He nodded slowly. Like he'd known before he'd asked. "Yeah," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He offered me a thin smile. "I think I've known for a while." He looked down at his coffee. "Since the funeral, maybe. The way you introduced us." He glanced up. "You introduced us like… like you were trying very hard not to."
I laughed. It felt silly to do it, but I couldn't help it. "Was it that obvious?"
"Only to me." He picked up his file. "Is it—are you?—?"
"I don't know," I said. It was the only honesty I had left. "I genuinely don't know what it is."
He nodded. "Okay." He stood with unhurried grace. "For what it's worth, I hope it works out. Whatever it is." He said it and meant it, which was the most Tom thing he'd ever done.
I watched him move down the corridor, already skimming the file in his hand, already pivoting to the next task. I sat there for a long moment after he’d gone.
Through the window, the afternoon was shifting, the light filtering through the clouds in pale, settling streaks. I thought about the future the way you do when you’ve just closed one door and are standing in the hallway before the next. I didn’t know what was on the other side. I didn’t know if what was happening with Jack was a real thing, or if the conversation that was clearly coming would change everything or end it before it started. I didn't know if I was brave enough for any of it.
What I knew was that I’d seen the off-ramp and kept driving.
That had to mean something.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find four words from Jack.
Are you free Saturday?
I looked at his name at the top of the screen. I typed back before I’d finished deciding.
Yes.
I put the phone away and sat for a minute longer in the quiet waiting area. Around me, the hospital kept humming on. I felt as though I’d stepped off a solid ledge and into a fog where I couldn't yet see the bottom.
Then I stood up, straightened my coat, and went back to work.
Chapter Forty-One
Jack
Cedar Falls did a spring market on the last Saturday of April. Lily had spotted a flyer for it on the school noticeboard and mentioned it four times in three days, her voice getting a little flatter and more insistent each time she ‘happened’ to bring it up. I’d told her we’d go. She’d given me a short, grave nod, like a general confirming that a long-planned maneuver had finally been executed.
I’d sent the text on Thursday, staring at the screen until the nine words felt like they weren't mine.
Market on Saturday. Lily wants to go. You around?
I’d waited through a five-minute silence that felt like a long shift.
Then:
I could be.
So here we were.
The market was the kind of thing Cedar Falls did well. It was unhurried and unpretentious, with a double row of stallsrunning through the park. The spring light came through the trees in thin, pale strips, and the air smelled of damp earth and fried dough. Local stuff mostly: heavy loaves of bread, misshapen produce, and a man with a table of woodwork that Lily examined for a long time with great seriousness before declaring she liked the small ones.
I'd been to this market before, years ago. Different version of my life. I hadn't thought about that until I was standing here, and then I thought about it too much and made myself stop.
Lily walked between us in the way she'd started doing lately—not holding our hands, just claiming the center, like she'd decided that was where she went and nobody had told her otherwise. She had her pocket money tucked in her jacket and was spending it with grim deliberation. She’d already committed to a small jar of honey and a hair clip with a bee on it, and was currently weighing a bag of shortbread against a stick of rock candy. The rock candy was a non-starter, but I stood back and let her work through the logic of the trade.
Maddie walked on the other side of her. She had her hands in her coat pockets and her hair down, and she looked different out of the hospital. Lighter somehow, like she'd remembered she was a person who existed outside of it. She'd been laughing at something Lily said a moment ago, and the laugh had caught me off guard the way her laugh always did. I'd looked at the stall in front of me and found something very interesting about a display of artisan jams.