“I have a large condo. Three bedrooms, and I use one plus the office. Lily needs a real preschool. Then a school. There isn’t one here. You need D.C. for your work. Serious design opportunities are there, not out here. That’s the practical part.”
“And the non-practical part?” she asked quietly.
He was silent for a second.
“The non-practical part is that over these weeks I realized something. For a long time I didn’t understand why anyone would want to come home. Not in the sense of being tired—just that there was no point to the return itself. My condo was a place where I slept and worked.” He looked at the fire. “Now I catch myself thinking about Lily drawing on the refrigerator. That probably sounds odd.”
“No,” Kate said. “It doesn’t.”
“I’m not rushing you. I’m not asking you to decide anything right now. The divorce isn’t even finalized yet. You’ve only just started to breathe again. I understand that. I just want you to know the offer is there.”
Kate finally turned toward him. She looked straight at him, the way she always did, without games.
“Alex, I need to be honest with you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m afraid.” She said it simply, without apologizing for it. “Not of you specifically. Of the pattern. Of depending on someone again. Of ending up in a situation where I’m living in somebody else’s space and expected to be grateful they’re willing to have me there.”
“That’s not what I’m offering.”
“I know that’s not what you mean.” She hesitated. “But for five years I thought I knew what the man next to me meant. I was wrong.”
Alex nodded slowly.
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Give me time,” she said. “Not because I’m saying no. Because I want to make the decision from a solid place. Not out of fear, not out of gratitude, not out of convenience. From myself.”
“How much time do you need?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Okay.”
They sat a while longer in silence. Then Kate said softly:
“Lily loves you. You know that.”
“I know,” he said. “She’s very direct about it.”
Kate laughed. Quietly, but genuinely.
“She is. I have no idea where she gets that. I wasn’t like that as a child.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing she is.”
“Yeah,” Kate agreed. “Probably she’s smarter than both of us.”
Alex left the next morning. This time Lily was awake in time, dressed, and serious. She shook his hand like an adult, with both of her small hands.
“Will you come for Christmas?” she asked.
“I’ll try.”
“‘I’ll try’ is not exact,” she pointed out.
“I’ll come,” he said.
“That’s better.”
Three months passed the way time passes when it’s full. Alex worked. A lot, as usual, but something in the work had changed. Not the work itself—him. He started noticing when he was tired. Started leaving the office before midnight. One Sunday he didn’t open his laptop at all. Just walked around the city, went into a bookstore, bought three books for no particular reason.
Riley closed the case in mid-December. He called himself, short and to the point:
“Done. Divorce granted. Order takes effect in thirty days. Husband signed.”
“How did she take it?”
