Noah sighed. “Storms don’t have cake.”
Sophie said, “Everything should have cake.”
And there it was—life, stubborn and sweet, going on in the middle of ruin.
Rachel checked her watch. “They need lunch soon.”
“Come to my apartment,” I said before fear could stop me. “We can compare the letters. We can figure out what happened.”
Her expression closed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“I understand. Then a café. Anywhere public.”
She looked at the children, then at me. “There’s a small place on Spruce with a back table. They know us there.”
“Okay.”
She hesitated. “You should call Noelle.”
The sound of my fiancée’s name struck me with fresh guilt. “I will.”
Rachel’s mouth tightened, not with jealousy, but with an exhausted kind of compassion. “She deserves better than being left in a park with no explanation.”
“She does.”
“So did we,” Rachel said.
I had no answer.
The café on Spruce was warm and narrow, with fogged windows and mismatched chairs. The owner greeted Rachel by name and brought crayons before she asked.
He glanced at me only briefly, but there was recognition in his look—not of who I was, but of what I might become in Rachel’s life, and therefore in the children’s.
We settled at a table near the back. Rachel ordered grilled cheese cut into triangles, apple slices, milk with lids, and coffee she did not seem likely to drink. I texted Noelle with trembling fingers.
I’m with Rachel. I’ll explain everything tonight. I’m sorry. None of this is what it looks like, but it is serious.
Her reply came several minutes later.
I’ll be at my apartment. Don’t make me ask twice.
I set the phone down.
Rachel watched me. “She loves you.”
“I know.”
“Do you love her?”
The question should have been simple. A week ago, it would have been. I loved Noelle’s steadiness, her intelligence, the way she remembered people’s birthdays and gave direct answers.
I loved the life we had planned because it seemed safe. After Rachel, safety had felt like love.
But now I looked at the three children arguing softly over whether a blue crayon was really blue or secretly purple, and all my definitions failed me.
“I care about her deeply,” I said.
Rachel nodded as if that answer hurt exactly as much as honesty should.
The food came. The children ate with bright concentration. Noah offered me one apple slice after studying me for a full minute.
“You look sad,” he said.
“I feel a little sad.”
“Apples help.”
I took it. “Thank you.”
Rachel looked down at her coffee. Her lashes trembled, and I saw not only the woman I had lost, but the woman she had become without me: careful, resilient, tired in ways rest could not fix. She had carried pregnancy alone, birth alone, first fevers and first steps and grocery bags and rent notices and questions she could not answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes lifted. “For what?”
