I have board meetings until four, so I’ll handle the evening pickup and the dinner shift.” Julian nodded, adjusting Clara in the crook of his arm.

“Sounds good.

I’ll take the night bath routine and the nine o’clock wind-down.” It was the most ordinary exchange in the world, two parents coordinating a day.

And it was, to me, the sound of everything I had fought for.

People who hear this story sometimes seem disappointed by that ending, by how undramatic it is.

They want, I think, a grander finale: Julian on his knees in tearful apology, a passionate reconciliation, some cinematic proof that love had conquered all.

And I understand the appetite for that, but I have come to treasure the ordinariness precisely because of what it represents.