Then he put the phone in his jacket pocket and finished his coffee and did not think about it for the rest of breakfast, which was an act of discipline that cost him more than it should have. The thing about Daniel's message was not what it said. It was the timing. It arrived on a Saturday morning while Ethan was sitting across from his daughter and the woman who had shown up with a glittery sign and it felt like an intrusion from a world he had just barely started to step away from the specific world where he was the man with too much history and not enough future. He didn't respond.
Not that day. After breakfast, they drove back to the park so Lily could play on the equipment because she had determined that the morning's victory deserved additional celebration. Lily ran ahead. Ethan and Clare walked behind her at the pace of two people who have something to say and are finding their way toward it. You went quiet at the diner, Clare said.
I got a text. She looked at him. Daniel, he said. She stopped walking. Not dramatically.
Just a full stop. the way people stop when they need their body to be still so they can think clearly. What did he say? That he wants to apologize to both of us. She looked at Lily who was already on the climbing structure with the focused intention of a mountaineer approaching a summit. Then she looked back at Ethan.
How do you feel about that? I don't know yet. He said honestly. You I've been waiting for an apology from Daniel Ross for about 14 months. She said I'm not sure I still need it.
She paused. But I think that says more about where I am now than about what he did. What did he do? Ethan asked, not pushing, just asking. Asking because she'd given him a shape of it last Friday, and he'd been holding the shape without the full picture.
She was quiet for a moment. They'd started walking again slowly at the pace of the conversation. I told you about the plant, the rewriting, the slow shrinking. She exhaled. What I didn't tell you is that toward the end, I had stopped trusting my own work.
I was second-guessing designs I knew were good. I was asking for approval on decisions I'd been making confidently for years. She paused. I presented a residential concept to a client, a really beautiful concept, one of the best things I'd done. And the client loved it.
And I came home and told Daniel, and he said, "Well, clients don't always know what they want." Her voice was steady, but there was something underneath it. The kind of steadiness that has been earned through practice, says, "I almost believed him. I almost went back to the client and walked it back." She shook her head.
I didn't. But the fact that I almost did that took me a long time to forgive myself for. Ethan was quiet for a moment. You don't need to forgive yourself for that. I know that now.