Days pass. The weight has shifted and we're both still learning the new shape of it. She stays. Not the guest room —the bedroom. Bagel migrates between us each night, claiming territory. Poutine watches from the bookshelf and withholds comment.
Thursday, she brings her laptop into the kitchen and works while I do physio exercises on the couch. Friday, I find her shampoo next to mine in the shower. Neither of us mentions it. That night, she cooks pasta — terrible, again — and I sayit's greatagain, and she knows I'm lying and I know she knows, and the knowing has become its own kind of meal.
Now, she's asleep.
I know because her rhythm changed — not quieter, not louder, just different. The particular cadence of a body that has stopped monitoring itself and handed the controls over to whatever system runs things when the conscious mind isn't watching. She's resting without performing it.
Bagel is between us, flat on his back, paws in the air, tail draped across my forearm. Orange against blue in the dark. He's been in this position for approximately ninety seconds and has already achieved a depth of sleep that I, a grown man with a healing pelvis, will not reach for another hour.
I can see her. Not clearly — the blinds let in enough light to make shapes from shadows — but I can see the line of her shoulder under the blanket. The dark spill of her hair on the pillow. The slight part of her lips.
No makeup. No calculation. No distance.
This is the version I watched from across the kitchen on the flour night — the one she didn't know I could see. Except this time I'm not across the room. I'm here. And the door is open all the way.
My phone is on the nightstand. Maman called twice while we were on the couch — I saw it buzz and didn't pick up. She'll call again in the morning. She always calls in the morning.
I'll tell her. I'm not sure how yet, but I'll tell her.
The hip makes its sound — the one it makes when I've been in one position too long, the low note beneath everything. I shift. Carefully. The kind of carefully that's for Bagel, not for the hip — the cat is more fragile to me than the bone.
She doesn't wake up.
I close my eyes.
The apartment is quiet. My apartment. Our apartment — not yet, not officially, but the pronoun is changing in my head and I'm letting it. Her shoes are by the door. Her pillow is under her head. Her presence fills the room.
I wakeup to the sound of my own phone.
Maman. 7:14 AM. Saturday.
Nora is still asleep. Bagel has migrated from between us to directly on top of her chest, his face two inches from hers, purring like a small engine. Her arm is across him. She is holding the cat the way you hold something that chose you.
I pick up the phone. I get out of bed — slowly, the hip protesting the first movements of the day as it always does, the morning stiffness that the physio says will fade, that I believe will fade because I'm choosing to believe things now. I reach for the crutches.
I take the call in the kitchen.
"Allô, Maman."
"T'étais où hier? J'ai appelé deux fois—" Where were you yesterday? I called twice—
"Yeah, I know. I was — occupied."
"Occupé comment?" Occupied how?
I look down the hallway. The bedroom door. Open. Inside, a woman and a cat.
"Nora's here," I say.
Silence. A long silence. From Maman, this means she is either processing or preparing.
"Elle est là." She repeats it. Flat. Testing the weight of it.
"Oui."
"Là comme — elle est encore là? Depuis hier soir?"
Here, as in still here. Here, as in since last night.
