Billie passes the bread. I take a piece and pass it to Ronan and our fingers brush on the basket and neither of us says anything about it.
Coats on at the door. Billie hugs her father the way she always does — both arms, face against his shoulder — and he holds her with his hand on the back of her head and says something into her hair that I can't hear. She nods and squeezes him once and steps back.
Ronan looks at me. The hallway, the coat rack, thirty years of goodbyes at this door.
He puts his hand out.
I take it. The same firm grip, except he holds it one beat longer than he needs to. A man who has shaken my hand a thousand times choosing to do it again.
"Drive safe," he says.
"Always do."
He lets go. Steps back. The door closes.
Billie takes my hand in the driveway and we walk to the car. I don't start the engine right away. The light is on in Ronan's front room and somewhere in that kitchen the chair I sat in is pushed back the way I left it and the bread basket is still on the table and a man is clearing dishes alone the way he's been clearing dishes alone since Claire died, except tonight there were four plates instead of one.
"Okay?" Billie says.
I look at her. Her face in the light from the dashboard, her hand in mine, her stomach under the dress carrying the next version of everything.
"Yeah," I say. "Okay."
She squeezes my hand. I start the car.
Sunday.
28
Declan
She is making breakfast and getting egg shells in the pan.
She taught herself to crack one-handed from a YouTube video three weeks ago and she has committed to this technique with the focused stubbornness she brings to everything she decides matters. She misses about one in four. She picks the shell out. She does not switch to two hands. She will master this or die trying and I have very quietly started buying extra eggs.
She's showing now. Not slightly. Actually showing, the curve of her visible in profile when she reaches for the pan, and she moves through my kitchen with the specific ease of a woman who stopped thinking of it ashiskitchen approximately two weeks ago. There are no tentative objects left in this house. Everything she owns has settled. Her shampoo displaced mine. Her gaming chair is in the living room. The Celsius has its own shelf.
This is just how we live.
I'm at the table with coffee, watching her cook, because that's also just how we live. She cooks. I watch. She's aware I'm watching and she doesn't mind and this fact — the not-minding, the ease of it, the complete absence of performance — is something I still notice every morning. I suspect I'll notice it every morning for the rest of my life.
"You're staring again," she says, without turning around.
"Yes."
"Has anyone ever told you it's weird to watch someone cook eggs with that level of intensity?"
"No."
"That's because no one else has been subjected to it." She flips the eggs. Successfully. No shell. She makes a small triumphant sound. "Did you see that? Clean flip. No debris."
"I saw it."
"You could say something supportive."
"That was a very good flip."
"Thank you. I've been practicing while you do your thing where you sit there looking like a cologne ad and don't help."
