“Calmly. Didn’t cry, didn’t celebrate. Just said thank you and left.” Brief pause. “Strong woman, Alex.”
“I know.”
Kate texted that same day, short and simple: “It’s over. Thank you.”
He replied: “I’m glad.” Then thought a moment and added: “You did this.”
She didn’t answer for several hours, and when she did, it was unexpected: “Lily and I are ready to move. If the offer still stands.”
He looked at the message for a long time. Then wrote: “It stands. When works for you?”
“After Christmas. Lily wants to spend it with Mrs. Parker.”
“Okay. I’ll come for Christmas, like I said.”
He arrived on December 31 in the late afternoon. The town was covered in snow—real snow, thick and white. Smoke rose straight up from chimneys into the cold sky. The snow squeaked underfoot loudly enough to hear from yards away. Lily ran out to meet him in an oversized hat with a pom-pom and winter boots and crashed into him at full speed, hanging from his arm.
“You came! I told Mom you definitely would!”
“She wasn’t sure?”
“I was sure,” Kate said from the porch. “I just didn’t say it out loud.”
Mrs. Parker celebrated New Year’s Eve with them, setting the table at her house with pies and three kinds of preserves. The four of them sat there while snow fell outside and Lily noisily reported everything that had happened over the past three months. Knitting. Carrots. The fact that she had chosen a name for Mrs. Parker’s cat, even though Mrs. Parker did not yet have a cat.
“The cat’s name is Stanley,” Lily announced. “He just doesn’t know it yet because he doesn’t exist yet.”
“Makes sense,” Alex said.
Mrs. Parker watched them over the rim of her mug with the same quiet smile she had worn when she once told him, “I’m still deciding.”
In early January, right after the holidays, they moved. Kate brought very little: a backpack with documents and clothes, a box of work materials, a bag of Lily’s toys. Lily carried Rabbit Peter herself under one arm, with the solemn expression of someone responsible for important cargo.
They stepped into the condo in Georgetown—spacious, orderly, clean. Lily stopped in the entryway and looked around.
“Big,” she said.
“Big,” Alex agreed.
“Can I run in here?”
“You can. Just not too hard. Neighbors downstairs.”
Lily nodded with the air of someone accepting terms and immediately went off to inspect the territory…
