"Audrey. You don't have to do this."
"Yes, I do."
"We can figure this out here. Together. You don't have to send me away to?—"
"I'm not sending you away. I'm asking you to go think about what you actually want without me sitting across from you making it harder to be honest." Her jaw was set, but her eyes were wet for the first time since the conversation started. "I need you to figure this out somewhere I'm not, Duke. Because if you're looking at me when you decide, you're going to choose what I need. And I need you to choose what you need, even if it's not me."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
I'd already chosen. Weeks ago, months ago, in the slow accumulation of mornings that started with her coffee order and ended with her feet across my lap on the couch. But she couldn't hear that right now. Not with her mother's marriage sitting in the room between us, filling in every silence with a story I hadn't written.
I got up.
I pulled on my jeans from the floor. The shirt over my head. I kept my eyes on my hands because looking at her was going to undo me. She kept hers on the duvet. The apartment was quiet. Nova's monitor hummed from the nursery down the hall.
I stopped at the bedroom door. My hand on the frame.
"I love you."
It came out before I meant it to. It was the first time either of us had said it. It came out because I had nothing else left, and the truth was the only thing still in my mouth.
Audrey looked at me. Her face did something I couldn't read, a movement behind her eyes that could have been ten different things and that she didn't let me see the final shape of.
"I know," she said.
I stood there for a beat. Then I turned.
The door to Nova's room was open a crack. The hallway light threw a narrow stripe across the crib. I could see her inside—the small shape under the blanket, the fists curled at her shoulders. I stood at the door for a count I didn't track, looking at my daughter through the gap, and then I kept going.
Down the hall. Out the door. Down the stairs. Into my truck at the curb.
The morning was just coming up—thin gray light over the roofline, the streetlights still on. I sat behind the wheel with my hands on my knees, and then I drove to my parents' house.
My father was at the kitchen table with the paper and a cup of coffee. Wednesday morning. My mother was at the school—second grade, the classroom across town. A game-film notebook was open beside the paper. My dad, writing notes for next week's practice on a Wednesday, because that was what he did.
I walked in without knocking.
He looked up. Read me in one beat. Folded the paper. Stood.
"Sit down, kid."
I sat.
He poured me coffee. Set it in front of me. Sat across from me and waited.
"What's going on?"
I told him. Audrey saw the Nepal confirmation on my phone. She thought I was still deciding. I told her I wasn't—told her I'd already chosen, that the answer was no, that I wanted to be here. She didn't believe me. She asked me to leave so I could figure out what I wanted without her in the room. I told her I loved her. She said I know. I left because she asked me to.
He listened, drank his coffee, and watched me. When I was done, he sat with it for a long time. Longer than I expected. The game plan was usually ready by now—the play call, the next move, the schedule.
He was sitting in silence.
"I can't tell you what to do about her, kid." His voice was quiet. "That's not mine."
I nodded and looked at my coffee.
The silence stretched. I thought that was all he had for me this morning.
