I looked through the windshield at the afternoon traffic.
“Do you think people find each other for a reason?”
“I think people find each other,” she said. “And then they decide what to do with the chance.”
I smiled.
“That sounds more like you.”
“It is.”
She paused.
“Come home, Ethan.”
And for the first time in my life, the word home meant more than a place where I could close the door against the world.
Two years later, Diane and I were still not married.
We still kept separate homes.
I had my workshop, my mornings, and my quiet apartment. She had her house, her garden, her design business, and her reading room.
We had keys to each other’s doors.
We ate dinner together most nights.
We argued about paint colors, business decisions, and whether I was allowed to repair something before she’d finished explaining what was wrong with it.
