Chapter 27 Nora
Nora
We made rules.
This was David's idea, because David's response to emotional upheaval is to build a framework around it and call that progress.
To be fair, it's also my response, which is probably why we're so catastrophically suited to each other—two people who manage chaos by writing it a policy manual and then hoping the manual holds.
We met at a diner for lunch the day after the hearing.
A place neither of us had been before, so it was mutual ground.
Halfway between his office and the school.
We ordered food, sat in a booth across from each other, and built the scaffolding of whatever this is—like two people who have been burned badly enough to understand that love without structure is a fire with no perimeter.
I watched him draft the rules on a napkin and thought: this is how we survive each other.
He contains by perimeter. I contain by disappearing into usefulness.
And in that vinyl booth, with ketchup on the table between us, we did what we do best—turning a feeling into an agenda so we don't have to feel it raw.
It's tidy. It's reassuring. It's also, if I'm honest, exactly how two people manage to love each other hard and still leave.
The rules, such as they are:
One. Michaela doesn’t know. Not until the custody situation is resolved, and not until we’re sure—as in lifetime-commitment sure—that this is real. If we do this wrong and she gets caught in the wreckage, neither of us survives it.
Two. At school, we are Principal Harrison and Mr. Kingsley. No first names. No lingering. No adjustments to the professional dynamic that would give anyone a reason to raise an eyebrow.
Three. His friend group doesn’t know. Not yet.
They all have their suspicions—especially after I followed David out of the courtroom and Serena and Layla saw us in his home together.
But suspecting and confirming are different categories, and David would like to keep it that way for as long as possible because, and I quote, “if Dominic finds out, he’ll congratulate us in skywriting, and then the whole of Chicago will know. ”
Four. We don’t rush. We take our time. We get to know each other like adults who have things to lose, not like two people who’ve already proven that chemistry and proximity are a dangerous combination.
The rules are good. The rules are sensible. The rules were composed by two intelligent adults with the experience and emotional maturity to understand that love is not the same as readiness.
That was six days ago.
In the six days since, we’ve maintained the rules.
Publicly, professionally, in every way that can be observed and documented, we’ve been impeccable.
The pickup routine has continued—I sign Michaela out, she comes to my house, David collects her in the evening.
Marta’s coming back next week, which means the arrangement has an end date now, which means our afternoons are numbered, which is a thing I’m not thinking about yet.
Not much has changed so far, really.
Well, except the phone calls.
Every night. After Michaela is asleep. He calls.
He calls and we talk. About everything. About nothing.
He now knows I was a swimmer in college, that I once failed a driving test because I argued with the examiner about the logic of a one-way street, and that my comfort food is peanut butter toast with banana, which he finds “structurally concerning.”
I now know that he taught himself to braid hair from YouTube tutorials when Michaela was three, that he’s read every Roald Dahl book aloud to her twice, and that he cries at exactly one movie, which he refuses to name and which I’m determined to discover before Christmas.
We’re learning each other. In the dark. Through phone speakers. With the intimacy of two voices in two separate beds in two separate houses, saying things the daylight versions of ourselves would never risk.
Some nights the conversation drifts. His voice gets lower.
The pauses get longer. The things we say to each other stop being about childhood memories and comfort food and become about what I’m wearing, what he’s thinking, what we’d be doing if the rules didn’t exist and the miles of Chicago weren’t between us.
Those calls end differently. They end with my hand between my legs, breathing hard, listening to him breathe, the distance between us feeling like both the cruelest and the most necessary thing in the world.
Mostly, though, it’s just talking. And wanting. An extraordinary, sustained, low-grade fever of wanting that turns every pickup into an exercise in restraint and every “good night, Mr. Kingsley” into the biggest lie I tell all day.
Still, I keep waiting for the catch. For the evening when the phone doesn’t ring.
For the conversation where his voice goes careful and he says something that starts with I think we should and ends with my world contracting back to its original size.
The old pattern insists this is borrowed time.
The new evidence—his voice, his laugh, the way he says my name while he touches himself—says otherwise.
I’m trying very hard to believe the evidence.
But today isn’t about me or David. Or my inability to trust my own happiness.
Today is Wednesday. Michaela’s first visitation.
I watch from my office window for them to arrive.
A black SUV, expensive, idling in the pickup lane with the engine running.
Thomas Canning gets out. He’s in a navy blazer and khakis, and he looks .
. . kind. Which I hate, because I want to hate him.
But when he approaches the front entrance with a folder in his hand—the court-authorized pickup paperwork, which I’ve already reviewed, verified, and filed in triplicate because if there’s one thing I can control about this situation, it’s the documentation—he holds the door for a mother with a stroller before walking through.
He does not look like a villain.
That is, frankly, inconvenient.
He signs in at the front desk with a smile, offers his ID before Janice asks for it, and thanks her when she hands it back.
No irritation. No impatience. No performative charm turned up a little too high.
Just the behavior of a man who has spent his adult life moving through institutional spaces and understands that the people working in them deserve respect.
It would be easier if he were oily. Or smug. Or visibly complicit in the entire grotesque theater of this.
Instead, he looks like a decent man in loafers who has no idea he’s standing inside someone else’s lie.
I smooth my jacket, leave the shelter of my office, and walk out to reception.
“Mr. Canning,” I say.
He turns at once. Tall. Controlled. More silver at the temples than I expected. The kind of face that probably reassures investors and terrifies junior associates.
“Principal Harrison.” His voice is warm, measured. “Thank you for seeing me.”
This is not social. This is administrative. I hold onto that with both hands.
“As I explained to your counsel,” I say, “Michaela will be brought down from class at the scheduled time. You’ll sign her out here. Pickup and return must happen through the main office only. No classroom access, no unscheduled appearances, no deviation from the court order without written notice.”
“Understood.”
I glance at the folder in his hand. “I’ll need the order.”
I don’t need the order. I just want him to give it to me himself.
He passes it over immediately.
I review it, simply because it makes me feel less helpless. Temporary supervised visitation. One afternoon. Return by seven. Thomas Canning designated responsible adult.
“Mrs. Canning isn’t joining you to collect her daughter?” I ask, and there’s a pause as Thomas’s expression flickers uncomfortably.
“She thought it might be easier on Michaela if I handled pickup,” he says carefully.
Easier on Michaela.
I have to admire the elegance of the phrasing. It leaves all kinds of room for interpretation while saying almost nothing at all.
“I see,” I say, which is principal code for I do not, in fact, see, but I’m not starting a fire in reception.
He inclines his head once. “I’m aware this is a difficult situation.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me. It’s such a grand understatement that it loops around into absurdity.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
I hand the order back and nod to Janice, who presses the button to call down to Michaela’s classroom. My chest tightens. There’s no reason for it to happen this fast every time. And yet.
Thomas slips the folder under his arm and waits without fidgeting.
He doesn’t check his phone. Doesn’t sigh.
Doesn’t adopt the irritated posture of a man inconvenienced by procedural caution.
He just stands there in my reception area looking like the kind of person who tips valets at Christmas and remembers his dry cleaner’s name.
I dislike him on principle.
“Has Michaela been told the plan for today?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “Kelsie and I both spoke to her father’s counsel yesterday to confirm the timing.”
That is not what I asked, and I suspect he knows it.
“I meant by you,” I say. “Has anyone explained to Michaela what this afternoon will look like in concrete terms?”
His gaze sharpens as though he’s recalibrating me.
“I believe so,” he says. “But if there’s anything specific you think would make things easier on Michaela, I’d love to hear it. I want her to look forward to Wednesdays.”
That answer is so earnest it throws me off balance for half a second.
Before I can decide whether to be irritated by his reasonableness or suspicious of it, the inner office door opens and Michaela walks in with Ms. Ramos beside her.
My entire body locks.
She’s wearing her navy cardigan, her backpack on both shoulders, her hair in her usual two braids. Her face is composed. Not a natural expression on an eight-year-old. A defensive structure. I hate it on sight.