What if we told the truth about the beginning, too? She looked at him sharply. Ethan, I mean the actual truth, that it started as help. That we were neighbors. That I offered because I could, and because it was right.
That's not illegal. Being kind isn't fraud. Admitting that the marriage was arranged to help my immigration status absolutely is. I'm not saying we use those words. I'm saying we tell the story the way it happened.
Two people who knew each other, who made a decision together, who built something over time. He leaned forward because that's true. Every word of it is true. She stared at him. The part that would be a lie, he said carefully, is pretending we were in love on January 15th when we signed that certificate.
We weren't. But we're not in that interview on January 15th. We're in it in 14 days. And in 14 days he stopped. In 14 days she said quietly finishing for him.
It's not a lie. He held her gaze. No, he said. It's not. Something moved across her face.
Something complicated and layered the way real things always are. Not simple happiness, not simple fear. Something in between, something that had grief in it and relief in it, and the particular ache of a person arriving somewhere they had been traveling toward for a long time without knowing it. She looked back down at the folder. Okay, she said very quietly.
Okay. They stayed at the table for another hour, not rehearsing, just talking. About Nadia, about the apartment, about the farmers' market, and the cedarwood soap, and the first time she had made coffee in his kitchen and gotten the ratio exactly right without asking. Small true things. The kind that don't feel like evidence until suddenly they are.
At 11:15 she closed the folder and said goodnight and went down the hall to her room. He sat at the table alone for a few minutes. Then he picked up his phone and called his mother. She answered on the second ring, which meant she had been waiting. His mother had a gift for knowing when he was about to need something developed over 33 years of watching him try to need nothing.
Hey, Mom. It's almost midnight, Ethan. I know. Is Nadia okay? Nadia is fine.
She's asleep. A pause. Is Isabel okay? He exhaled. Why does everyone always ask about Isabel?