She pressed her free hand against her mouth. Her eyes were wet and she was very clearly not going to cry in front of James Carter on the kitchen floor if she had any say in the matter, which she apparently did not because one tear got through and then a second and then she stopped fighting it and it lasted about 45 seconds, quiet and contained, and he sat beside her on the floor and let it happen without comment or management. When it passed, she straightened up, wiped her face with the back of her hand, looked at Noah, who had watched the whole thing with enormous eyes, and now reached up and patted her face with one flat baby palm in what was clearly a gesture of comfort, delivered with no understanding of its own accuracy. Sophia let out a breath that sounded like 6 months of held air. "He does that sometimes," she said.
"Just knows." "Yeah," James said. He was watching the baby's face. They do that. He got up off the floor and offered his hand.
She took it and he pulled her up and neither of them let go for one second longer than was necessary. Then they both let go and the moment passed into the ordinary morning. That afternoon, Ava came home from a friend's house, read the mood in the kitchen, the way she always read moods, and said without preamble, "Did something good happen?" James looked at Sophia. Sophia looked at Ava.
Yeah, James said. Something good happened. Ava nodded satisfied and went to find Noah. January arrived with the cold that Charlotte does in January. Not brutal, but serious.
A cold that meant business without overcommitting. Sophia found an apartment the first week of the month. She told James about it on a Thursday evening, and he heard in her voice the careful balance she was trying to maintain, excited about her independence without it sounding like she was eager to leave. He went to see it with her on Saturday. Two-bedroom on the second floor of a building 12 minutes from his house.
Good light, good landlord, a small outdoor space off the second bedroom that she was already imagining as a place Noah could eventually play. He walked through it with her and said, "It's good." "It is," she said. "12 minutes," he said. "I know," she said.
They looked at each other. "Ava is going to want to see Noah every week," he said. "Noah is going to want to see Ava every week," she said. And he said, and then he stopped because the rest of that sentence was something they hadn't said yet. And this was not the place and not the moment.
And he was still practicing, still learning the difference between feeling something and saying it at the right time. And she repeated back to him, leaving it open, giving him time. And we figure the rest out, he said. The way we've been figuring it out. Slow, she said.
Agreed. Honest, she said. Honest. She looked around the apartment. I'm going to take it.