CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
RHETT
Month Four
Dating my ex-wife requires a spreadsheet.
Nora sends it from Oslo after I return to Stoneharbor. Columns include time zones, travel days, foundation meetings, therapy appointments, and dates labeled OURS in pale gray.
"This is romantic," I tell her on video.
"You once missed our anniversary because Damon scheduled a shoe campaign. Calendars are erotic now."
"Fair."
Our first long-distance date happens at seven in the morning for me and one in the afternoon for her. We both order breakfast and set our phones across the table. I eat eggs in the penthouse. She eats soup in a train station outside Bergen.
We ask questions people usually ask before marriage.
What does a good week look like?
How much time alone do you need?
What does public mean?
What happens when work conflicts?
"I don't want to be your default emergency contact without being part of the decision," Nora says.
"I don't want you to feel responsible for my mood after losses."
"You can have moods."
"I know. I don't want the household to organize around them."
We discuss money. Travel. Homes. Children, a question we postponed so long it became silence. Neither of us knows. For once, uncertainty does not become delay disguised as certainty.
At the next therapy session, Sloane asks whether dating feels different.
"Everything is more explicit," I say.
"That is good?"
"It is exhausting. Also good."
"What are you afraid to ask her?"
I look at the chain beneath my shirt.
"Whether she still wears the ring."
"Why haven't you asked?"
"Because I don't want the answer to become a score."
"Could you explain that before asking?"
Growth remains offensively simple in theory.
That night, I call Nora.
"I want to ask something symbolic and potentially stupid," I say.
"Your specialty."
"Do you still wear the ring on the chain? You do not owe me the answer, and I am not using it to measure us."
She reaches beneath her sweater and draws the ring into view.
"Yes."
Relief moves through me.
Then she says, "Do you?"
I show her mine.
Two rings on two screens, no longer legal evidence of a marriage.
"Why do you wear it?" she asks.
"To remember that love without skill can still do damage. And because I am not ready to pretend the marriage was only a mistake."
She touches her ring. "Same."
We do not put them back on our hands.
Not yet.