Lucas and Amelia have settled, steadily, into a life divided between two homes — messier than before, less polished, and immeasurably more honest.

There was a day, some months on, when Brandon and I fell into a sharp argument in a parking lot over the logistics of getting Lucas to a school event, and for a few minutes the old machinery of our marriage came grinding back to life — the quick accusation, the practiced defense, the small confident reinterpretation of the facts, and his plain expectation that I would eventually apologize just to make the discomfort stop.

And then, in the middle of a sentence, I stopped.

“I’m not going to keep having this conversation in this format,” I said.

He laughed, bitterly.

“So you just walk away now, whenever you hear something you don’t like?” “When a conversation stops being productive,” I said, “yes.