Ethan quit refolding his paper napkin and glanced up.

“So that means no more six-month ship rotations?”

“That means no more six-month ship rotations,” I told him.

“My office is forty minutes down the highway, and I’ll be home every night by five.”

He let out a soft breath that hardly stirred the air in the room, then picked up his spoon and went back to his oatmeal.

The navy leather-bound journal he’d kept through those dark weeks at the Pine Street house sat on the shelf over the stove, closed and dry between two cookbooks.

The phone on the wall rang twice before I lifted the receiver.