When the elevator screeched back to life, Adam reached over and touched Grace’s shoulder. “Huh. Look at that. A ladybug. In an elevator. In autumn.” He held out a finger to show her. Grace’s breath caught in her throat. “That’s ... strange.”
They scheduled a date for the next week. One day before it, Grace received an email from Mollie, expressing interest in representingThe Tides. One year later, and with a book contract in hand, she left her day job, broke the lease on her downtown studio, and moved into Adam’s doorman apartment on the Upper West Side. One year after that, he proposed.
Now, back in the kitchen, they stare at each other, their silence like its own language.
“So.” Adam’s voice cuts through the quiet. He leans against the island, no longer comfortable enough in this space to sit. When he does, Grace notices his T-shirt—the one he bought last August on their trip to Maine, the memory of that weekend like a punch to the chest. “Coffee aside, I come bearing good news.”
“Oh, yeah?” Grace pulls the coconut milk from the fridge. She shakes the carton. All that remains in it are a few pathetic drips. “What’s that?”
“They’re making good progress with your mom’s stuff out there.” He sips his drink, accented by a perfect, creamy swirl. “Looks like they’ve already brought most of it inside. Shouldn’t be much longer before the truck is emptied out and they have this all wrapped up.”
She tosses the carton into the recycling bin, sighs. “I guess in the end,” she says and gives him a sidelong glance, “it doesn’t take all that long to dismantle a whole life.”
It’s been six months since Birdie died. One hundred and eighty-four long, gut-wrenching days.An aneurysm,the doctors had explained in the too-bright hospital hallway near Grace’s hometown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It didn’t make sense. How did a vibrant sixty-eight-year-old woman go to sleep and then not wake up? Apparently, it happened more often than people cared to admit. That February afternoon, Grace left the hospital a different person than the one who’d entered it. She walked through the slushy parking lot, feeling like a tree that’d been cut off at its roots. She didn’t understand how she was still standing.
In the months since, Grace’s grief had become like a second job, one that paid only in heartache. The paperwork. The endless calls. The logistics of disassembling another person’s existence. Her father, James, had been killed in an accident when she was a toddler. Neither of her parents had siblings. Their parents were already gone. It all fell on her. Packing up Birdie’s house—the cozy townhome she’d rented since Grace was five—was the hardest part.
For months, Grace stalled. On the first of every month, she sent a check to Birdie’s longtime landlord—a man she still, despite her age, called Mr. Sam—explaining that she needed more time. But math was math. The money added up. At the start of August, she gave Mr. Sam a hug and a final check. In September, a new tenant would move in.
There were parts of death that felt like a surprise to Grace. The mind-numbing finality. The way it made her ache for the past and dread the future—the present an unfamiliar landscape she longed to escape.But the biggest surprise? The world didn’t just stop. Flowers bloomed. Seasons changed. Relationships ended. Life moved forward, whether you wanted it to or not.
Adam made his announcement in early May, the shock of Birdie’s passing still fresh.
“I’m not sure I want to be married anymore,” he said. They were on opposite ends of the sofa, picking through takeout and half watching a documentary about a cult on Netflix.
“Because it feels like a tiny cult?” She thought he was kidding.
“No.” His eyes remained on the TV. “Because I’m not sure it’s making me happy.”
Adam’s proclamation was a surprise but not a shock. They’d been drifting apart for ages, well before Birdie was gone. Still, the timing felt cruel.
Despite his professional love of planning for the future, Adam had zero post-announcement plans in place. No bachelor pad. No bags packed. For a little over a month, he juststayed. Grace had every right to demand he leave, but she didn’t. And maybe that was the saddest part. Despite everything, she preferred he was there. It was better than being alone.
They engaged in a strange dance, like people who once regularly waltzed but had begun to step on each other’s feet. One minute, they were shouting about how they’d lost their way from one another. The next, they were trying to retrace their steps and find their way back. They oscillated between holding on and letting go, like a twisted game of tug-of-war they played with their hearts. At night, Adam slept on the couch, while Grace lay in their bed and studied the walls. A few times, he tiptoed upstairs, and they tumbled around in the sheets, as if their bodies could fix all that was broken. But by morning, the sun always shone light on their circumstances.
In mid-June, the day after Grace’s lunch with Mollie, she and Adam engaged in one last romantic rendezvous, followed by one last blowout argument. The next day, he signed a lease on a nearby apartment, packed up as many of his belongings as he could fit in his car, and moved out. They’d been stuck in a sort of separation limbo ever since.
Back in the kitchen, a knock at the door interrupts them.
“Sorry.” One of the movers appears in the room. “Wanted to let you know we’re at the tail end. Just need to clean up some trash, have you sign a few papers, then we’ll be on our way.”
“Thanks.” Grace finally sips her not-right beverage and instantly smacks her lips, even though it’s only partially to blame for the new sour taste on her tongue. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
The man steps outside, leaving Grace and Adam to themselves again.
“I’d better run upstairs,” Adam states, as if this next part is natural. Normal. “Okay with you if I pop into the spare bedroom? There’s some stuff I forgot to take last time. I’m going up to the lake house this weekend.”
“Sure,” she says, her peripheral vision consumed by the most recently assembled tower of boxes, the ones that’d been in the townhome’s attic for years. Her mother’s cursive handwriting marks their sides.Baby years—Don’t Toss! Elementary—Art Projects! Journals & Notebooks—Important!The sight of Birdie’s looping penmanship is almost enough to bring Grace to her knees. In search of something steady, her fingers find the chain of her old nameplate necklace—the one she hardly takes off, not even to sleep. Despite all she’s lost this year, it’s one thing that still feels like her. “Take your time.”
Adam takes a few steps backward, bumping into the kitchen table in the process. A flurry of loose papers that’d been precariously set on its edge—those Grace brought downstairs earlier in the naive hope that she’d tackle some work while the movers were here—fall to the floor.
“Sorry,” Adam says, already bending to gather everything up. In the process, his eyes slide over their content. “Wait.” He shuffles the papers into a pile—old printouts of Grace’s early writing, her notes and annotations scribbled in the margins—but not before giving them another glance. His brows knit. “Is this an old version ofThe Tides?”
Grace nods, noting the way his expression has changed, like he’s caught her doing something illicit by skimming back over a narrativefrom her past. “Averyearly one,” she says. “It’s nothing like the story that actually went to print.”
“Why are you reading through that?” Adam sets them back on the table, a hint of accusation carrying his tone.
“Just looking through some old drafts,” Grace says, trying to ignore it. Wishing she could just ignore him. Ignore everything. “Trying to remember that they all used to be blank pages.”
