Chapter 9
Elise
Tessa let me eat four fries before she asked about Roman.
She had chosen a booth at a harbor diner with cracked red seats and a view of fishing boats through the window. My coat lay beside me, the ring box fastened inside its pocket.
“Questions, or complaints about the fries?”
“Questions first.”
I told her Roman had waited outside, stepped out when the heartbeat overwhelmed him instead of asking me to handle it, then returned when allowed. His apology asked nothing from me.
“He did everything I allowed,” I said.
“Good. He survived waiting outside a clinic. He can survive not getting a grade tonight.”
“I still wanted to reach for him when he heard the heartbeat.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Do you wish you had?”
I broke a fry in half. “I don’t know.”
Tessa pushed the ketchup toward me. “Fine. Eat before you turn dinner into homework.”
I stole a fry from her plate. “I want you to remind me that the prenatal group meets Thursday and your bookstore window still needs lettering.”
“Coward.”
“Professional redirection.”
Ten minutes later, we were arguing over yellow paint for the bookstore window. The ring box stayed closed inside my coat.
---
The first time Roman came to my cottage, I gave him the address for one delivery and nothing else.
He arrived on a wet Thursday with a slim folder. Through the narrow window beside the door, I watched him set it on the porch and back away.
Only then did I open the door.
“The clinic sent information about prenatal classes, hospital registration, and pediatric practices. I didn’t contact any of them.”
I picked up the folder.
“You drove forty minutes to leave paperwork on a step,” I said.
“You approved the delivery.”
Rain darkened his coat. He did not use it as an argument for shelter.
“I’ll read it.”
He nodded and left without looking past my shoulder.
I closed and locked the door after he left.
The ring box he had returned sat in my desk drawer beneath a stack of color proofs. I had not opened it since the clinic.
I did not open it then.
---
I reserved a public-library room for forty-five minutes and sent Roman the confirmation. Its glass wall faced the reference shelves. I chose the chair closest to the door; he sat across from me with a notebook.
Before the pregnancy advanced further, we settled the practical structure.
My insurance and accounts stayed mine. I kept final authority over my medical care.
Roman would pay providers only after I approved a bill; he would receive a receipt, not access to the patient portal.
Tessa remained my first emergency contact.
He listened until I finished, then wrote down what we had decided.
The hospital estimate lay beneath my notes, beside an invoice from a client whose deposit had paid the cottage rent.
The two numbers were close enough to make my shoulders tighten.
Roman could remove that pressure with one transfer.
Once, I would have called the relief teamwork and ignored how quickly shared money became shared authority.
His contribution changed one column in my ledger. It did not move the center of the page.
I pushed another sheet across the table. “I read your timeline.”
His hand stilled.
I had spent two nights comparing it with old messages, calendar entries, and the notes I had written after speaking to Dr. Chen. Roman’s account listed each day separately. What Dr. Chen had advised. What Nadia had known. Which promise he had repeated to Serena. Which deadline he had moved.
No softened verbs. No convenient blur called those three weeks.
“On day four,” I said, “you wrote that Dr. Chen recommended starting with the year and Serena’s work history.”
“Yes.”
“That matches what she told me.”
Roman said nothing more.
“On day seven, you told me Serena had become distressed after a memory exercise and needed more time.”
“I did.”
“Dr. Chen’s note says she was distressed, but medically stable. The recommendation was family support while they continued correcting the timeline.”
“Yes.”
“You made distress mean the truth had to stop.”
“I did.”
I turned the page.
“On day fourteen, you said there had been no safe opening.”
His jaw shifted once. “There were several. I did not use them.”
“And day twenty-one?”
“I knew that morning she could be told everything.”
I had already known. I had heard enough outside the hospital room to break the last excuse open.
Placed in sequence, his record matched mine without asking me to soften it.
I closed the timeline.
“The facts match,” I said. “It isn’t trust.”
Roman’s fingers tightened around his pen, then loosened.
I slid the pages back into my folder.
The meeting ended on time.
---
I kept the weekly coffees to thirty minutes at a narrow café near the harbor.
The first week, we discussed prenatal classes. Between meetings, I chose the lighter stroller over the travel system Roman had researched, ordered it, and sent him the receipt for half.
The second week, we discussed the anatomy scan. I told him I had not decided whether I wanted him there.
He said, “Let me know when you do.”
By the third week, the woman behind the counter knew he drank plain coffee and I wanted ginger tea with too much honey. Familiarity tried to form around us in small, ordinary lines.
I did not confuse ordinary with repaired.
Roman kept the conversation on the child. Nausea, not dinner. Medical recommendations, not sleep. When I mentioned a deadline, he left the client and cover unnamed.
The missing parts of me stayed visible around the frame I had drawn.
With four minutes left, he set down his cup.
“May I ask something that isn’t about the pregnancy?”
“You can ask.”
His thumb rested against the cardboard seam of the cup. “Will there ever be a point when I’m allowed to know you as you are now?”
The question reached beyond every subject I had allowed him so far.
Cedar Harbor was not scenery arranged around my absence from him.
I had clients he had never heard of, a grocery store where the cashier saved bruised peaches for me, a window in my workroom that turned the whole desk gold at four in the afternoon.
I had learned how quiet could feel when it belonged to me.
Roman did not own that version of my life because he regretted losing the old one.
“Not yet,” I said.
His eyes stayed on mine. “All right.”
The silence stayed his. At thirty minutes, he carried his cup to the trash.
“Next week?” he said.
“Same time.”