CHAPTER TEN
Jessica
The first time Jessica tried to draw for more than thirty minutes, she cried because the bird’s wing looked wrong. Not bad. Wrong. Her hand had forgotten nothing. Her brain simply couldn't seem to hold a line from beginning to end.
She sat at Natalie’s dining table with paper spread around her, Sophia’s latest update open on her phone, and the same half-finished illustration she had been staring at for twenty minutes.
A small bird stood beneath a tree while rain fell around it. Simple. She had drawn hundreds of more complicated images. The wing still looked ridiculous.
Jessica erased it again.
Natalie came through the kitchen carrying grocery bags. “You’re working.”
“I’m failing.”
“Promising start.”
“The wing is wrong.”
Natalie put down the bags.“Which wing?”
Jessica looked offended. “That one.”
“They look the same.”
“You have no artistic integrity.”
“Half my office wall is finger paint.”
“Exactly.”
Natalie walked closer. She looked at the page. “What’s the bird doing?”
“Hiding from a storm.”
“Smart bird.”
“She refuses shelter because she thinks she should be able to fly through it.”
Natalie slowly turned her head.
Jessica gave her a look. “Don’t.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say perhaps subtlety is not your strongest artistic instinct right now.”
Jessica threw the eraser at her.
Natalie caught it. “Violence. Excellent. You’re healing.”
Despite herself, Jessica laughed. The laugh faded when she looked at the illustration. “I started this before Sophia was born.”
“I remember.”
“The ending was different.”
“What happened?”
“The bird built her own shelter.”
Natalie pulled out the chair across from her. “And now?”
Jessica looked toward the rain beyond the window. “Now I think maybe someone offers her shelter.”
“That sounds healthier.”
“It sounds sentimental.”
“You write books for children.”
“Children deserve standards.”
Natalie smiled.
Jessica picked up the pencil again. The bird still looked wrong. Maybe the wing wasn't the problem.
Kane Paper House occupied the fourth floor of a narrow building in SoHo.
Jessica hadn't been inside in almost two months.
Natalie drove her there on a Friday morning after Dr. Jackson cleared Jessica to resume light work as tolerated.
The elevator opened directly into the studio. Jessica stepped out and stopped.
Her assistant, Zoe Kim, looked up from behind the reception desk. “Do not cry.”
Jessica immediately cried.
Zoe came around the desk. “I specifically told you not to.”
“You’re terrible at instructions.”
They hugged carefully.
Jessica had started Kane Paper House eight years earlier with two illustration clients and a line of hand-painted wedding invitations she had expected to sell for six months.
Instead the stationery had taken off. Then children’s publishers found her work. Eventually she hired Zoe, then two part-time designers, then rented this space. The studio was hers in a way the apartment with Alex had once been theirs.
For months, nearly every decision had been organized around pregnancy, doctors, the NICU, or the state of her marriage. Standing here reminded Jessica that she had built something before any of those things went wrong, and it still belonged to her.
She didn't need Kane Paper House to prove she could live without Alex. She needed it because she wanted a life large enough that staying with him, if she ever chose it, would be a choice rather than a retreat. Jessica needed that.
She walked slowly past shelves of paper samples and framed book covers. Her desk sat near the windows. Nothing had changed. Except everything.
Zoe followed her. “I moved all the deadlines. No one is angry.”
“I know.”
“You are not doing guilt.”
“I know.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying that like a hostage.”
Jessica smiled. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
The first hour exhausted her. She answered emails. Reviewed proofs. Made three notes on a cover mock-up. Then stared at her computer as if she had just completed manual labor. She hated how weak she still felt.
Zoe appeared with tea. “Home.”
“I’ve been here ninety minutes.”
“Impressive. Go away.”
“I own this company.”
“And yet I control your calendar.”
Jessica accepted the tea. Her phone vibrated.
Alex. Sophia finished almost the entire feeding. Nurse says she recovered well afterward.
A photograph followed. Sophia asleep against Alex’s chest during skin-to-skin time. Jessica’s breath caught. Alex’s face wasn't visible.
Only his dark shirt, one large hand against Sophia’s back, her tiny body curled beneath his chin. No message asking Jessica to respond. No question. Just information she would want. Jessica stared too long.
Zoe pretended not to notice. “You want me to leave?”
“No.”
“Was that Alex?”
“Yes.”
Zoe sat on the edge of the desk. Jessica had told almost no one at work about the separation. She hadn't needed to. Zoe knew enough.
“You okay?”
Jessica looked at the photograph again.“No idea.”
“Helpful.”
“He’s changing.”
Zoe didn't answer immediately.
Jessica glanced up. “That wasn't permission for a facial expression.”
“I have no control over my face.”
“You absolutely do. I have seen you with clients.”
Zoe smiled. “What kind of changing?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s less convincing.”
Jessica set the phone down. “He listens now.”
“Low bar.”
“Yes.”
“He respects what I say.”
“Also low.”
“I know.”
“He’s doing everything for Sophia without expecting me to organize him.”
“That one is slightly higher.”
Jessica rubbed her forehead. “He started therapy.”
Zoe looked surprised.
“He didn’t tell me at first.”
“Why not?”
“He said he didn’t want it to become another thing he was showing me.”
Zoe considered that. “That’s mature.”
“Exactly.” Jessica looked toward the windows. “I don’t want to notice.”
“Why?”
“Because noticing makes it harder to leave.”
Zoe’s voice softened. “Do you want to leave?”
Jessica swallowed. “I wanted to want to.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Zoe stood. “You don’t have to decide today.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that.”
“Maybe because you keep trying to decide today.”
Jessica sighed.
Zoe smiled sweetly. “I’ll be in the other room.”
Alex came to the studio just after four.
Jessica had asked him to bring a storage box from the apartment containing original sketches she needed for a publisher.
She expected him to send someone. He arrived himself.
He knocked on the open studio door despite having walked in without knocking for years.
Jessica looked up. “You can come in.”
Alex entered carrying the archive box. His gaze moved around the studio. Something in his face tightened. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Alex.”
“I haven’t been here in a while.”
“That’s because you’ve been busy.”
He heard the edge.
Jessica regretted it.
Alex set the box on a worktable.
“I brought the blue portfolio too. It was beside the box.”
“Thank you.”
“And your gray cardigan.”
She looked at him.
He immediately raised both hands. “You left it over the chair. I know it’s the one you wear when the air conditioning is too cold.”
Jessica stared at him.
“Did I overstep?”
“No.”
He nodded. Then seemed uncertain what to do with himself.
Years ago Alex had treated the studio like an extension of home.
He had designed the shelving. Chosen the lighting.
Once spent an entire Sunday fixing a storage wall after Jessica mentioned that the drawers stuck.
Now he stood three feet inside the room like a visitor. Jessica hated the sadness of it.
“How was Sophia?” She asked.
“Good.”
“You sent the picture.”
Alex’s mouth softened.“She slept like that for almost forty minutes.”
“I saw.”
“She drooled on me.”
“Your first parental sacrifice.”
“I’m expecting a medal.”
The joke escaped before either of them could avoid it. Silence followed. Alex’s expression changed.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Jessica said. “It was funny.”
“It was terrible.”
“Both things can be true.”
The fact that he could make the joke without becoming defensive unsettled her.
Alex glanced toward her drawing table.
“The bird.”
Jessica looked at him.
“You remember?”
“You drew six versions of it on the back of a restaurant menu.”
“That was months ago.”
“I remember.”
Of course he did. Alex had always remembered her work. Maybe that was another reason this hurt. He hadn't been a bad husband every day. If he had, Jessica would have known what to do with him.
“What happens to her?” he asked.
“The bird?”
“Yes.”
“I changed the story.”
He leaned against the edge of the table. “How?”
“She doesn’t build the shelter herself anymore.”
Alex looked at her.
Jessica immediately wished she had chosen another topic.
“What does she do?”
“Someone offers her one.”
“And?”
“She says no.”
His gaze remained on her.
“Why?”
“Because she thinks accepting help means she can’t fly.”
Alex looked toward the unfinished illustration. “What changes her mind?”
Jessica swallowed. “I haven’t written that part yet.”
He nodded. No interpretation. No romantic metaphor. No attempt to explain the bird back to her.
Jessica was absurdly grateful.
Alex glanced at the clock. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to.”
The words came out before she thought about them.
He stopped.
Jessica’s pulse jumped.
“I mean you can stay for coffee.”
Alex searched her face. “Do you want me to?”
The question no longer felt like an accusation.
“Yes.”
His shoulders lowered slightly. “Okay.”
They sat in the small conference area near the windows.
Alex drank coffee. Jessica drank tea because caffeine had become another item on the endless list of things people discussed around her as if she were a medical chart.
For several minutes, they talked about Sophia.
Then the conversation drifted. Zoe’s ongoing war with a difficult paper supplier.
Graham threatening to demolish an architect’s scale model after someone left it in a conference room.
A bakery near the hospital that sold terrible croissants Alex kept buying because the woman behind the counter remembered his order.
Jessica laughed. It was the easiest twenty minutes they had shared since before Sophia’s birth. That frightened her.
Alex must have sensed the change because he looked at his watch and stood. “I should let you rest.”
Jessica’s first instinct was to tell him she wasn't tired. She was. “Okay.”
He gathered his cup. At the door he looked back. “I’m really happy you’re drawing again.”
Jessica nodded. “Me too.”
Alex left. She remained at the table. Her body felt tired. Her mind didn't. She looked at the bird drawing. The story needed another character. Not a rescuer. Someone who simply left the shelter open. Jessica picked up her pencil. This time the wing came out right.