I could be tired without being accused of neglect.
I could disagree with someone without wondering whether the disagreement would become a three-day punishment.
Peace, I was discovering, wasn’t the absence of love.
It was the absence of fear.
That realization should have made everything simple.
Instead, it made me afraid of what I was beginning to want.
Diane was fourteen years older than me. She had been married to a man she deeply loved. She had built a successful design business, raised her daughter, and learned to live independently.
I was a man with a small workshop, a rented apartment, and a history of confusing endurance with devotion.
What could I possibly offer her?
And what would happen when she eventually realized that the age difference was more than a number?
I tried to convince myself that I was simply grateful for her friendship.
Then one evening, while we were clearing the dinner table, her fingers brushed mine.
