and so does the spoon.
Mack narrows his eyes from the doorway.
“Dada’s learning” Mack says, deeply offended.
“Dada’s been learning for fifteen years.”
“Your grilled cheese caught on fire.”
The children dissolve into laughter, Mack claims they are all ganging up on him, and when Will only hums like this is both true and deserved, Mack retaliates by crossing the kitchen in two strides, catching him around the waist, and attacking his cheek with loud, obnoxious kisses until Will is laughing and trying to shove him off with flour-dusted hands.
The children immediately start gagging.
“Stop kissing in the kitchen!”
Mack, deeply pleased with himself, only squeezes Will tighter and says this is exactly the kind of household hostility he has been talking about.
Still, Mack gets the last laugh when sports season comes around, because that is where he becomes absolutely immovable. Every tournament, every practice, every inconvenient 7 a.m. game two towns away, he is there with coffee in one hand and snacks in the other, trying and failing to pretend he is not secretly hoping the kids choose hockey over every other sport offered to them.
The championship games are easy, because everyone shows up for those. It is the random Tuesday afternoon games with six people in the stands that matter to him, the ones nobody remembers a month later except the kid who kept glancing toward the bleachers and hoping someone would be there. Mack remembers what that felt like too clearly to let his own children know the shape of that particular ache, so he shows up every time, even when the schedule is brutal, even when he is exhausted, even when the game itself is mostly chaos and untied skates and kids skating in the wrong direction.
After every game, regardless of the score, he waits by the boards with a grin, a water bottle, and usually too many opinions, but always with the kind of presence that says: I saw you. I was here. I am proud.
The proof of the years gathers slowly around the house. A pencil mark on the kitchen doorframe becomes another, and then another, until the wood is crowded with names, dates, crooked lines, birthdays, growth spurts, and the physical evidence of entire childhoods inching upward. Every few months, Mack lines everyone against the wall and insists on measuring them again, even if Will points out that nobody could possibly have grown enough since the last time.
“They grew half a centimeter” Mack says, pleased.
“That’s barely anything.”
“That’s literally everything! They’re all going to be over six foot, I’m telling you.”
Years later, nobody is allowed to paint over the doorframe. Not even Will.
Homework, however, remains Mack’s greatest enemy.
He always starts confidently enough, sitting at the kitchen table with one of the kids and explaining that math is just logic, and logic is easy, and there is no reason for anyone to panic. Twenty minutes later, he is staring at a worksheet like it has personally betrayed him.
“What do you mean there are three ways to solve this?”
“Why did they change math?”
By this point, the children are wheezing into their sleeves, and Will keeps calmly wiping down a pair of skates at the end of the table, threading a cloth along the blade with the patient restraint of someone who has been expecting this exact collapse since the workbook opened.
“They’ve invented new numbers.”
“Control your rage in front of the children?” Mack guesses, already defeated.
The textbook just barely survives getting thrown across the room and straight into the wall.
The best moments, though, happen before the day begins, in the soft, blue-grey quiet before sunrise, when Mack clips leashes onto the dogs and slips out into the sleeping neighbourhood. The streets are empty then, the houses still dark, the air cool against his face as the dogs trot ahead and the world feels briefly suspended between one day and the next.
When he returns forty minutes later, cheeks pink from the cold and sneakers damp from the morning grass, the house is still silent enough that he thinks everyone might still be asleep.
Then he pushes open the bedroom door and stops.
Sometime during his run, the kids have migrated into their room in the way they always do, quietly and without permission but with complete confidence that there will be space for them. One child is curled beneath Will’s arm, another has stolen his pillow entirely, and the blankets are tangled around all of them in a warm, impossible knot. Will is buried in the middle, still half asleep, mouth open and hair sticking up in every direction, one hand resting loosely against the small back pressed into his side.
For a moment, Mack simply stands there and looks at them, because some moments are so ordinary they almost pass unnoticed, and some are so ordinary they feel like the entire point of everything.
Then he slips beneath the blankets, careful not to wake anyone, and wraps an arm around Will’s waist, pulling himself into the pile.
Will makes a sleepy noise and leans into him immediately.
It lasts maybe five minutes before tiny hands start tugging at the sheets.
Four eyes crack open, and before either of them can pretend to still be asleep, the children announce with great urgency that it is breakfast time and begin climbing over them like the bed is a mountain that needs conquering.
Laughter fills the room, the dogs start barking downstairs, and somewhere beyond the door, the day is already waiting for them with practices and lunches and homework and tournaments and whatever else the house will manage to hold.
But for one lingering moment, before anyone gets up, the whole world exists inside that bed.
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