A/N: Please play the instrumental above if possible :)

Here's the thing about small houses: sounds carry. That was the reason why seventeen year old Grace Howard, sitting at her desk with her feet propped up on her bed—because her attic bedroom really was that small—could hear her parents shouting at each other downstairs at one-thirty six AM.

It was also the reason the walls trembled when her mother slammed the front door and started the engine of their rusty car, presumably to drive for a few hours, stop at a roadside McDonald's to order three large cups of black coffee, and then drive some more. And it was the reason the whole house seemed to hold its breath as her father let out a long, tired sigh, before heading back to his office to grade "boring, half-bassed essays." Except he didn't really use the fish-related filter when he thought his children were asleep.

The soft knock at the half-open door to Grace's room came promptly after, and it swung open to reveal a seven-year-old brother, clutching his Build-A-Bear stuffed animal tightly in one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other.

"Grace?" He asked, voice wavering slightly. "I can't sleep."

"Me neither, Jason," she smiled softly, moving to sit on her mattress. He took the three steps from the door to her bed, and she wrapped him in her quilt—worn thin from hundreds of wash cycles—and pulled him into her lap.

I'm sorry, she wanted to tell him. I'm sorry that you were adopted into my dysfunctional family, that my parents took you in as an attempt to form the picture-perfect family of four they thought they could still have.

I'm sorry I wasn't enough in the first place.

But that didn't make for the best goodnight story, so instead she whispered a lullaby into his ear, swaying him back and forth in her arms, willing her voice not to break (singing on tune was an impossibility she had given up on long ago).

"Darling, close your eyes,
can you see the fireflies?
Remember the nights
you held me tight in your arms
and said 'everything's alright
cause it'll always be you and I'?"

The little boy's eyelashes fluttered closed as he curled up next to her.

"Close your eyes, can you see
the city lights?
Remember the times
we danced under the moonlight
and I said 'we'll be alright, long as it's
you and me, we have all that we need.'"

Grace slowly slid off the bed, slipping on the too-big brown slippers that had once been her dad's. He was the one who had helped her write these lyrics—her first real poem—when she was nine. He was the one who had sung them to her every night, strumming a careful rendition of James Arthur's "Say You Won't Let Go" on the permanently off-tune guitar he'd picked up at a yard-sale; he was the one who sat at the edge of her bed holding her hand on nights she didn't want to go to sleep, the fairy lights he strung above her bed illuminating the crinkle of a smile at the edge of his warm brown eyes—until he didn't have time for their song anymore, didn't have the energy to climb the stairs, didn't remember to say goodnight.

"You and me, all we need.
Close your eyes, can you
see the stars?
Darling, one day, they'll all be ours."

Looking back to ensure that her brother was asleep, Grace shut off the extension cord next to the door and the fairy lights hung on her wall flickered into darkness. She closed the door, sinking onto the wooden planks of the hallway floor.

"They'll all be ours,
yours and mine,
Just close your eyes,
I promise, we'll be alright."

The last lines dissolved into a strangled whisper, and Grace hugged her knees, letting the tears that had burned in the back of her throat fall, soaking into her cotton pajamas, her shoulders trembling softly.

Sounds carry in small houses, and Grace Howard had perfected the art of silent crying.