I moved us into a slightly larger apartment still near Green Lake—same neighborhood, better windows, more light, a second bedroom that felt almost luxurious. Per the agreement, I informed Ethan in writing two weeks before the move. He offered movers. I declined. He sent over boxes anyway. I accepted those.
By then we had learned something important: refusing everything is just another form of fear.
At Leo’s first birthday, the Seattle sky surprised everybody by showing off.
No rain. Just pale blue and sunlight through the trees.
We held the party in Maya’s café after hours, the tables pushed back, balloons taped modestly to the windows because Maya said anything more was tacky and she ran a respectable establishment, not a suburban carnival.
Leo wore a little cream sweater and spent most of the party trying to chew on the ribbon from his gift bag.
Maya baked the cake herself—yellow cake with vanilla frosting, simple and beautiful. Robert brought wooden blocks. Carol brought a silver frame that I privately thought no one should ever give a one-year-old, but she also brought herself under control, which was the real present. Mrs. Gable dropped off a hand-sewn bib and cried when Leo smeared frosting on it.
Ethan arrived last, not because he was late, but because he had stopped to pick up a tiny raincoat Leo did not need that day at all.
“Planning ahead,” he said when Maya mocked him.
“Obsessive,” she corrected.
He smiled.
Actually smiled.
That still startled me sometimes.
During the party, Leo stood holding onto a chair, looked at the room full of adults who had all, in their own flawed ways, fought over him, feared for him, failed him, or learned because of him, and then he did the most ordinary, miraculous thing in the world.
He took three wobbling steps.
Not to Ethan.
Not to me.
To the space between us.
We both lunged on instinct, both laughing, both kneeling, and he collapsed into our joined hands with a delighted shriek like he had invented walking personally.
Everyone clapped.
Maya cried openly and denied it immediately.
Robert looked away and cleared his throat.
Carol pressed her lips together so tightly I knew she was trying not to show emotion, which in her case counted as a public confession.
And I sat back on my heels with my son between us and thought:
This is it.
Not the fantasy I once married for.