On hard nights, when Christopher is teething and miserable, I sleep on the living room sofa so I can take the early feedings and let Rosalie rest.

We are not, yet, what we once were, and we may never be exactly that again.

But we are something honest, and something patient, and something real, which is more than the marriage was in its last two polished, absent years.

And I have made a kind of peace with the uncertainty of it, which is itself a thing the old version of me could never have done.

That man needed to know the outcome; he closed deals, he secured guarantees, he did not tolerate open questions.