27. Maren #2
Rowan eats his bagel in approximately four thousand bites, dropping crumbs everywhere, talking with his mouth full about the dream he had about flying all the way to Pluto.
“Pluto’s not really a planet anymore,” Rhodes says. “They call it a dwarf planet now.”
Rowan stares at him. “What?”
“Too small. Different category.”
“That’s dumb.”
“I agree.”
“It should be a planet.”
“It really should.”
Rowan nods, vindicated, and takes another enormous bite of bagel.
Across the table, Rhodes catches my eye. There’s something almost like humor there, a shared acknowledgment of the absurdity of explaining planetary science to a three-year-old who’s primarily concerned with what constitutes a “real” planet.
I don’t smile.
But I don’t look away either.
The call comes Sunday afternoon.
We’re at my apartment, Rhodes on the floor building a block tower with Rowan, me on the couch pretending to read a magazine while actually watching them, when his phone starts buzzing.
He pulls it out. Looks at the screen. His expression shifts into something sharper, more focused.
“Sorry,” he says, and answers. “Calloway.”
I watch him listen. Watch his jaw tighten. Watch the familiar transformation from the man on my living room floor into the executive who runs an empire.
Here it comes, I think. The moment the real world calls him back.
“When?” Rhodes asks. “How bad?”
I set down the magazine. Start calculating how to explain to Rowan that Daddy has to leave.
“And the damage report?”
He listens. Drops his head back against the wall. I recognize the restlessness, the kind that used to mean he’d be in his office for the next twelve hours, unavailable, unreachable.
“Is anyone hurt?”
A pause.
“Is the building on fire?”
Another pause.
“Then Barrett can handle it. That’s what I pay him for.”
My chest tightens.
Rhodes glances at me. Just once, quick and unreadable. Then back to the call.
“I understand it’s a significant delay. I also understand that I’m in Boston and you’re on-site and perfectly capable of making decisions without my direct supervision.
” He pauses. “If Barrett has questions, he can email them. I’ll respond tonight.
But unless someone is bleeding or something is burning, I’m not available this afternoon. ”
He hangs up.
Puts the phone face-down on the carpet.
Turns back to Rowan, who’s been trying unsuccessfully to balance a rectangular block on top of a circular one.
“Try flipping it,” Rhodes says, like the last thirty seconds didn’t happen. “Flat side down.”
Rowan flips the block. It balances, and he gasps with delight.
“I did it!”
“You did.”
“Let’s make it taller!”
“Okay.”
I sit on my couch with an unread magazine in my lap and watch Rhodes Calloway choose his son over a work crisis like it’s the easiest decision he’s ever made.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
He’s extended his stay.
I find out Monday, not from Rhodes but from Patricia at Livingston House, who mentions it casually during our planning call like it’s common knowledge.
“Mr. Calloway’s been great to work with,” she says. “So much more accessible now that he’s local for the foreseeable future.”
I nearly drop my phone. “Foreseeable future?”
“He extended his rental through the end of the year. Didn’t he mention it?”
“He didn’t.”
A pause. “Oh. I assumed, well. He seems very invested in Boston these days.”
I end the call and sit in my office and stare at nothing.
End of the year.
That’s four months. Four months of Rhodes in Boston, of preschool pickups and park visits and dinners at my apartment and block towers on my living room floor.
Four months of watching my son fall in love with a father who’s never around.
Except he’s around. He’s been around constantly.
He’s learned the rocket crackers and the apple slices and the seven-thirty bedtime and the fact that Rowan won’t wear the blue socks because they’re “scratchy.” He’s asked questions and taken notes and adjusted himself around my son instead of expecting my son to adjust around him.
And that’s what scares me.
Because I know how this ends. Rhodes Calloway has responsibilities.
Buildings and an entire company that requires his attention.
Eventually the calls won’t be ones he can pass off to Barrett, the emails won’t be ones that can wait until tonight, and he’ll have to go back to his real life, and Rowan will be left waiting for a father who promised to come back and didn’t.
Like I was.
I pick up my phone. Type a text, delete it, type it again.
We need to talk.
His response comes in thirty seconds: When?
Tonight. After Rowan’s asleep.
I’ll be there.
He shows up at eight-fifteen, half an hour after Rowan finally stopped requesting “one more story” and passed out clutching Mr. Zorp.
I make tea because I need something to do with my hands. Rhodes sits at my kitchen table and waits, and the silence between us feels heavy in a way it hasn’t all week.
“You extended your stay,” I say finally, setting his mug in front of him.
“Yes.”
“Through December.”
“Patricia told you?”
“She mentioned it, casually, like I already knew.”
He wraps his hands around the mug but doesn’t drink. “I should have told you myself.”
“Yes.”
“I was going to. I just-” He stops, starts again. “I wanted to be sure first. That it was the right call.”
“And is it?”
“Yes.”
“Rhodes.” I sit across from him, my own tea untouched. “You can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Blow up your entire life because you feel guilty.”
His expression flattens. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“You run a whole company, with buildings going up in three states. You can’t just relocate to Boston indefinitely because-”
“Because I have a son?”
“Because you found out a week ago.” I lean forward, trying to find the words that’ll make him understand. “I know you want to fix this. I know you want to make up for lost time. But you can’t put your whole life on hold. That’s not sustainable, and when it falls apart-”
“When?”
“Rhodes.”
“Not if. When.” He sets down the mug, and his voice has gone cold. “You’ve already decided this ends badly.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“You’re being-” He cuts himself off. Breathes. “I don’t need you to protect me from myself, Maren.”
“Someone has to. You’re making decisions based on emotion, not-”
“Based on my son.” His voice rises, and he catches himself, glancing toward the hallway where Rowan’s room is.
When he speaks again, it’s quieter but no less intense.
“I’m making decisions based on my son. My son, who I didn’t know existed a week ago.
Who calls me Rhodes because Daddy still feels unfamiliar.
Who showed me his cubby and his stem-sorting job and his stuffed alien like they were gifts, because to him they are. ”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you trying to talk me out of staying?”
“Because I watched you do this before!”
The words are out before I can stop them. They sit there between us, sharper and more honest than I meant to be.
Rhodes goes still.
“You made promises,” I continue, my voice shaking slightly. “In the beginning. You said you’d be there. You said work wouldn’t come first. And then it did, every time, and I stopped expecting anything different because expecting hurt more than accepting.”
“That was-”
“I know it was different. I know I’m not Rowan. But he doesn’t know that, Rhodes. He’s three years old and he thinks you’re magical because you know why Pluto isn’t a planet. He’s falling in love with you, and when you go back to California-”
“I can work from here.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
The phrase is supposed to sound like devotion. From where I’m sitting it sounds like a man who hasn’t done the math yet.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” He pushes back from the table, stands, paces to the window and back. “What do you want me to say, Maren? That I have a detailed five-year plan for how this works? I don’t. I’m making it up as I go because I don’t have another option.”
“You have options. You could-”
“What, visit once a month? Send gifts from California? Be the dad who shows up for birthdays and disappears the rest of the year?” He stops pacing, faces me directly. “I already missed three and a half years. I’m not going to spend the next fifteen making up for it from a distance.”
“You don’t get to decide that alone.”
“Neither do you.” His voice is quiet now, but there’s steel in it. “You kept him from me. I understand why. I’m not, I’m trying not to be angry about it anymore, because being angry doesn’t help Rowan. But you don’t get to keep deciding what my relationship with him looks like.”
I stand up too fast. My chair scrapes against the floor.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Isn’t it?” He takes a step closer. Not threatening, careful, measured. “You’re telling me I can’t stay because you’ve already decided I’ll leave. You’re protecting yourself from something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“I’m protecting my son.”
“Our son.” The words land like a blow. “Our son, Maren. And I’m not going anywhere.”
We stand there, three feet apart in my tiny kitchen, and the space between us crackles with everything we’re not saying.
He’s not wrong. I know he’s not wrong. But knowing something and feeling it are different countries, and I’ve been living in the one where Rhodes Calloway doesn’t stay for a very long time.
“I’m scared,” I say finally. The admission costs me something I can’t name. “I’m scared you’re going to be perfect for him and then you’re going to leave and I’ll have to put the pieces back together by myself.”
“I know.”
“You don’t. You can’t.”
“Maybe not.” He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t try to close the distance. “But I’m asking you to let me try anyway. Not because I’ve earned it. Because he deserves a father who shows up.”
“Even if showing up means rearranging your entire life?”
“Especially then.”
I don’t have a response for that.
We stand in the silence, and somewhere in the back of the apartment, Rowan coughs in his sleep and settles again.
Finally, Rhodes steps back.
“I’ll go,” he says. “It’s late.”