Chapter 10
Nora
“Serena. I’m . . . adjacent to Nora’s student.” She gestures at Michaela, now lying flat on her back on the grass while Archie stands over her like a furry canopy.
“Adjacent,” Miranda repeats, and I can hear her filing the word away for later.
A shriek from the grass derails whatever Miranda was building toward.
Amelia has found the Michaela-Archie pile and is attempting to join it by climbing directly onto Archie’s back.
Angus follows, because Angus follows Amelia into all disasters, and within seconds there are three children and one golden retriever tangled together on the lawn in a heap of limbs, laughter, and fur.
“Oh my God,” Serena says, watching the pile with mild alarm. “Is the dog OK with that?”
“Archie would let a toddler perform dental surgery on him and wag his tail through the whole thing.” I crouch to untangle Angus’s foot from the leash. “He’s fine.”
Serena watches Amelia attempt to braid Archie’s ear while Angus pats his tail. Michaela directs operations with the authority of an air traffic controller.
“Yours?” Serena asks, nodding at Amelia and Angus. The question is casual—the standard park-encounter inquiry when small children are present.
“My sister’s,” I say, gesturing to Miranda.
My voice is normal. My smile is normal. Everything about my external presentation is completely, unremarkably normal.
Inside, the word yours lands like a thumb on a bruise.
It shouldn’t still hurt. It’s been five years since the final round of IVF failed, and four since Greg sat across from me at our kitchen table and told me he’d been seeing someone from his office—a woman named Claire who was, as he put it with characteristic delicacy, “able to give me what I need.” As if a child were a deliverable.
As if I were a vendor who’d failed to meet specifications.
They have a son now. Oliver. I know because Greg’s mother still sends Christmas cards—which is either an act of extraordinary kindness or extraordinary cruelty, and I’ve never been able to determine which.
I’ve done the work. Therapy. A clean divorce on paper, devastating in practice. A life rebuilt around a career I love, a sister who won’t let me disappear, and a dog who needs me in the uncomplicated way only animals can.
What therapy couldn’t entirely fix, I suspect, is the part I don’t say aloud.
Greg didn’t have to fight to leave. I made it graceful for him.
I held the door open because that was the role I understood—the helper, the steady one, the woman who makes sure everyone else’s transition is smooth.
I thought it was kindness at the time. Most of me still thinks it was.
But somewhere underneath, quieter, there’s a version of me who wonders whether I ever stood in the center of my own life hard enough to be missed when I stepped out of it.
I don’t spiral at the word yours anymore. I don’t cry in the fertility clinic parking lot. I don’t google Claire’s Instagram at two in the morning or calculate that Oliver would be starting preschool this year.
Not often, anyway.
“They’re adorable,” Serena says, watching Angus attempt to feed Archie a leaf. “How old?”
“Five and three,” Miranda says. “Amelia’s the diplomat, Angus is the anarchist.”
“Miranda jokes that Amelia negotiates like a trade envoy and Angus governs like a small, sticky-handed dictator,” I add, keeping my voice light. Fluent in the language of other people’s children.
Serena laughs. Miranda catches my eye—quick, knowing, the look that says I see you performing, and I love you, and I’m sorry.
I give her the tiniest shrug. It’s the shape of my life, really.
A charming anecdote, warm delivery, the exact right amount of rueful affection—the tone of a woman who loves children so much it is almost funny that she is not raising any.
I’ve practiced this until it sounds effortless.
It isn’t effortless. It’s the cover charge for being allowed in the room without announcing my own sob story.
Michaela extracts herself from the pile and bounces over to Serena with Archie in tow. “Serena. I need you to know that Archimedes is the best dog I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of dogs.”
“I can see that. You have grass in your hair.”
“That’s from the defense proceedings.” Michaela turns to me. “Miss Nora, can Archimedes come to our apartment sometime? I want to introduce him to my room. I think he’d find it intellectually stimulating.”
“Your room is ninety percent stuffed animals and law books,” Serena points out.
“Exactly. Intellectually stimulating.”
I smile despite myself. “That’s something you’d need to ask your dad about.”
“Dad will say we’ll see, which means no.”
“Then perhaps we start there and negotiate.”
“I respect the process.” She turns back to Archie and drops to her knees. “Don’t worry. I’m working on it.”
Serena checks her watch and winces. “All right, counselor—as much as I support this new canine merger, we do actually have to go.”
Michaela whips around. “What? No. I just got here.”
“We’ve been at the park for an hour already.”
“But we’ve only been right here for a few minutes. That is not enough time to complete park operations.”
Archie noses Michaela’s pocket hopefully, in case park operations involve snacks. Amelia immediately takes this as proof that the meeting should continue indefinitely.
“He likes her,” Amelia announces.
“Everyone likes me,” Michaela says, with the confidence of a child who has never once doubted her own market value.
Serena pinches the bridge of her nose, though she’s smiling. “I can’t believe I’m about to argue with an eight-and-a-half-year-old litigator in public. But here we are. Shoes on, coat zipped, let’s go.”
Michaela plants her feet. “I want to stay with the A-team.”
“The A-team?” Miranda echoes.
Michaela points in rapid succession. “Archimedes. Angus. Amelia.”
Angus, hearing his name, yells, “AY-TEAM!” and falls sideways into the grass for no discernible reason.
“I mean,” Miranda says, “that is a pretty strong lineup.”
“It is,” Michaela says. “And I am an essential director.”
Serena folds her arms. “I don’t dispute your value. I’m still taking you home.”
Michaela looks at me, as if I might overrule the entire adult world. “Miss Nora.”
There are few sounds more dangerous than a tiny, hopeful girl using your name like it’s a lever.
Before I can answer, Miranda swoops in with the cheerful diplomacy of a woman who has negotiated hostage situations involving juice boxes and screen time.
“Maybe not today,” she says, crouching a little so she’s closer to Michaela’s eye level. “But I bet we could arrange another park meet-up soon. An official one with the whole A-team. There’ll be proper notice and far too many snacks.”
Michaela narrows her eyes, evaluating the offer for weaknesses. “How soon is soon?”
“Soon enough that you can start preparing your legal strategy immediately,” Serena says. “I’ll organize it with your dad myself.”
That, apparently, is the correct answer.
Michaela brightens. “Fine. But I want advance disclosure about snack options.”
“Understandable,” Miranda says gravely.
Serena exhales like she’s been granted a stay of execution. “Bless you, random gorgeous mediator.”
“I do what I can,” Miranda says.
Serena smiles and looks at me. “David has your number, right?”
“He does,” I say, trying to ignore the flutter in my stomach at his name. And the smaller, sharper thing underneath it—that Serena is organizing David’s Saturday while I organized his emergency, and somehow those feel like very different levels of access.
Michaela gives Archie one last fierce hug, then turns to me and gives me a quick one too, all elbows and sincerity and grass-stained coat.
She fits against me like she was always supposed to be there, and the thought is so dangerous I let go before it can take root.
“Goodbye, Miss Nora. Goodbye, Archimedes. Remain honorable.”
“We’ll do our best,” I tell her as Serena steers her away by the shoulders.
They head down the path, Michaela half-skipping, half-arguing about whether a future playdate should include contractual terms. Archie watches them go with soulful betrayal, his tail slowing to a mournful swish.
Mine would be about that age. If any of it had worked. Eight, maybe nine—old enough for opinions and arguments and half-skipping down a path while someone who loves them tries to keep up.
I don’t let the thought finish. I’ve gotten very good at that.
“How,” Miranda demands the second they’re out of easy earshot, “is that little girl on hugging terms with your dog?”
I stare after Michaela for a second longer, buying myself time, and let out a breath.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, aiming for nonchalant.
Miranda makes a sound like a teakettle beginning to boil. “Nora.”
“I can explain.”
“Oh, can you?” She plants both hands on her hips.
“Because from where I’m standing, your mystery hot father has now become your mystery hot father whose child knows your dog by name, hugs you in public, and refers to you as Miss Nora like you’re one homemade cookie away from being folded into the family Christmas card. ”
“Miranda,” I hiss, glancing down the path even though Serena and Michaela are far enough away that we’re safe from immediate humiliation. “Please lower your voice before the ducks file a report.”
She lowers it by maybe five percent. “Start talking.”
I tug Archie gently back onto the path before he can decide to drag me after Michaela on pure emotion. Amelia and Angus have already moved on to poking at a patch of moss with a new stick, which gives us roughly ninety seconds of adult conversation before one of them licks something they shouldn’t.
“It’s not what you think,” I say—which is exactly the sort of thing people say when it’s distressingly close to what someone thinks.
Miranda’s eyebrows climb. “You are making this so much worse.”
“I know.”
“Then stop doing that, and tell me why Principal Professional Boundaries has somehow acquired a secret relationship with a student and her hot father.”
“It isn’t a relationship. And I never said he was hot.”
“That was not a denial with enough conviction to satisfy me.”
I rub my forehead. “Michaela had a very bad day at school a few weeks ago. Her mother—who surrendered her rights when she was a baby—showed up unannounced.”
Miranda’s expression shifts at once, mischief fading under concern. “Oh.”
“Yes.” I start walking again, because movement makes confession easier. Less like I’m standing still while she stares through me.
“It was awful,” I say. “Michaela was terrified. David was across the city and couldn’t get there quickly, and the school board was already circling because of the liability issues, and she kept asking for him and crying and saying she wanted to go home, and .
. .” I swallow. “I took her to my house.”
Miranda stops walking again. “You what?”
“I know.”
“Nora.”
“I know.”
“As in your actual house? With your actual couch, your actual dog, and your actual—” She lowers her voice. “Potentially career-ending judgment lapse?”
“Yes,” I say miserably. “That house.”
Miranda blows out a breath and starts walking again, faster this time, the way she does when she’s processing and trying not to say the first ten things that occur to her. “OK. Why?”
“Because she trusted me. Because she was miserable. Because she didn’t want to sit in my office for two hours waiting for her father to get out of meetings while pretending she was fine.” I tighten my grip on Archie’s leash. “And because I knew she’d be safe with me.”
Miranda glances over. “Did her father know?”
“Yes. I called him first. He agreed.”
“OK.” She nods once. “That helps. Slightly.”
“It should help more than slightly.”
“It would if I thought you were telling me the whole story in chronological order, instead of feeding me facts like you’re hiding something.”
I sigh. “He came to pick her up. He was . . . upset. About Michaela, the custody filing, his ex showing up at school. He was frantic. Afraid she’d hurt Michaela again.
I was trying to comfort him, and . . .” I look straight ahead at the path because I cannot say this part while meeting my sister’s eyes. “And then he kissed me.”
Miranda makes a noise so sharp and startled that Archie looks up.
Amelia, twenty feet ahead, also looks up, because children can smell adult drama at impossible distances. “Mommy, did you step in poop?”
“No, honey,” Miranda calls automatically, never taking her gaze off me. “Not literal poop.”
I laugh once, but there’s no humor in it. “Yeah. Poop.”
Miranda slows until we’re barely moving. “Nora.”
“I know.”
“You kissed him back?”
“I did more than kiss him back,” I mutter.
She hits me on the arm. “Nonny! You didn’t? With the daughter in the house?”
“No! I had sex with him when he came to my house to apologize for the kiss.”
Her jaw practically hits the path. “Some apology!”
I put my hand over my mouth to hide the smirk. “It was an amazing apology.”
“Oh my God,” she says. “I’ve never seen you blush like this. Who is this guy? I want to see pictures.”
“I’m not showing you pictures.”
“Fine. I’ll look him up, then. What’s his full name?” She pulls out her phone and immediately opens Instagram.
“I’m not giving you his name. Stop being a creeper.”
“I’m a stay-at-home mother, Nora. Creeping is all I have to live for.”
I roll my eyes. “Please just leave it. It’s all so horribly complicated, and it’s likely he views the whole thing as a hideous mistake that will never be repeated.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he can barely look at me now.”