"Okay," Greg said. "That's it." "Okay, what do you want me to say?" "Something useful, Ethan. I've been waiting for this phone call for about 14 months.
Greg's voice was warm and slightly exasperated. I don't have useful things to say. I have finally things to say. She deserves If you say she deserves someone without baggage, I will drive to Denver and physically remove that sentence from your vocabulary. Ethan stopped.
You are 35 years old. Greg said, "You have raised a remarkable human being, mostly by yourself for 4 years. You get up every day and you do it right. You are a good man and a good father and a good engineer and you are not the damaged goods you've been cataloging yourself as. A pause.
And if this woman sat on your lap and then didn't take the empty seat, "Ethan, she already knows the baggage. She's telling you she wants to carry some of it." Ethan looked at the table. "I'm scared," he said. "I know.
What if it goes wrong?" "It might," Greg said simply. Most things might go wrong. Sarah might have lived a hundred years and something else would have taken you both eventually. Fear of going wrong is not a reason to not start.
When did you get wise? I've always been wise. You just never called on Thursdays before. After he hung up, Ethan sat at the table for a while. The house was quiet.
Lily was asleep. The lamp in the living room made a warm light across the carpet where she'd left her shoes again. and he looked at those shoes, small purple, one of them, slightly unlaced, and thought about what it meant to have built something real out of the wreckage of the worst years of his life. He picked up his phone. He typed, "Lily has declared that you remember which books she likes." This was stated as a formal endorsement.
"I thought you should know." He put the phone down. It buzzed 30 seconds later. Claire, that child is the best judge of character I have ever encountered him. She also says your sign for T-ball better be loud.
Clare I have already started designing it. It involves glitter. Him. Lily will love that. Clare I know.
A pause. Then her next text. How are you doing Ethan? Not how's Lily? Not how's work.