"Yes."
"Have you thought about what that means? Legally?" She folded her hands on the table. "If anything changes between you two, he has rights to her. He can take her on vacation without your permission. He can put her in a different school district. He can move, Audrey, and petition for her to go with him."
"I know what it means. I'm a nurse, Mom. I know what every line on every form means."
"Then you should know better than to sign one with a man you've been seeing for ten weeks."
The sentence landed across the table between us. She didn't raise her voice. She never raised her voice. The control in her delivery was what made it hit—the same measured tone she used when she was telling me something she believed completely and expected me to hear as fact.
"Duke has been showing up every day for ten weeks," I said. "He asked because he meant it."
"Of course he meant it. They always mean it on the day they ask." She picked up her water glass, took a sip, set it down. "I'm not questioning whether he means it today. I'm asking you whether he'll mean it in a year. In five years. When the newness wears off, the shifts are long, the baby is screaming at three inthe morning, and he remembers he used to have a life that didn't include any of this."
"He already does that, Mom. He already comes at three in the morning."
"Coming at three in the morning is not the same as staying for eighteen years."
"You don't know him."
"I know what a man looks like when he's in love with the idea of something." Her voice was quiet now, and the quiet was worse than volume. "Your father was in love with the idea of our family. He showed up. He was present. He was wonderful, Audrey, for as long as it lasted. And then one morning, I woke up, and the idea wasn't enough anymore. He was gone, and I spent three years sitting at this table waiting for a phone call that never came."
"Duke is not him."
"That's exactly what I said." She looked at me across the table, and her eyes were wet, and the wetness was not performance. It was the real thing, surfacing for the first time in eleven weeks of composure. "That’s exactly what every woman says, sweetheart. He's different. He's not like the others. He means it. And then the paper is signed and the name is on the form and you've handed a man legal standing over your child, and if he decides to leave, the paper doesn't stop him. It just makes the leaving more expensive."
"I'm not you, Mom. This is not your marriage."
The line landed. I watched it hit her face—the small fold, the tightening at the corners of her mouth, her chin lifting a fraction, her eyes going still. Her gaze dropped to the table, then to the chicken getting cold on the good plates, then to Nova in the carrier, who was watching both of us with the placid attention of a baby who didn't yet understand that the two women in thiskitchen were standing on opposite sides of a wound that was twenty-three years old.
"I just don't want you to be me, Audrey." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"I'm not going to be you."
The kitchen was quiet. The radio played something I didn't register. The gravy boat sat on the table with its chipped lip facing me, the same direction it always faced, and neither of us reached for it.
I stood up. "I should get back."
She didn't try to stop me. She walked me to the door as she always did—through the hall, past the photos on the wall, past the hook where her coat hung beside the one that used to be my father's and was now just a hook with nothing on it. She touched Nova's foot through the blanket. She didn't say anything to me beyond "Drive safe."
I put Nova in the car and sat behind the wheel at the curb with the engine off.
The conversation I'd been afraid of was behind me. I defended my choice. I told my mother no. I was supposed to feel lighter.
I didn't feel lighter. I felt the older thing—the thing her voice did to me every time it carried the weight of her marriage into a room I was standing in. She was afraid for me. She loved me. The fear and the love were the same thing in her mouth, and I couldn't separate them no matter how many times I tried, because I grew up inside both of them at once.
I turned the key and drove home.
Astrid was rounder than she'd been two weeks ago. I noticed the curve under her sweater when she came through my door, her hand going to her lower back when she straightened from the hug. I clocked it. I didn't comment.
Duke was at the counter chopping tomatoes. He'd been here since five. Nova was in the bouncer between us, watching the ceiling fan with the religious focus she brought to ceiling fans. Easton came in behind Astrid with a bottle of wine, clapped Duke on the shoulder, and bent to tap Nova’s nose.
We ate at my small table, the four of us, pasta, salad, and garlic bread. I poured three glasses of wine. Astrid drank water with lemon. The water and lemon were the confirmation, and I let it sit. Trying not to smile. The dinner was warm with the ease of people who know each other—Astrid and I in one conversation while Duke and Easton ran another beside us, two threads running parallel inside the same room.
Then Astrid set her water glass down. She looked at Easton. He smiled at her—the private one, the one that made his whole face settle.
"So," Astrid said. "We have news."
I already knew. I'd known since she walked through the door.
