Like when the sun comes up through the kitchen window.”

I wrote it down on the back of a grocery list.

For the first time, I was making a plan for something entirely ordinary and genuinely ours.

PART 17

Winter came early to Evanston.

The trees along our street stood bare and the lake turned the color of polished steel.

I began visiting smaller homes and apartments, trying to decide whether keeping the old house would truly give Grace stability or simply keep us surrounded by reminders of promises that hadn’t survived.

I showed her photographs of three possible places, careful not to suggest that she was being asked to choose our future alone.