She was standing on the sidewalk in a coat she'd bought somewhere colder than San Francisco. Pulling a suitcase from the trunk. Not the same rolling bag from October, a bigger one. Calvin put down what he was holding. She looked up and saw him.
She didn't say anything. She just looked at him with an expression that when certain at the same time, the expression of someone who has made a very large decision and is standing on the other side of it. He crossed the yard. He stopped in front of her. You're not supposed to be here until May.
He said, "I know your contract runs through April. I negotiated an early exit." She said, "They were good about it." She paused. They were better about it than I expected.
He looked at the large suitcase, then back at her. How much is in that thing? He said, "Enough for a while," she said. "Define a while," she met his eyes. "I put my apartment in storage," she said.
"I'm not going back to San Francisco." The street was completely quiet. "You're moving back," Calvin said. "I'm moving back," she said. "Not because he needs me.
Not out of guilt." She held his gaze and it was absolutely steady. Because I want to. Because I finally know what I actually want and I stopped talking myself out of it. He looked at her.
Does he know you're coming? He said, "No," she said. "He knows I'm coming in May. He doesn't know I'm standing in the driveway right now." Calvin looked at Robert's front door.
"You should go knock," he said. She looked at the door. "I know," she said, but she didn't move. "Not yet. She stood there for just a moment, not frozen, not afraid.
Not the way she'd sat in his truck in October, unable to make herself open the door. This was different. This was someone pausing at the top of something good, taking one breath before walking into it. She turned and looked at Calvin. She said, "Did you miss me?"
And there it was, the same question, the one she'd asked at the airport the first night, standing there with her suitcase and her canvas bag, and 6 years of distance between her and the front door of her father's house. He hadn't known what to say then. He hadn't had an answer. He'd driven 30 minutes for a neighbor's favor and gotten something he hadn't known he was looking for. And she'd asked him a question he wasn't ready for.
And he'd looked at her and said nothing because he didn't know her yet. He knew her now. He'd had 6 months of coffee conversations and porch steps and cookout laughter and Sunday dinners and the slow, careful process of watching two people learn to love each other better. He'd been there for the shoe box and the photo album and the recipe card at age 12 and the bank statement and the the night. Robert said, "I'm scared for the first time out loud."