She had spent years being subsumed into my ambition, made invisible beside the size of my name, and she was building something now that would be hers, unmistakably and entirely, and my only permitted role in it was to help and then step back.

It was, I have come to see, a small perfect emblem of everything I was learning: that love is often shown not by how much of yourself you add to another person’s life, but by how carefully you learn where to stop.

We continue to take the two of us one day at a time, without rushing into promises neither of us is ready to make.

Some evenings we share a home-cooked meal.