Emily released his hand and sat back, cradling her coffee mug. He couldn’t read her expression, and for a moment he was back in their Seattle living room last year, the night everything had almost fallen apart.
She’d wanted to leave after the shooting. Not the shooting itself—no one they knew had been hurt that day—but the knowledge that it had happened three blocks from their house, at the grocery store where she shopped every week, in the checkout line she’d stood in a hundred times. A woman had died. A cashier. They’d watched the news coverage together, Emily white-faced and shaking, and when she’d said, “I can’t do this anymore,” Evan had thought she meant the city.
She’d meant everything. The job that consumed him. The house they’d bought as an investment, not a home. The life they’d built on ambition and momentum and very little else.
“I almost lost you,” he said quietly. “Last year. I almost lost both of you.”
“You didn’t lose us.”
“Because you gave me an ultimatum.” He met her eyes. “Because you told me if I didn’t figure out what actually mattered, you’d figure it out without me.”
“I remember.”
“And then I got laid off anyway, and it felt like—” He stopped, searching for words. “Like the universe was making the choice for me. Like I’d held on so tight to something that didn’t even want me back.”
Emily set down her mug. “Is that how you still feel?”
“No.” The answer surprised him with its certainty. “No, that’s the thing. At first, yeah. At first I was furious. All those years, all that work, and they just... let me go. Restructuring, they called it. Optimizing human capital. Like I was a line item on a spreadsheet.”
“You were to them.”
“I was.” He looked out the window again, at their yard with its messy garden beds, the lake beyond, the mountains rising blue and steady against the sky. “But I’m not anymore. And that’s... that’s actually okay.”
The baby monitor crackled—Grace shifted in her sleep, making those small sounds that meant she was dreaming about whatever babies dreamed about. Milk, probably. Warm arms. The strange new world she was just beginning to discover.
“My dad missed everything,” Evan said. “Every school play, every soccer game. And I told myself I was different. Told myself I worked hard because I cared, not because I was avoiding anything.” He shook his head. “But I was turning into him. I could feel it happening. And then Grace came, and I held her, and I thought?—”
“You thought you didn’t want to miss it.”
“I don’t want to miss any of it.” His voice cracked slightly, and he didn’t try to hide it. “I want to be here. For her first steps and her first words and her first day of school. I want to know her teachers’ names and her friends’ names and what she’s afraid of and what makes her laugh. I want to be present.”
Emily rose from her chair, crossed to him, and settled onto his lap. Her weight was warm and familiar, her arms around his neck, her forehead pressed to his.
“Take the job,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Take the job, Evan. Teach business to kids who actually want to learn. Build something that matters.” She pulled back enough to look at him, her eyes bright. “I didn’t drag us across the country to watch you mope around the house forever.”
“I don’t mope.”
“You absolutely mope. You moped through all of December. You moped through January. You only stopped moping when your mother put you to work on the inn renovations.”
“That’s not moping. That’s processing.”
“It’s moping.” She kissed him, quick and firm. “But I love you anyway. And I think you’re going to be an amazing teacher.”
The monitor crackled again, and this time Grace’s small cry followed—the hungry one, the one that meant she was done sleeping and wanted attention immediately.
“I’ve got her,” Evan said.
Emily slid off his lap. “I’ll make more coffee. Then we need to run into town, Ally needs someone to pick up more honey from her place because she sold out this morning at the farmer’s market.”
“Sold out?”
“Apparently, everyone at the wedding wanted jars to take home. She’s thrilled.” Emily was already at the coffeepot, moving with the easy energy she’d rediscovered since the move. “Oh, and Christina asked if you could help Ryan with something. I think about his internship?”
“Sure, though that kid is smarter than all of us.” It had taken Evan the longest to come around to his half-brother. While he knew it wasn’t Ryan’s fault that Harry had an affair with Ryan’s mom, the hurt had lingered for months. But now? Now, Evan saw the kid as family. Guessed people could change.
