CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ROMAN
April.
He came on Wednesdays.
Not every Wednesday — the first month was every other, then three weeks running, then just every Wednesday, as naturally as if it had always been the schedule.
He came at six-forty-five and he was there for bedtime and afterward they sat at the kitchen table with the apartment quiet around them and they talked.
Not about Felix. About other things.
He told her about his parents — he rarely talked about his parents, had spent twenty years filing them under too much — but she asked about them on a Wednesday in April and he answered.
He told her what it had been like at twenty-four when they died within eight months of each other.
What Camille had been in that period. What the loss had done to his relationship with permanence — the specific training of losing people that made him suspicious of things that were too good to lose.
She listened with her full attention.
He said: “I think I’ve been waiting for everything to break since I was twenty-four.”
She said: “And so you helped it break.”
He held very still.
“Yes,” he said.
She said: “That’s the thing you needed to say.”
He looked at her.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve been working up to it for months.”
She was quiet for a moment.
She said: “My parents never lost each other. They’re still — they’ve been married for thirty-five years. I grew up inside that and I think I assumed that permanence was a thing that happened to you. Not a thing you maintained.” She paused. “We were both wrong.”
He looked at her.
“You were less wrong,” he said.
“I was differently wrong,” she said.
They sat in the Wednesday kitchen.
He thought: this is what talking feels like when you do it without management.
He thought: we should have been doing this the whole time.
He said: “I want to meet your parents.”
She looked at him.
“They don’t know who Felix’s father is,” she said. “I’d have to—” She stopped.
“I know,” he said. “That’s a significant conversation.”
“Yes.”
“When you’re ready,” he said. “I’m not asking for a timeline.”
She looked at the table.
“My mother has been asking to visit,” she said.
He waited.
“Maybe June,” she said.
“June,” he said.
She met his eyes.
“Roman,” she said.
“Yes.”
“If I let you into all of this—” She stopped. She breathed. “If I let you fully in. My parents and the legal documents and the drawing with your face at the kitchen table—” She paused. “I need to know you understand what you’re asking for.”
He looked at her.
“I know exactly what I’m asking for,” he said. “I’m asking for the life I should have understood I had.” He held her gaze. “I’m asking for your Wednesday evenings and Felix’s bath time and the rubber ducks and the tea after. I’m asking to sit at the table you draw.”
She looked at him.
“All right,” she said.
She refilled his tea.
He sat at her kitchen table.
He thought: there it is.
He thought: this is what I was afraid of losing. This.
He thought: I’m not afraid of it anymore.