20. Graham
GRAHAM
T he eight-week mark lands on a Tuesday.
I know because I've been watching it approach the way you watch a deadline you haven't decided how to handle — aware of it, not ready for it, running parallel calculations in the background while everything else runs in the foreground.
Eight weeks was the agreement. Eight weeks was the word I used, the word she used, the word we both stood behind in my kitchen like it was a load-bearing wall.
Eight weeks is up on Friday.
I bring it up on Tuesday because I've never been someone who waits for a problem to arrive when I can address it three days early.
Marisol is at the kitchen table with Isla after school, working through what appears to be a worksheet about animals, which Isla is approaching with the same gravity she brings to everything she cares about.
She's in her school clothes still — a navy dress, white collar, one sock pulled up and one fallen down, curled ringlets of hair escaping whatever braid Marisol put them in this morning.
She looks like a kid who had a full day and is powering through on fumes and stubbornness, which, as far as I can tell, is her natural state.
Marisol is in a soft burgundy sweater, her black hair loose, leaning on one elbow while she reads from the sheet in Isla's direction. She looks up when I come in, clocks my expression, and looks back down.
"Which animal hibernates?" she asks Isla.
"Bears," Isla says, immediately. Then, pointing at me: "Like Graham in the mornings."
"I'm awake by six," I say.
"You're awake. That's different from ready."
Marisol presses her lips together and makes a note on the worksheet.
I pour coffee I don't need and stand at the counter and wait, because interrupting Isla's homework is not something I'm willing to do, and because I need another thirty seconds to land on the right opening.
Isla finishes the worksheet with the flourish of a diplomat signing a treaty. Marisol collects it, tells her she can watch one show before dinner, and Isla slides off her chair and disappears toward the living room at a speed that suggests she'd been waiting for exactly that sentence.
The kitchen settles.
"Friday's the eight-week mark," I say.
Marisol doesn't look up from stacking the papers. "I know."
"I'd like to extend the arrangement."
Now she looks up. Her dark eyes are steady and give nothing away, which is the version of Marisol I trust the least, because it means she's already thought about this and has a position locked in. "By how long?"
"Another eight weeks to start."
"To start," she repeats.
"Isla's still in active therapy. The school readiness assessment results come back in three weeks. It's not the right time to change her environment again."
"That's all true," she says. "It's also a very clean argument."
"It's the argument because it's accurate."
She puts the papers down and turns to face me fully, leaning back against the counter with her arms crossed over that burgundy sweater, and I've learned enough about Marisol Vega's body language to know that crossed arms doesn't mean closed off — it means she's holding her own ground while she listens. Two different things.
"The original agreement was eight weeks," she says. "You said temporary. I said I'd leave if it wasn't working. Those were the terms."
"The terms can be renegotiated."
"By who?"
"By the two people who made them."
"And which two people are we right now, Graham? Because that answer changes depending on where we're standing and what we're pretending the last eight weeks were."
The question lands harder than she probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended — with Marisol it's genuinely difficult to tell, and I've stopped assuming I know.
"We're two people doing right by Isla," I say. "That's the position I'm arguing from."
"Is it?"
"It's the one that matters."
"Sure." She tilts her head, and her hair falls over one shoulder. "So this isn't about the fact that this house ran like a disaster before you asked me to move in and you know it'll revert the moment I leave."
"I'm not disputing that."
"And there's nothing else driving it."
I hold her gaze. "I'm asking you to stay, Marisol. The reasons are what they are."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got right now."
She's quiet. In the living room, the sound of Isla's show drifts through — something animated, cheerful, entirely unaware of the conversation happening twenty feet away.
Marisol looks toward the sound, then back at me, and I watch something move through her face that she doesn't try hard enough to hide.
"Four weeks," she says. "Not eight. Four. And we revisit."
"Eight is more practical."
"Four is what I'm offering."
"You're negotiating against yourself. Four weeks isn't enough for the transition Dr. Patel is recommending."
"Graham." Her voice drops, not quiet enough to be a warning, but getting there. "Don't use Dr. Patel's timeline as a bargaining chip. It's beneath you."
She's right. I know she's right the moment she says it, and the irritation I feel is entirely directed at myself, which doesn't improve my posture. I set my coffee mug down on the counter and look at it instead of her for a moment.
"Six weeks," I say.
"You just came down from eight."
"You came up from four. We're negotiating."
"We're not negotiating. I'm telling you what I can give and you're trying to restructure it."
"I'm trying to get you to stay." The words come out before the edit catches them. Flat. Unambiguous. Without the professional scaffolding I'd intended to build around them.
Marisol stares at me.
I don't walk it back because I don't do that — I said it, I meant it, the ground doesn't shift just because something landed unexpectedly. But I feel the room change around it, the temperature of the conversation moving into territory the eight-week agreement was specifically designed to prevent.
"Six weeks," I say again, quieter. "For Isla."
I see it — the moment she decides to let me have the frame even though we both know what's inside it. It's a mercy, frankly, and I'm not sure I deserve it.
"Six weeks," she says. "Same terms."
"Same terms."
"And we don't do this again." She picks up the worksheet stack. "No more extensions. Six weeks, Graham, and then we figure out a real plan. One that doesn't keep pushing the same wall forward and calling it progress."
"Agreed."
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
She moves toward the hallway, and I stay at the counter, and from the living room Isla laughs at something on her show — full and unguarded, the laugh she didn't have eight weeks ago — and Marisol slows for just a breath when she hears it.
She doesn't stop. But she slows.
And I file that away with everything else I'm not supposed to be keeping.