Ronan, who is making lunch in the kitchen with the focused contentment of a man in his natural habitat, looks over. “I’ve been looking at her for weeks. She’s remarkable.”
“They all are,” Myrna says, not looking up from Bossy, who has grabbed her finger and is holding on with characteristic conviction. “You’ve done well, Sage.”
I look at her. She says it simply, not as a compliment exactly, but as an assessment. It’s the way her father makes observations, plainly and without decoration. “Thank you.”
“And you’ve made him happy,” she quietly adds, still not looking up. “Which we’ve been waiting for. So thank you for that as well.”
I glance at Ronan, who is very focused on the lunch he is making and is absolutely listening to every word. “I hope so.”
Over lunch, they ask me questions with the focused attention of two women who are genuinely interested. What is online personal training like? How did the pivot happen? What are my plans for the degree?
I answer honestly, including the parts I’m not sure about, and Myrna listens with the evaluating focus of an artist who is deciding what to do with what she sees, and Orla asks follow-up questions with the particular precision of a photographer who understands that the real answer is usually in the frame just outside the obvious one.
I find myself talking more than I intended to. It’s easy to talk to his daughters, even though they’re older than me and well withintheir right to hate me. I am the woman who accidentally birthed their half siblings, after all. They could think I’m up to no good.
I don’t get that off of either of them.
After lunch, when the babies are down and Orla is on the sofa editing photographs and Myrna is sketching in a small notebook she produced from somewhere, I go and stand next to Ronan at the kitchen sink and bump his shoulder with mine. “You were right,” I say quietly.
“About what specifically?”
“They’re wonderful.”
He looks at me. The expression on his face is the unguarded one, the one that still gets me every time, and he says, “Yes. They are. So are you. In case I haven’t said it clearly enough.”
“You’ve said it,” I tell him. But I still love hearing it.
“Good.” He goes back to washing up. “I intend to keep saying it.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
He smiles and keeps washing.
I look at my daughters and my son sleeping in the next room. At this man washing dishes in his kitchen, in our kitchen, with the quiet satisfaction of someone who is exactly where he wants to be.
Everything feels as if it’s falling into place, which historically, has been when it all falls apart. It’s hard not to listen for the other shoe falling, but I’m trying.
Orla appears at my elbow with her camera. There are five photographs. In all of them, I am looking at someone else. AtRonan, at the babies, at Myrna. Just enjoying their company. I look, in these photographs, like a person who is entirely at home.
I look like someone who belongs here.
I have been waiting my whole life to look like that in a photograph. To be in a place and simply belong in it rather than managing my fit. I hand the camera back to Orla, and I don’t say anything because I don’t have words for it yet, and she seems to understand this, because she just nods and moves away without making it a thing.
I add her to the list of Callahans I did not expect and am very glad of.
They stay for dinner, and I’m glad for it. Ronan makes something Irish and substantial that involves potatoes in three preparations, which Myrna approves of and Orla photographs before eating, which Ronan pretends to find annoying and clearly doesn’t. We put the babies to bed in relay while the twins wash up, and by the time I come back to the kitchen, they have apparently decided I’m one of theirs, because Myrna is telling me something about a commission that went sideways and asking my opinion as though I’ve always been in this kitchen, always been part of this family.
Maybe I have been. Maybe some things just take a while to find their way to where they’re supposed to be.
When they leave, Orla hugs me at the door with the same directness she brings to everything. Myrna shakes my hand, then thinks better of it and hugs me too. Ronan watches from the hallway with the expression I have come to love most. The one that is pure, unguarded, nothing managed about it.
I moved in with this man days after our first date, and it is the least reckless thing I have ever done. Maybe the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
28
RONAN
Mary callson a Wednesday afternoon while I’m doing something I have not done in years, which is sitting in my own home in the middle of the day doing nothing in particular. Boy is asleep on my chest. Sage is in the study taking a client call. The girls are in their cribs, Bossy conserving energy for her next campaign and Baldy communing with whatever interior landscape she finds so endlessly interesting.