"I've been reading about it. It's small but it has everything—farmers market, good coffee, and the nursing program has an eighty percent retention rate after graduation, which means—"
"Which means it actually places people."
"Yes. Jane, this is the one."
She goes back to her coffee. Then, after a moment:
"If I'm in Colorado..." Grace picks at her croissant, not looking at me. "You know you don't have to stay in Boston, right?"
My coffee stops halfway to my mouth.
"I'm serious." She looks up, and her eyes are bright.
"You've been arranging your whole life around me since I was fourteen. And I love you for it. But Jane..." She reaches across the table, grabs my hand. "If there's somewhere you want to be—someone you want to be near—you're allowed to want that."
"This is about your program—"
She lifts her hand to stop me.
"This is about you being happy." She squeezes my hand once, hard. "Colorado's two thousand miles from Boston. It's also nine hundred miles from New York City."
"Grace—"
"I'm just saying. You have options now… like New York."
She picks up her mug. Case closed.
I file this conversation in the same drawer asI would’ve missed the whole thing.
And this time, I leave the drawer slightly open.
He calls on a Wednesday. Voice call. Gym acoustics — high ceilings, bass echoing somewhere behind him. We talk for an hour and seventeen minutes.
I check the time after.
Mortified.
At the end:
“Don’t forget, I’m on the interview circuit starting tomorrow. Coaching conversations. A few different places.”
"How's that going?"
"Good, I think. Still finding the right fit."
"You'll know it whenyou find it."
"Yeah."
We hang up.
It’s been three weeks since Anguilla. Three weeks of distance behaving like it’s reasonable.
By Friday morning I still haven’t told him about Grace’s scholarship and plans.
Not because I’m hiding it.
But because if I say it now, he’ll start calculating distance. Start offering proximity before I even know what I want.
