My heart is going to pound out of my chest. “I need to go.”
“Everett!”
I hang up. The ranch suddenly feels too quiet. Too open.
A daughter. I have a daughter.
Emily.
The name replays over and over in my head.
Three years old. Three years of birthdays I missed. Three years of first steps and scraped knees.
This isn’t how I imagined becoming a dad. I always thought someday I would have kids. But it would be with my wife.
Planned.
Exciting.
Something we chose together.
Not a phone call out of nowhere telling me my life had already changed three years ago.
And then another thought creeps in.
Violet.
She had told me once that she had accepted the possibility that she might never have kids.
What will she think about this? About me suddenly having a child in another country.
We had just started something. Barely started. One date. One incredible night.
Something fragile and new, still finding its footing. Would this be too much? Too complicated? Too soon?
Everything I thought my future looked like yesterday has shifted.
And I have no idea what is coming next.
22
Violet
“Coffee pairs nicely with silence.”
There was a change. I felt it before I could explain it.
It wasn’t obvious enough to point out a single moment where everything shifted, but it was there all the same. A quiet space that hadn’t existed before. Something just felt slightly off.
Everett still texts. He still asks how my day was, still checks in when he knows I have early mornings at the café. Still says goodnight.
But the gaps between messages stretch longer than they used to. Conversations that used to drift effortlessly throughout the day now stop and restart hours later. He’s rescheduled plans. More than once. And every time he did, it never felt like he didn’t want to see me. It felt like he did, but couldn’t.
Like something heavier had taken priority. Like he was carrying something he didn’t want to set down near me yet.
I pour more coffee into my mug, watching the late morning customers trickle in and out. The espresso machine hisses behind me, the familiarity of steaming milk and grinding beansfilling the room. Normally, the noise grounded me. Today, my thoughts are drifting.
I keep telling myself not to jump to conclusions. Absence doesn’t mean he’s not interested.
