But the thing is… I’m scared.
Every time I don’t hear from her for a while, something sinks in my gut. This cold, hollow pit that whispers she’s changed her mind. That she wants the divorce. That all of this, was just one long goodbye.
I don’t want to push her. I’m grateful she’s even giving me a chance. She deserves all the time in the world.
No matter what Blake thinks.
He says this fear is a red flag. That anxiety like this can lead to drinking if I don’t manage it.
But Blake’s never been married. He’s never had someone like Lore, never lost half his goddamn soul, so he doesn’t get to lecture me on my marriage.
By the time I leave my parents’ place, it’s well past eight.
Agnes is asleep. Milo is nearly there, his head lolling onto his shoulder.
I park outside my building, kill the engine, and step out into the cool night. I open the back door and unbuckle Milo first. He melts into me immediately, arms hooking around my neck, his breath warm on my collarbone.
“Hey, buddy,” I whisper, shifting his weight onto one arm. With the other, I grab Agnes’s carrier, her tiny breaths steady and soft.
I walk toward the elevator, both kids heavy in my hold, but it’s the kind of heavy I’ll miss one day. Soon he won’t want to be carried like this. Soon he’ll be too big for me to lift without throwing my back out.
So yeah, I’m gonna carry him as long as I can. Forever, if he’d let me.
The feel of his small body going completely limp with trust pulls up a memory so sharp it almost knocks the wind out of me.
All the times I fell asleep in the backseat while Dad drove.
The way he’d circle the block when I couldn’t sleep, even though he had work the next morning. He never complained. Not once. Didn’t make me feel bad for my inability to fall asleep at ten.
And that’s what I keep coming back to in therapy, not the yelling, the pressure, the rules, but this. The quiet good.
For every bad memory, there were a hundred good ones. I just spent my whole life staring at the wrong pile.
I wish I could always stay this positive. But real life, real fatherhood, doesn’t let you stay in the warm glow for long.
My son is going to grow up one day and ask why I lived in an apartment. Why his parents spent a year apart.
Why his sister was born into a broken home.
And I’m going to have to tell him.
It’ll change how he sees me. How Agnes sees me. It has to.
I just hope, God, really hope, that there are enough good memories to outweigh the man I became.
Enough for them to see the father I’m trying to become, instead of the one that broke their mother’s heart.
Once both kids are settled, Milo star fished across the bottom bunk, Agnes curled like a kitten in her crib, I step back and glance around the room.
The only place I could find and afford short term was this two-bedroom apartment. I was supposed to take over Harvey’s housewhen he left for Seattle, but… it felt too permanent. Too much like admitting the marriage was dead, even when I still woke up every morning reaching for a woman who wasn’t there.
So instead, I moved a crib into this room, and now my six-year-old and one-year-old share a room while I sleep in a room smaller than the office at our old home.
I swallow hard, stepping out and pulling the bedroom door almost closed. Not all the way, never all the way, just enough that I’ll hear them if they stir. The receiver for the baby monitor is already in my bedroom.
A soft knock taps against the front door.
I freeze, halfway down the short hallway.
