“I wish I’d noticed it then.”

“So do I,” she said.

There was no cruelty in her answer.

Just a truth we could finally bear to hear in the same room.

PART 13

By February, Mason had begun calling me more often.

He still said Liam, and I was content with that.

Once he phoned from Lauren’s kitchen to ask whether a cardboard rocket would fly better with three fins or four.