“What do you want to do?”
I looked out the kitchen window.
The neighbor’s kid was on the bicycle again.
Back and forth on the same stretch of sidewalk, easy and unhurried, going nowhere and not minding.
“I want to take some time,” I said.
“Real time.
Not a week.
Months.”
“That’s your right,” Patricia said.
“I know,” I said.
“I’m starting to remember that.”
Ryan moved into a furnished apartment in February.
Not far — twelve minutes, which I noticed and didn’t say anything about.
He was there every morning for drop-off when it was his day, and every evening for pickup when it was his.
He was on time.
He texted when he said he would.
He did not push.
Toby adjusted the way children adjust — not without noticing, but with a practicality that sometimes broke my heart and sometimes steadied me.
“Do I have two houses now?” he asked one evening in March, sitting on the kitchen counter while I made dinner.
“Kind of,” I said.
“You have this house and Daddy’s apartment.”
“Marcus has two houses,” he said.
“He says it’s okay because he gets two birthday cakes.”
“That’s a solid way to look at it,” I said.
