I wasn't making a statement. I just didn't want to pretend anymore in a space where there was nothing to pretend about. She looked at him. "I know," she said, "I know you meant it. "I want to be clear with you about where I am right now."" "Okay."
"I'm not confused anymore," he said., ""I'm not in the six-week framework. I'm not running an experiment. I know what I want and I know that what I want is complicated by Ava and by the custody situation and by the fact that we work together and probably another dozen things I haven't thought of yet." He held her gaze. But I know what I want.
Clare set down her sandwich. "What do you want?" She said, "Not testing him, just asking you." He said, "straight, simple, with no hedging: I want us to be us properly without the six-week framework or the experiment language or any of the architecture I built around it to make it feel safer than what it actually was." She looked at him for a long moment.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, that's my answer. "Okay."" She picked her sandwich back up. "We're doing this." He stared at her.
"That's it? "What did you expect?" "I don't know. More conditions, more conversation." "Malcolm."
She looked at him with a particular patience of someone who has waited a very long time for something and is genuinely bothered by the time it took because the thing itself was worth it. "I proposed six weeks two months ago. I've been waiting for you to catch up. I don't need more conversation. I just needed to know you were sure.
"I'm sure." "Then we're done deliberating." She looked at her watch. Also, you have a delivery situation at the east entrance in about 4 minutes. He laughed.
A real one, full and genuine, and he didn't recognize the sound for a half second because it had been a while since he'd heard himself laugh that way. She was smiling when he stood up. "Go fix the delivery situation," she said. He went. The family evaluation 60 days out was a procedural appointment with a court-appointed evaluator named Dr.
Sylvia Green, who spent 2 hours with Malcolm and 45 minutes with Ava separately. The evaluation was in Renee's assessment beforehand, a formality given the outcome of the preliminary hearing, but formalities still required preparation, and Malcolm prepared with the same thoroughness he brought to everything that mattered. He told Dr. Green the truth about his work schedule, the demands of his job, the funding crisis and its resolution about the custody arrangement and how it was working in practice. About his relationship with Ava, not the curated version, not the performance, but the actual day-to-day reality of raising a child alone, the mistakes he'd made, the things he'd learned, the ways fatherhood had changed him into a person he hadn't known he was capable of becoming.