"So you subtract yourself."
“Yes. Before everything breaks."
Anna unfolded her hands. Placed them flat on the table. The gesture was intentional, the way everything Anna did was intentional.
"My George had a bad hip," she said. "Did I ever tell you that?"
"No."
"Bad from before I met him. Construction work when he was young. The doctors told him he'd need it replaced by forty-five. He danced with me anyway. That first night at the Greek Orthodox church, he danced like a man with two good legs because he'd decided I was worth the pain. And thirty years later, when the hip finally went, you know what he said?"
"What?"
"He said, 'Anna, I'd wreck both legs for one more dance.' And I told him he was an idiot and I loved him and we'd figure it out together." She paused. "He didn't get to decide what I could handle. That was mine."
Jake didn’t respond.
"Emily is not a woman who needs you to do her math for her," Anna said. "She knows what Marchand is. She knows what proximity costs. She's a federal prosecutor, Jake, not a child. She walked into this relationship with her eyes open and she made the choice to stand next to you and she will keep choosing it, and the only thing that can take that choice away from her is you."
His phone buzzed on the table.
Emily's name on the screen.
Jake looked at it. Anna looked at it. Neither of them moved.
He watched it ring. Everything in him wanted to answer. Everything in him wanted to hear her voice and tell her he was sorry and that he was coming home and that none of it mattered, not Marchand, not the math, not the long habit of stepping aside. But he could feel the old pattern underneath the wanting, patient and dressed in good intentions. The part of him that would answer and be warm and start the process of making the landing soft. And he knew Emily would hear it. She heard everything. She'd hear the goodbye hiding inside the hello, and it would confirm every fear she'd ever had about letting someone in.
The ringing stopped. The screen went dark.
Anna watched him. Said nothing. Let the silence hold.
His phone buzzed again. A text this time.
He looked at the screen.
Take your time. I'll be here.
Six words. Jake read them twice, because they didn't fit the pattern. They didn't sound like patience, or pressure, or a door being held open. They sounded like a woman who'd decided where she was standing and wasn't asking anyone's permission to stand there.
I'll be here.
Notcall me when you're ready.Notwe need to talk.Not evenI love you, which would have been true but would have given him too much to manage, but she gave him what he needed.
I'll be here.No negotiation. No conditions. Just Emily Callahan, planting her feet.
He turned the phone so Anna could see.
She read it. Then she looked at Jake, and her expression was the one she'd worn the day she'd told him about George and the dance at the Greek Orthodox church.
"She's not asking you to stay, Jake. She's telling you she already has."
Jake put the phone in his pocket. Sat at the table. Looked at the window where the afternoon light hit the hand-painted letters backwards.
Anna stood. Collected his water glass. Paused beside his chair and put a hand on his shoulder. Brief. The same touch she'd given Emily.
"Twenty years I've watched you step aside for people and call it love," she said. "Don't you dare do it to the one who'd never ask you to."
She went back to the counter. Picked up her crossword. The pencil found its place in her hand.
