A pause. Then Clare, don't watch. Andre, too late. Another pause. Longer, Clare.
12 months. He looked at that for a moment. Then he typed back the only true thing. Andre, I'll be here. He started the truck, pulled away from the curb, merged onto the airport road, heading back toward the neighborhood, toward the house, toward Maya, who was at Mrs.
Pattersons and would want a full debrief on the weekend toward the work week starting tomorrow and the crown molding job and the seven people who depended on him and the porch where he and Clare had sat for 2 years almost at admitting something and had finally in the last 9 months started saying it out loud. He was 3 mi from the airport when his phone buzzed on the seat. He waited until the next red light to look. It was from a number he didn't recognize. Atlanta area code.
He opened it. It read, "This is Ryan Caldwell. I got your number from James Morgan. I apologize for the intrusion. I wanted to say something I should have said in September.
What I saw at that dinner was real. I'm glad she found it. Take care of her the right way. That's all. " Andre read the message twice, sat at the red light for the 2 seconds remaining before it went green. Then he put the phone face down on the seat and drove home through the Atlanta Sunday.
And when he got to the house, he sat in the driveway for a moment and looked at the space next door Clare's front door, her porch, the hanging plant she'd left in his care that he had managed to keep alive through 5 months of honest effort and two consultations with a garden center employee. The plant was fine. He was fine. 12 months he got out of the truck, locked it, and went inside to call Maya and start the week. The second six months were different from the first.
Not easier, different. The way the second year of something hard is different from the first. You still feel the weight, but you know where to put your feet. Clare said yes to Helen on Monday morning. The same Monday she flew back to New York.
Standing in her Crown Heights apartment with her carry-on, still not fully unpacked because she'd been home for put 8 hours spent most of them on a porch in Atlanta. Helen said three words in response. I knew you would. Then she immediately sent a 40point email about phase 2 priorities, which confirmed to Clare that Helen Jiao's version of celebrating good news was assigning more work. The second 6 months had structure that the first hadn't.
Andre came to New York in October, 4 weeks after she went back. He came alone. And Maya had school as Clare had firmly established and he came for 4 days which was more than a weekend and less than enough. And those four days were the clearest evidence yet that what they had built over a phone and a thousand miles was not a simulation of a relationship but the actual thing. She showed him her Brooklyn neighborhood, the corner store with the Jamaican beef patties, the subway line she took every morning.