Page 107 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

Ivy climbs onto the chair beside my bed with careful determination, then unfolds the drawing and pushes it toward me. It’s three stick figures standing in front of a house. One of them is very clearly me, though I’ve been given impossible shoulders and what appears to be a cape.

I hold it up. “I’m touched by the realism.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. “That’s our family picture, but I didn’t know if I should make your hair silver or gray.”

Athena laughs into her coffee, and the sound catches low in my chest. I look at the page again, then back at Ivy, and there’s something about hearing our family picture spoken out loud that makes everything inside me go very still.

“Our family picture,” I repeat.

Ivy nods like that should’ve been obvious from the first line. “Yes.”

Athena sits down in the chair by the window and watches both of us with that guarded softness she gets now, the one that still looks slightly surprised every time it shows up. She’s tired. I can see it around her eyes. She’s also beautiful enough to be distracting in a room where I’m supposed to be recovering.

Daniel notices where my attention goes and rolls his eyes. “Great,” he mutters. “He’s definitely fine.”

I don’t even look at him. “Leave.”

He snorts, yet he does. The door shuts behind him, and the quiet that follows feels earned.

I set the drawing on the tray table carefully. Ivy is already talking about something that happened with a stuffed animal in the gift shop yesterday, and Athena is stirring sugar into her coffee like she’s trying not to say something bigger than that. I know the look now.

I wait. Eventually, Ivy pauses long enough to look at her mother. “Can I say it?” she asks.

Athena blinks. “That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not ominous,” Ivy says, offended. “It’s planning.”

I have to bite back a smile. Athena glances at me once, then at her again. “Go ahead.”

Ivy turns back to me and folds her hands in her lap with terrible seriousness. “Mom and I were talking,” she says, “and I think maybe we should stay here.”

I look at Athena. She holds my gaze this time. No dodging. No pretending this is only Ivy talking. “We were talking,” she admits. “And before you say anything, I know you already offered to go wherever we needed. I heard you.”

I settle back against the pillows. “Then I’ll say it again anyway.”

Athena’s mouth twitches. “Of course you will.”

Ivy leans closer. “I like Boston,” she says. “The pigeons are worse, but everything else is good.”

“That’s a ringing endorsement,” I murmur.

She ignores that. “And you’re here,” she adds. “And I think if we go back and then come here and then go back again, that sounds annoying.”

Athena presses her lips together, trying not to laugh. “That is, unfortunately, a strong logistical argument.”

I look between them, and something about the two of them presenting this to me, calm and careful and trying not to ask too much too fast, makes my eyes sting.

“You really want to stay?” I ask Ivy.

She shrugs one shoulder. “I want us together.”

Athena looks down at her cup for a second, then back at me. “I’m not talking about tomorrow,” she says quietly. “I’m talking about soon. Once you’re steadier. Once we know what our lives look like after all this. There are branch campuses of Ivy’s school network here. It wouldn’t be impossible.”

I study her face. “Would you want that?”

Her eyes don’t move from mine. “I think,” she says slowly, “I spent six years building a life alone since I had to. That’s not the same thing as saying I want to keep doing it if I don’t have to.”

I let that sit there, let it land everywhere it needs to. Ivy looks between us like she’s waiting for one of the adults to stop being emotionally constipated and say the obvious thing.