How are you? He looked at that question for a long moment. Then he typed better than I've been in a while. still figuring some things out. But better. Her response came quickly.
That's enough. Better is enough. He read it three times. He set his phone on the table and looked at the ceiling and let himself feel without managing it, without containing it just for a moment. Just in the kitchen at 11 at night with nobody watching the specific terrifying genuine sensation of hope.
Not the distant theoretical kind. Not the kind you keep behind glass where it can't hurt you. The real kind. The kind with weight and temperature. The kind that requires something of you.
He sat with it. He didn't run from it. Friday came and went. A normal workday. He and Clare passed in the hallway twice and talked once about a contractor issue.
And everything was professional and fine. And underneath everything was not professional and not simply fine. And they both knew it. and neither of them pushed it. And there was something almost unbearably good about that about two adults choosing the pace deliberately together without panic. Saturday morning te-ball day.
Ethan was awake at 6:00 because Lily was awake at 6:00 because Lily was incapable of sleeping past 6 on a day she was excited about. He braided her hair he'd learned on YouTube. A year after Sarah died, sitting at the kitchen table at 11 at night with tutorial videos because Lily had come home from school saying the other girls had braids and he was not going to be the father who couldn't do his daughter's hair. He wasn't good at it. Exactly.
But he was consistent and Lily had decided consistent was good enough, which was one of her many acts of daily grace toward him. They arrived at the park early. Other families were filtering in. Lily spotted her teammates immediately and sprinted toward them with a complete wholehearted commitment to velocity that was her primary mode of travel. And Ethan stood at the edge of the field and watched her go and felt the familiar mix of pride and fierceness that living with a 7-year-old produced in him roughly 40 times a day.
He checked his phone. Nothing from Clare. He told himself this was fine. He'd said she was welcome. She'd said she'd come.
But things came up and it was early and he hadn't confirmed and it was genuinely okay either way. He believed this approximately 40%. 20 minutes passed, the game started. Lily was batting third and she knew it and was vibrating with impatience in the dugout in a way that was visible from the stands. Ethan was standing near the fence because he was constitutionally unable to sit in bleachers when he could stand close enough to watch her face.
He heard footsteps behind him. Then he heard, "Sorry, parking." He turned. Clareire Bennett was slightly out of breath and holding a handmade sign poster board. Block letters glitter exactly as promised that read Lily Parker future hall of famer.