I didn't take it back. It was true, and he deserved to hear it, and the time for protecting him from true things had passedsomewhere around the moment he'd picked up that pen without reading what he was signing away.
"I've been waiting," I said, "my whole life. For you to be different." I looked at him. Let him look back. "I don't think I'm going to do that anymore."
He didn't say anything. His hands tightened on the mug.
"I'm not saying I won't call," I continued, because I was trying to be precise, not cruel. "I'm saying I'm going to stop waiting. It's different."
"I know." His voice was barely sound. "I know, baby."
Baby. The word he'd called me since before I could walk. The word that fit no version of me he'd ever actually known.
I picked up my bag.
"I'll let you know when I arrive," I said.
I didn't hug him. He didn't reach for me. We had gotten good, the two of us, at the art of the incomplete goodbye, the gesture withheld, the word almost said. We had been practicing it for years.
I walked out.
* * *
The car was already waiting. Black, clean, idling at the curb, a driver I didn't recognize, who got out when he saw me, took my bag without being asked, and placed it in the trunk with the care of someone who'd been told to be careful with it.
I got in.
The city moved past the windows in the gray light of a November morning, the coffee shop where I worked, the bus stop where I'd waited through three winters, the bookstore where I spent my days off and my careful budget. The ordinary geography of a life I'd built from whatever was available. I watched it go without trying to hold onto it.
I was good at this too. At not holding on.
We were on the highway before I thought to look at my phone. There was a text from an unknown number, sent at 7:42 that morning. No name. No preamble.
We'll arrive around four. There's a room ready. If there's anything specific you need, send a list to this number before noon.
I stared at it for a moment.
Then I typed back:Who are we.
The response came in under a minute.
Dominic.
I looked at the word for a long moment. Dominic. Like it was obvious. Like there was no other we I would mean.
I typed:How did you get this number.
Your father had it on file.
Of course he did.
I put the phone face-down on the seat and watched the city give way to highway, highway give way to open road, the flat particular landscape of a drive I'd never made before. November sky, low and white. Fields that had finished with autumn and hadn't yet decided what to do next.
I thought about the contract. About my name in the middle of all that formal grammar, in my own handwriting now. About the clause on page three that I'd read twice to make sure I understood, a single line, simply worded, that said the arrangement could be dissolved by mutual agreement of both parties, at any time, provided certain conditions were met.
Both parties.
I'd almost asked the lawyer what that meant in practice. Then I'd decided I already knew. It meant the door was there. Technically, legally, theoretically there. It didn't mean I could reach it.
Not yet.