And they passed between them the easy ordinary language of two people who have decided each other is worth the trouble. She was almost asleep when she hung up. She fell asleep with her phone on the pillow next to her face like a teenager, which was embarrassing and true. She called in the morning. She called the morning after that too and the morning after that.
By the end of week three, it had become a thing, not a rule, not an expectation, just a rhythm they had arrived at without discussing it. The way two people who are paying attention to each other find rhythms without needing to name them. Morning calls, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 40. Evening calls when the day had been hard or particularly good or particularly strange. Texts throughout the day that ranged from substantive to entirely stupid.
And the entirely stupid ones were she was finding the ones she saved. Andre Maya just informed me that the reason I can't grow basil on the kitchen window sill is a communication breakdown between me and the plant. I have been living with a philosopher and didn't know it. Clare, she's not wrong. You do have a history of poor communication with living things.
Andre, I communicate fine, Clare. It took you 2 years to say anything to me. Andre, I was communicating. You weren't listening. She was in a production meeting when that last text arrived.
And she read it under the table and pressed her lips together hard so she didn't smile visibly. And Helen looked at her from across the table and said something funny about the gala catering timeline. And Clare said, "No, sorry. " Completely focused, which was mostly true. The month 2 call, the one Dedray had predicted with the certainty of prophecy, happened on a Tuesday night at 11:14. It started with a missed call.
Andre had tried to reach her at 9:30, and she'd been in a production meeting that ran long. And by the time she saw the missed call, it was after 11:00 and she'd had a day that compressed itself to something that felt less like 24 hours and more like a sustained exercise in managing other people people's anxiety while concealing her own. She called him back. He answered on the first ring, which meant he'd been awake. Sorry, she said immediately.
The meeting went long. I should have texted. It's fine. She could hear something in his voice. Not anger, not anything as clean and manageable as anger.
Something quieter than that. It's not fine, she said. Tell me a pause. I had a thing today, he said with Maya. She had a rough day at school.
Some social stuff with her friend group. I don't fully understand the details, but she was upset. Really upset. And I handled it fine. I got her through it.