She always was, she said. Even in school, barely knowing her, she was the kind of person who saw things clearly and didn't need to make you feel bad for the things she saw. He looked at her. Why didn't you like her?
He asked. Back then. Rebecca looked at the counter. I think because she made me feel shallow, she said.
Not intentionally, just by existing. A pause. She was comfortable with things I was always trying to transcend. Ordinary things, simple things.
And I didn't understand at 24 that the things I was trying to transcend were probably the things that actually mattered. He didn't say anything. Take care of her. Rebecca said quietly.
I mean that. He looked at his ex-wife, this woman he had spent nine years with, who had been wrong about so many things and right about others, who had caused him a particular kind of slow damage that had taken years to repair, and who was now standing in his kitchen asking him to take care of someone else. I intend to, he said. She nodded.
She picked up her bag. I'm going to do better at calling before I come over, she said. I'd appreciate that. She almost smiled.
Tell Lily I'll call this weekend. I will. He walked her out. He stood in the doorway after she left and watched her taillights disappear down the quiet street.
Then he called Sophie. She answered on the second ring. Can I come over? He said.
I'm here, she said. He walked across the driveway. She opened the door before he knocked. She had the dish towel again.
She was always cooking in the evenings, always in the middle of something, and she took one look at his face and stepped back to let him in. Rebecca came by, he said. I know, Sophie said. I saw her car.
They went to the kitchen. She poured him something wine this time, not coffee, which meant she had assessed the situation correctly. He sat down. He told her everything.
Not in the edited careful way of someone managing information, but directly and completely. What Rebecca had said, what she had admitted, what the conversation had actually been about underneath the surface. Sophie listened without interrupting. When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.
She came back to tell you the truth, Sophie said. Yes. Even when the truth was unflattering to her. Yes.
Sophie looked at her wine glass, then she did the right thing, she said simply. Sophie, she tried to damage what we have. And then she came back and told you she did it and why, Sophie said. Which is more than most people do.
She looked at him. I'm not saying it wasn't a crummy thing to do. I'm saying she corrected it, and I'd rather give her credit for that than hold on to the other part. He looked at her.
You're going to make me be fair to my ex-wife, he said. Only when she deserves it, Sophie said. Right now does." He sat with that. "Does it bother you?" he said.
"That she came over, that she's" he searched for the word "still a presence." "She's Lily's mother." Sophie said. "She's always going to be a presence. And honestly, Caleb" she stopped chewing something. "An ex-wife who wants to make things right is easier than one who doesn't.
I'd rather navigate this than the alternative." He looked at her across the table. "You know what I keep thinking about?" he said. "What?" "I keep thinking about the fact that you did all of this." He gestured a small, inadequate gesture at the kitchen and the house and the space between them and everything that had accumulated there over the past year. "You did all of this without any guarantee.
You fell in love with someone who was scared and said the wrong thing and needed eight months to say the right thing. And you just waited. You trusted the thing itself." Sophie held his eyes. "I believed in what I could see." she said.
"And what I could see was worth waiting for." He reached across the table. She put her hand in his. "I'm sorry it took me so long." he said. "Don't be." she said.
"You came when you were ready. That's the only way it could have worked." He looked at their hands on the table. Then he looked at her. "I want to ask you something." he said.
She waited. "I want to ask you if you'd consider" he stopped. Took a breath. Started again with the directness that was at its core his truest quality.
"I want us to move in together. Not right away. Not without a conversation about what that means for Lily and what it means for both of us. But I want to have that conversation.
Because I'm done approaching this like it's something that might not last. He held her eyes. "I want to approach it like it's something I intend to build." The kitchen was absolutely still. Sophie looked at him for a long time.
He did not look away. He had learned over these months to hold space for the way Sophie processed things, to not rush her, to not fill the silence with nervous elaboration. He'd learned that her stillness was not absence, but presence. She was entirely there.
She was just thinking with her whole self. "Lily," she said finally. "Lily loves you," he said. "You know that." "I know she does now," Sophie said.
"But this is different. This is permanent in a way that the rest of it hasn't been yet. I want to make sure we do it right for her." "So do I," he said. "That's why I'm not saying tomorrow.
I'm saying let's have the conversation. Let's make a plan. Let's do it the way you do everything with intention." Something moved in Sophie's expression. Something that wasn't quite a smile, but was the shape of one.