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“Yes, it did. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the amount I was hoping for.”

The anxiety bled through my voice as I spoke, and I imagined my mother could hear it as well.

“Ember, please don’t worry about me and my medication. That wasn’t why I asked.”

“I’m not, Mom.”

“Sweetie, who do you think you’re fooling? Listen, I can always call Dr. Smith and ask about the payment plan again. She was more than understanding last time, and she told me that if I needed to be moved to that, all I needed to do was ask.”

“No Mom. I have it handled. There is enough there, and Everett paid me today. I have set aside enough for this month and for our rent. I will put aside the next co-pay out of my next check. Please don’t call Dr. Smith.”

Mom was quiet. I could almost see her sitting in her worn armchair by the window, a blanket over her lap, wringing her hands.

“You always take care of everyone else, baby. I often wonder who is taking care of you.”

“I am fine, Mom. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not worried.”

I sat there in my car, staring at the house in front of me, at the warm light coming from the kitchen windows where I’d left the fairy lights on.

“I’m being taken care of. I promise.”

“Good. Are you eating? You sound like you’ve lost weight.”

“Mom, a voice doesn’t reflect weight loss,” I laughed.

“A mother knows, darling, we hear everything, even if we can’t see it. Now eat something and call me tomorrow.”

“Love you, Mom.”

“Love you more. Goodnight, baby.”

I hung up my cell phone and sat in the car for a few minutes longer, watching my breath fog up the windshield. I pulled up my banking app and stared at the balance, then transferred the money to our joint account, then closed the app and shoved my phone into my bag. We’d been in tighter situations, but I was grateful I could make this payment. Tomorrow as a new day and I knew I didn’t need to figure it all out now; it would all work out in the end.

Sophie had been in bed a little over an hour. I’d finally gotten everything cleaned up from dinner and had finished making a hot cup of tea and sat down at the island in the kitchen with my laptop. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be working in shared spaces, but Everett was still on the phone, locked behind his office door, and I figured what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt; besides, I had muffins in the oven for breakfast.

I’d been building the last six chapters of my book to get to tonight’s moment. When Ethan finally cracks. I took a sip of my tea, finished reading what I’d written last night and dove it.

He sat in the dark car with the engine off, his forehead pressed to the steering wheel. The streets were empty, and he stared at the house in front of him. Inside, his daughter was probably still laughing at the story Rosie was reading to her. The sound of that laugh was both the best and worst thing he’d ever heard.

The worst because it proved to him that happiness didn’t require the person you’d lost. That life would keep going, building around the void, filling in the edges and smoothing the rough parts, until one day you look around and realize that your life no longer included them anymore.

The moment you realized that, it felt like you were losing them all over again.

My vision blurred. I blinked, and a tear hit my keyboard, then another.

I reached for a paper towel, blotting my eyes so I could keep writing. Only the tears kept falling, and at some point I’d stopped typing all together and sat there with my hands over my face, crying over a man I’d invented who was feeling things I’d borrowed from a man I barely knew but somehow felt I was learning to understand.

Somehow, that turned into crying for Sophie, and how she had saved her money to buy a gift for her father because she feared he’d forgotten how to be happy. I thought about every sad comment she made today, and then I cried for Rebecca, who had the foresight to make sure her daughter remembered the happy memories because she knew her husband that well.

I was so wrapped up in my own emotions I didn’t hear Everett come into the kitchen.

“Hey.”

I jerked upright, wiped my eyes quickly, and turned to look over my shoulder. Everett stood in the doorway to the kitchen, under the bittersweet vine, holding a box of tissues in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other.

“I’m fine,” I said, which was absurd because I was certain crying had made my face puffy, never mind the fact that I’d been audibly sobbing for a good five minutes.