Which, technically, it was.
“Maldives in March,” she said. “Too hot?”
I leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching her with the same quiet amusement I’d had for years. “You’re asking the man who used to work through monsoon seasons without noticing.”
She hummed. “Fair point. April, then.”
Our schedules were empty. Deliberately so.
After retirement, we’d agreed on one thing without needing to say it out loud—we were done building. Done proving. Done living life like something we had to earn every morning.
Now, our work was simple.
Travel.
Rest.
Enjoy the life we had survived long enough to reach.
Sometimes Europe. Sometimes the coast. Sometimes nowhere at all. Just mornings that didn’t rush us and nights that ended whenever we felt like sleeping.
And somehow, even after all this time, it still didn’t feel ordinary.
I still caught myself staring at her—the silver in her hair, the calm in her movements, the way she no longer carried the world on her shoulders.
“You’re doing it again,” she said without looking up.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like I might disappear.”
I smiled faintly. “Old habit.”
She looked up then, expression soft. “I’m still here, Love.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the miracle.”
The house felt alive in a quieter way these days.
Haille had been here last weekend—husband in tow, her little boy running through the living room with the same wild energy she used to have.
Watching her as a mother, a doctor, a woman who knew exactly who she was... it had done something to me I still couldn’t put into words. She had Elena’s steadiness. My mother’s hands. And a strength that had been shaped, not hardened.
Ezra, our second-born, had my eyes, Elena’s calm and my stubbornness. A pilot who loved the sky the way some people loved certainty.
He called often, usually from some airport lounge halfway across the world. Almost thirty years old and already living the kind of life that refused to slow down. Still unmarried. Still convinced he had time.
“Don’t wait too long,” Elena had told him once.
“I’m not in a rush,” he’d said with a laugh. “I like my life.”
And honestly? So did we.
Elena set the tablet aside and leaned back in her chair. “Do you ever think about how unlikely all of this is?”
“All the time,” I said.
Because this life—this version of us—had never been guaranteed.
