CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NORA
February. Felix turned two.
She hadn’t told Roman the birthday was coming. She’d mentioned it, in passing, on a Saturday — Felix’s birthday is the fourteenth. She hadn’t meant it as an invitation. She’d meant it as information.
He’d arrived on the fourteenth with a cake from the bakery on Smith Street — not too elaborate, the kind of cake a two-year-old could fully destroy, which Felix proceeded to do within six minutes of its arrival — and a wooden train set that required assembly, which meant Roman spent forty minutes on the floor of the apartment with an instruction manual and the focused expression of a man who intended to succeed.
Felix watched the assembly with complete absorption.
When the first piece connected to the second piece and the train moved, Felix made a sound that Nora had only heard him make twice — the specific sound of something exceeding expectation.
She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched.
She thought: this is his birthday. He will have birthdays for the rest of his life and this is the first one where his father was in the room.
She thought: that matters.
She thought about the midnight signing.
She thought about walking out into the New Year.
She thought about everything that had followed from that moment — the Brooklyn apartment and the drawing table and Bea’s hand during labor and the first time she’d held Felix and thought Roman doesn’t know.
She thought about Roman on the floor with the train set.
She thought: some things can’t be recovered. But some things can be found.
That night, after Roman left, she sat at the drawing table.
She opened to the page where the new book’s ending was supposed to be.
She looked at it for a long time.
She picked up her pencil.
She drew the kitchen table. Two plates. A wooden train in the middle distance. A window with February light.
She drew two people at the table. She didn’t draw their faces yet — faces came later, when the scene was fully understood.
She drew the space between them.
Not empty. Not closed. Something in between — the specific quality of a space that has been decided about.
She sat back.
She looked at what she’d drawn.
She thought: that’s the ending.
She thought: not midnight. Morning.
She put down the pencil.
She sent Roman a text: He loved the train. Thank you for coming.
He replied in two minutes: Thank him for letting me.
She held the phone.
She typed: He’s already taken the train apart to examine the individual pieces.
He wrote: Runs in the family.
She looked at that.
She smiled.
She put the phone down.
She looked at the drawing.
The morning kitchen. The space between two people that wasn’t empty.
She thought: I know what I want.
She thought: I’m almost ready to say it.