“And,” he added, “if you’ll have me in it, with you.”
I touched his cheek.
“I think I can manage that.”
“High praise.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Then I kissed him.
Life did not become perfect after that.
This mattered.
Because for years, I had secretly believed happiness was supposed to arrive as a finished state.
A place where all the difficult questions had already been answered.
Instead, happiness arrived looking suspiciously like ordinary life.
Traffic.
Homework.
Deadlines.
Mia refusing broccoli.
Adrian forgetting that children required snacks approximately every eleven minutes.
Me discovering that dating after widowhood involved feelings nobody could schedule conveniently.
Sometimes I missed Daniel so suddenly that it startled me.
The first time it happened in front of Adrian, we were walking through Central Park.
A man rode past on a bicycle wearing the same ridiculous green jacket Daniel had owned.
I stopped.
Adrian stopped too.
