“Some days I give you a piece,” I said. “Some days I take one back. That’s how it’s going to be. Maybe for a long time.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “That’s more than fair.”
“Good.”
We sat there a while longer. Then, very slowly, I moved over on the step until my shoulder was touching his.
He didn’t move. I think he was afraid to breathe.
“Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“Next year, for her birthday, we’re doing the cake inside. I’m not scrubbing frosting out of that hair in the backyard hose again.”
He laughed. A real laugh. The first real laugh I’d heard from him in a year.
“Deal,” he said.
People ask me sometimes how I could go back to him.
My friend Rachel asked it straight out once, over lunch. “Claire, he threw you out. With a newborn. How do you even look at him?”
