Chapter 37
Nora
“He called her our daughter,” I say.
Miranda’s head snaps toward me so fast she nearly gives herself whiplash. The cold wind blows her hair into her face. “I’m sorry. He said what? When?”
“Yesterday. We were laughing about something Dominic did in the group chat, and David said—casually, mid-sentence, not even looking at me—‘he’s using our daughter as bait.’ And then just kept going. Like he hadn’t said it. Like it was just the word his brain reached for.”
“Did you say anything?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because we were laughing. He just said our like it was the most natural word in the world, and if I’d stopped and pointed at it, it would have become a thing. And I didn’t want it to be a thing. I wanted it to just be true.”
“So why are you telling me about it like it’s a crisis?”
“Because it might just be true. And it might have also been an accident. And I don’t know what to do with either.”
Miranda stares at me. We’re on a bench at the edge of the park, November-cold, the kind of Chicago afternoon where the sky is white, the air has teeth, and every parent in the vicinity is wrapped in layers that suggest they’ve accepted the snow is never going away.
Amelia’s on the climbing frame with Michaela, engaged in what appears to be an elaborate negotiation about whether the top platform is a courtroom or a pirate ship.
Angus is below them, eating a handful of soggy wood chips because he’s a toddler.
“Angus,” Miranda calls, without looking. “Spit.”
He looks over at us. Then we’re treated to the sound of wet wood chips hitting the slushy ground.
She turns back to me. “OK. ‘Our daughter.’ Walk me through what’s happening in your head.”
“Option one: it was nothing. A pronoun. He was mid-laugh, he was distracted, the word slipped out the way words do when you’re not editing yourself. If I’d pointed it out, he would’ve blinked, corrected himself, and we’d both have moved on.”
“Option two?”
“Option two: he wasn’t editing himself because there was nothing to edit.
He said our because that’s how he sees it.
Because at some point Michaela became ours in every way that matters—when I’m the person reading her The Wild Robot for the third time and holding her when she cries about a mother who can’t sustain two hours of attention and suggested they get butter chicken for dinner when she knows Michaela has a cashew allergy—this little unit we’ve built matters. ”
Miranda’s expression has gone very still. The teasing-sister face is gone, replaced by something more careful and tender.
“And which option scares you more?” she asks.
“Both. Equally. For opposite reasons.”
“Explain.”
“If it was a slip, I’m building a life inside a word he didn’t mean, and I need to stop before the gap between what I want and what’s real gets wide enough to fall into.
If he meant it—” My throat catches. “If he meant it, then I have everything I’ve ever wanted.
And I’ve spent four years learning how to survive without it.
I don’t know how to hold something this big without bracing for it to be taken away. ”
Miranda reaches over and takes my hand.
“Nonny,” she says. “Just this morning, the man introduced you to his father.”
“God. Don’t remind me about that one. His father was frightening.
” David and I had entered the coffee shop and walked out only thirty minutes later because Brent Kingsley learned the official nature of our relationship, then dismissed us with, “I have all I need,” so he could read his Sunday paper in peace.
She makes a small sound at the back of her throat, amusement and sympathy. “I’m sorry—the man’s actually a legal legend. There’s a Wikipedia page dedicated to him and everything. Did you know that?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t google everyone I meet like you do.”
“I have a lot of time on my hands.” She shrugs.
“Anyway. He introduced you to his dad. His daughter whispered in your ear during her most vulnerable moment that she wishes you were her mom. You’ve survived both the cross-examination and the stress, which, as I understand it, is very much a test. And now you’re here together, blending all of our children and your canine into a little pile of holiday happiness.
However the ‘our’ happened, that gorgeous man walking our way meant it. ”
Archie, who’s been lying at my feet, lifts his head and looks toward the concession stand along with us.
David is walking back across the grass with six hot chocolates balanced in a cardboard tray, Angus now riding his hip.
I don’t know when Angus migrated from the wood-chip buffet to David’s arms, but the sight of a six-foot-two attorney in a navy peacoat carrying my nephew like he’s done it a hundred times makes something behind my ribs go very quiet and very warm.
“He is pretty gorgeous, isn’t he?” I muse, my insides going all warm and gooey at the sight.
“Fucking delicious,” Miranda says.
“Can you not say it that graphically while I’m trying to process the concept of an emotionally available man wanting to be a family with me?”
She shrugs. “I’ll tone down the commentary.”
I look at David again, blue sky behind him, wind chapping his cheeks and blowing his hair out of its usual shape, giving him a younger, softer look.
He doesn’t seem to notice the cold or the chaos.
He’s just moving, a steady center of gravity for a small, ridiculous solar system of kids, dogs, and . . . me.
I want to run toward him.
I want to run away.
I want to make this bench a permanent home, so I never have to make any decisions at all.
Instead, I pull my jacket tighter, focus on the girls as they negotiate the rules for whichever kingdom is being erected atop the climbing frame, and try to slow the mutant parade of my own thoughts.
Miranda squeezes my hand again. “Has he said it? Like, in other contexts?”
“Which part?”
“That he loves you. That he wants you around. That he sees a future.”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” I say, exhaling into my scarf.
“He’s ludicrously straightforward about it.
He tells me every night, sometimes while very literally inside me, that he never knew he could want anything this much.
Michaela says she wants Archie and me living with them all the time—we’ve basically been living between my house and their apartment—and we’ve disclosed our relationship to all official parties, and now we’re—”
“Here.” Miranda smiles. “You’re right here. Exactly where you need to be.”
David reaches us, and all at once my body reacts to his nearness. He doesn’t hesitate—just plants Angus on the bench beside Miranda, offers her the first hot chocolate, hands the next to me without comment, like every detail of my life is already catalogued and seen to.
I kind of love it.
“Angus and I have been discussing geopolitics,” he says, taking the seat next to me. “His position on NATO is surprisingly nuanced.”
“His position on NATO is ‘truck,’” Miranda says.
“That was the nuanced part.”
Miranda grins. This is the first time she’s met David properly, and within thirty seconds she decided she approved of him, which is honestly the best I could have hoped for.
“Mama!” Amelia yells from the climbing frame, spotting the tray balancing on David’s knee. “Are those for us?”
Michaela whips around so fast one of her pigtails smacks her cheek. “Hot chocolate?”
David looks up toward them. “If you can get down here without establishing a new government first, yes.”
That does it. The top platform is abandoned mid-negotiation. The two girls scramble down the structure in a blur of boots, puffy coats, and urgent constitutional collapse, racing across the mulch toward us.
“Careful,” I call, rising half off the bench as Amelia nearly wipes out on the edge of the rubber mat.
“I’m careful,” she says, which is what children always say one second before proving they aren’t.
Michaela gets there first by virtue of strategy rather than speed. She plants herself in front of David and peers into the tray with a furrow in her brow. “Please tell me there are marshmallows.”
“There are,” he says.
“Excellent,” she says, already taking one of the cups with both mittened hands. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Amelia bounces beside her until Miranda passes her another cup. “It’s hot,” Miranda warns.
“I know.” Amelia blows on it theatrically and then takes the tiniest sip known to man. Her whole face lights up. “Oh wow.”
Michaela takes her own cautious sip and closes her eyes. “This is acceptable. Bordering on excellent.”
David hands the smallest cup to Miranda so she can help Angus. “I asked for this one to be lukewarm. So it’s probably ice-cold by now.”
“That’s either thoughtful parenting or witchcraft,” Miranda says.
“Definitely witchcraft,” I tell her.
David glances at me over the rim of his own cup, mouth tipping at one corner, and there it is again—that unbearable steadiness. The man notices everything. Remembers everything. Adjusts for everyone’s needs as if it’s not a burden but a reflex.
Michaela shuffles closer to the bench and leans against my knee while she drinks. My hand lifts to rest on her waist automatically, tugging down the edge of her jacket to make sure she’s warm.
I catch David seeing it.
His gaze drops to my hand, then lifts to my face. Something quiet passes between us. Not a conversation exactly. More like the physical sensation of a lock turning.
I look away first because if I don’t, Miranda’s going to have to explain to her children why Aunt Nora burst into tears over cocoa in public.
Angus, meanwhile, has discovered that “lukewarm” in toddler terms means “worthy of immediate facial immersion.” Miranda intercepts the cup before he can baptize himself.
“Absolutely not,” she tells him, wiping his chin. “You’re already sticky from an unknown source.”
Amelia has climbed onto the bench backward, kneeling over the seatback while she slurps cocoa. “Michaela says Archie can dance.”