The last week was quiet.
I took Noah to Little Sprouts for his first real afternoon on Tuesday. He cried at the door. Mrs. Okafor knelt down and let him hold Waffles. He stopped crying.
When Mark picked him up at five-thirty, Noah ran out to the car with a painting of a guinea pig and announced that Waffles was his best friend.
Mark started his early shifts. Four-forty-five alarms. He came home exhausted. He didn’t complain once.
Diane kept her things packed in the guest room. She was polite to me. Cool. But polite.
She didn’t eat out of a single pot for the rest of the week.
On the last morning of the six weeks, a gray Saturday in October, Mark carried her suitcases out to his truck.
Noah stood in the front hall in his pajamas. When Diane came out of the guest room with her purse, he ran over and wrapped his arms around her legs.
“Grandma,” he said. “Can the pelican come visit?”
Diane crouched down. Slowly. Her knees popped.
She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes got shiny.
“Of course she can, baby,” she said. “The pelican and the walrus are going to visit all the time.”
I held Noah’s hand on the front porch and helped him wave as Mark pulled out of the driveway.
Diane waved back from the passenger seat.
She didn’t wave at me.
But she didn’t look away from me either.
That evening, after Mark got back from moving her in, he found me sitting on the living room couch.
He sat down next to me. Not touching. Leaving some space.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really thought if it all worked out, you wouldn’t mind that I hadn’t asked.”
“I might have still said no,” I said.
“I know.”
“You needed to let me say it.”
He nodded.
“Thank you for handling the move,” I said. “And the early shifts. I know that’s hard. But I’m still hurt, Mark. You let me keep crossing off days on that calendar for two weeks. Counting down to something you’d already decided wasn’t going to happen.”
He looked at his hands.
“I know,” he said. “I watched you do it every night. And I told myself it was fine. Because I was going to fix it later.”
He didn’t ask if we were okay now.
I noticed that.
I think that was the first thing that made me believe we would be.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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