The kitchen was quiet.
Elizabeth looked at Darcy.
"You did not tell me," she said.
"I intended to."
"When?"
"Before this morning," he said. "Clearly that timeline did not hold."
Elizabeth picked up her keys. "I have my editor meeting tomorrow. It’s a pitch for my novel. I told you about it."
"I remember."
"I cannot move it. This editor has taken three months to pin down."
"I will go," Darcy said. "I said I would be there and I will be there."
Elizabeth looked at him.
He met her gaze and shook his head once, a small, steady reassurance.
"Good," she said.
She went to take Mia to school.
***
Priya's mother came on Saturday to pick Mia up at eight-thirty. The two girls had wanted to attend rehearsal early and Priya's mum had agreed to take them both. Elizabeth left for her editor meeting at eight forty-five. Darcy said goodbye to everyone and watched them go with the particular contentment of a man who had his morning accounted for.
At nine-thirty he went upstairs to change, already debating whether athletic wear was the right call over his usual clothes. He stood in front of his wardrobe holding a pair of Nikes in one hand and Adidas in the other, which was the kind of decision that should have taken thirty seconds and was somehow still unresolved at ten o clock when his phone rang.
It was from Singapore. A client. An emergency that was not technically an emergency but had been framed as one with enough urgency that he took the call still holding both trainers. He sat on the edge of his bed. The call became two calls. Two calls became a document that needed reviewing before anyone in Singapore could sleep. He moved to the small desk by the window. The document led to an email thread that had been running since Thursday and required his input before it could close.
He looked at the time. Eleven o clock. He did a quick calculation. One hour of work. Leave at twelve. Twelve-forty he would be at the school, just in time. Tight but manageable.
Satisfied with his permutation he continued working.
He did not look at the clock again after that. Not once. That was the thing he would think about afterwards — not the callsor the document or the email thread, but the not looking. As if some part of him had decided that not knowing the time meant the time was not passing, that he could simply finish when he finished and the world would wait politely.
The world had not waited.
His phone rang.
He picked it up without looking at the screen, already mid-sentence. "I am just finishing —"
"Where are you."
It was Elizabeth's voice. Flat, precise, an edge underneath that was not her usual sharpness. He registered the edge before he registered anything else. His eyes moved to the corner of his laptop screen on instinct, the way eyes moved toward something they did not want to find.
Then to the clock on his bedroom wall.
Then back to the laptop screen as if one of them might be wrong.
Two-fourteen.
The air went out of the room.
