By the timethe following evening arrives, I’m ready to break my promise.
The question sits on my tongue, heavy and insistent. I plan the moment I’ll ask her—on the drive, maybe, or after dinner. But when I see her waiting in the lobby, everything inside me unclenches.
She’s radiant. Hair loose, face open, a kind of softness I haven’t seen in weeks. When she looks up, the entire floor seems to tilt toward her. Whatever I thought I needed to say dissolves.
We end up in Greenwich Village, where the air smells of warm bread and rain-washed brick. Dinner is simple—pasta, wine, the kind of table where elbows touch. It’s a far cry from the dinner we had last night. She talks easily, her laughter spilling over mine, and each time she looks at me I forget that I came here with an agenda.
Afterward, we go on a walk. The streets are narrow, lanterns glow through the trees. Townhouses line both sides, elegant without pretense—red brick, brass knockers, ivy reaching toward high windows. She slows in front of one with a black-lacquered door and iron railings. The kind of house that costs more than reason allows.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmurs. “Could you imagine living somewhere like this?”
“Maybe someday,” I tell her, smiling softly. “If that’s what you want.”
What I don’t say is that I’d buy her any house she looked at twice—that I’d buy the whole street if it meant she’d stay. Because without her, no house would ever feel like home.
She studies the building a moment longer, then says, “I wonder if there’s a garden out back. It looks like the kind of place that should have one—for a dog to run around. Or kids.”
The word lodges in me like a hook.Kids.The thought flares bright, dangerous, too soon.
So I rein it in, turn it toward safer ground. “Have you ever had a dog?”
She smiles. “My parents wouldn’t let me. Always wanted one. You?”
“Never,” I admit. “But I wanted one too.”
“Then maybe someday we should get one,” she says, and the wordwelands deep. It’s small, almost playful, but it rewrites everything inside me.
I let myself lean into it, just a little. “What kind?”
She pretends to consider. “Something small. Something that snores.”
“A French Bulldog,” I say, already seeing it—her laughing as it waddles behind her in the kitchen.
Her lips curve. “Perfect.”
We keep walking, her arm brushing mine. I hold on to the ease of the moment, yet the thought won’t leave me. The wordkidskeeps circling in my mind, stubborn as a refrain. I tell myself to let it go, to play it cool… I last all of a minute before the question slips out. “Do you want children?”
She glances at me, considering. “I used to think I didn’t. After raising my brothers, I wanted to focus on my career first—have my own life before taking care of anyone else. But someday, yes. I’d want a family. A different kind from what I grew up with. Warm. Loving.”
Her words pull something from me I can’t hide.
“Then that’s what I want too,” I say. She smiles at the simplicity of it, unaware of how completely I mean it. The truthis, I want her in every version of a life she dreams of. However she wants it, whatever she wants, I’ll give it to her.
But if she wants children, then she’ll have them with me. I can already see her in that house behind the ivy, laughter in the hallways, a baby in her arms—and me, somewhere in every frame of it.
She tilts her head toward the townhouse again. “I’d want to raise our kids somewhere like this. A place that feels like home.”
Our kids.The phrase flares through me like light catching glass. I swallow it down, memorizing the sound of her voice, the movement of her hand as she points toward the window boxes.
For the first time in days, my mind goes still. Whatever she’s hiding can wait. Her happiness eclipses everything. The questions that once burned now seem trivial beside the image of her standing beneath these trees, dreaming of a life she might share with me.
Later, I’ll ask. Later, I’ll know.
Tonight, I only want her joy.
The corridorsof the Caldwell estate stretch ahead like something half-remembered. I know every turn, every portrait, yet they feel altered—less like a museum of ghosts, more like a home again. My steps echo lightly against the parquet as I make my way toward the west wing, where my mother keeps her office.
I can’t remember when I’ve last spent this much time with her.
