“I do.”
He nodded. Got into the car. Started the engine.
As he turned onto the town road, he looked in the rearview mirror. Kate and Lily were standing by the gate. Lily was waving with both hands. Kate just stood there. Then she lifted a hand too—briefly, calmly. He turned the corner, and they disappeared from the mirror.
The drive back to D.C. took four hours. He drove thinking not about work, not about the business that had piled up over those five days. He thought about his mother’s letter. About Lily’s voice at four in the morning: “You’re not leaving.” About the way Kate had placed her hand over his for one second, lightly, and how that had meant more than any words of comfort he had heard in the last year.
He got into D.C. around one-thirty. The city met him with traffic, horns, gray sky. He parked in the garage, took the elevator up to his condo, took off his coat, and stood in the entryway for a few seconds.
The condo was exactly as he had left it. Clean, orderly, quiet. Everything in place. No drawings on the refrigerator. No extra coffee mug on the table. No voice from another room.
He went into his office and set the rabbit on a shelf beside the monitor. It leaned sideways, so he propped it up with a book. Then he sat down. Opened his laptop. More than a hundred unread emails had been waiting since Friday. He worked through them methodically, answered what was urgent, flagged the rest. Work pulled him in immediately, as it always did. It knew how to do that—close over him, leave no room for anything else. But this time, some room remained.
Wednesday evening he called Mark Riley.
“Mark, did she call?”
“She did, around three.” Riley’s voice was businesslike, calm. “We talked. Standard case in form, but the husband’s dragging his feet. I requested the documents. Three or four months and we should have it wrapped up. You sure about the fees?”
“I’m sure.”
“Alex, she wanted to pay herself. Insisted on it.”
“I know. Let her cover half if she wants. I’ll handle the rest.”
Riley was quiet for a second.
“All right. Not my business. I’ll take care of it.”
The next day, Thursday, Alex called a construction company he had worked with for years. Asked to be connected to the division that handled rural properties. Explained the situation: old timber house, needed a condition assessment and an estimate for repairs—roof, windows, stove, general work.
“When do you need it?” the manager asked.
“Not urgent. Within the month.”
“We can do that. Address?”
He gave the address in Maple Hollow.
Friday evening Kate called. He hadn’t expected that. Thought she would text. But she called.
“Alex, good evening. Is this a bad time?”
“No. How’s Lily?”
“Healthy. Running around. Mrs. Parker is teaching her to knit. So far it mostly looks like a pile of tangled yarn, but Lily is very proud of it.” Short pause. “I wanted to say… Riley sent me the preliminary plan for the case. He’s a good attorney.”
“He is.”
“He says we should have it resolved before Christmas. Unless Daniel manages another delay.”
“If he does, Riley will handle it.”
“I know.” She paused. “I wanted to thank you. Not for the money. For… explaining that I have a right to this. To a normal outcome. That probably sounds strange.”
“It doesn’t.”
“For a long time I was told I didn’t have a right to anything. That everything was my fault. That if I left, I was abandoning my family. That made me a bad mother.”
Her voice stayed even, but Alex could hear what lived underneath that evenness.
“After a while you start believing it.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“I mostly don’t anymore.” And then, almost imperceptibly, something warm entered her voice. “Lily asked me to tell you Peter misses her.”
“Peter’s on my shelf. He’s fine.”
“She’ll be glad to hear that…”
