So am I. He held her gaze. I'm not asking you to be easy. I'm asking you to be here. There's a difference.
She held his gaze for a long moment. Reading him the way she always did. Fast, efficient, looking for the gap between what someone says and what they mean. She had done it since the beginning. She had always been able to tell the difference.
She found none. She exhaled long and slow and complete. "Okay. " She said. And this time the word had everything in it. Not just acceptance, not just arrival.
Choice. Deliberate, clear-eyed, I know what this is choice. Down the hall Nadia's door opened. She appeared in the kitchen doorway in her pajamas hair in two uneven braids blinking with the particular expression of someone who has woken up from a dream that wasn't quite done. She looked at them at the table with their hands linked and the phone face down between them.
"Did it come? " She said. "It came. " Ethan said. And Isabel looked at Nadia, and she smiled. Not the controlled, careful, composed smile she had worn for 26 months of keeping things managed. The other one.
The birthday cake one. Wide and unguarded and entirely hers. "I'm staying. " she said. Nadia stood in the doorway for exactly 2 seconds. Then she crossed the kitchen in six steps and threw both arms around Isabel's neck and held on with the complete unfiltered force of an 8-year-old who does not know how to be anything but entirely herself.
Isabel held her back. Eyes closed. Face pressed into Nadia's hair. Hands holding on. Ethan watched them.
He did not try to say anything. Some moments are complete without words. After a long moment, Nadia pulled back and looked at her father. "I told you. " she said. He raised an eyebrow.
"You told me what exactly? " "That it was going to be okay. " She said it with the absolute certainty of someone who has been right before and remembers it. "I told you that at dinner. Before the interview. " "You said trying is what counts. " "I said it was going to be okay. " She looked at him. "I was right. " He looked at his daughter. He looked at Isabel.