Chapter 2

The roses came Tuesday. Two dozen white ones and a card: To the best wife and mother. Let's start over.

I put them in water. I didn't smile and I didn't throw them out. I treated them like weather -- noted, and none of my doing.

Rowan had decided to become a better man, loudly, the way he did everything. Scratch pancakes. School drop-off. A text every three hours asking how my day was going.

Saturday was the park. He'd promised it twice. No training wheels. Just my hand on the seat, and then the whole world. Maisie had talked about nothing else for two days.

He held the seat. He jogged three steps. Her legs found the pedals -- wobbling, terrified, laughing, alive.

Then I saw him look past her.

Across the grass, near the fountain, a woman was standing with a little girl's hand in hers. Carla. She wasn't on a phone this time. She wasn't hiding behind a screen. She let go of the child's hand, and the little girl started running, and Carla came right behind her -- straight across the open park, straight at him, in front of everyone.

She reached him and wrapped both arms around his neck like she'd done it a thousand times.

And Rowan let go of the seat.

He let go of his daughter's bike to catch them.

The handlebar dipped. Some other kid's mother dropped her coffee and lunged and caught it, and said the thing you say -- pedal, honey, I've got you, now go -- and, because the moment needed it, she let go instead.

Maisie rode. Ten feet. Twenty. On her own, for the first time in her life.

She looked back for her father.

He had a woman in his arms and a small girl at his knee, and his back was turned to the path where his own daughter had just ridden away from him.

I didn't cross the grass. I didn't have to. Carla crossed it for me.

She came right up, the little girl on her hip now, and looked me over slowly, head to shoe, the way you price something in a shop you have no plans to pay for.

"So you're Amara." A small, pretty smile. "He talks about you, you know. Says being home with you feels like an apology he can never finish. Says everything with you is so... heavy."

The little girl reached down and tugged Rowan's collar, and he steadied her without looking -- easy, practiced, a habit worn smooth somewhere I'd never been.

I didn't blink. "He says a lot of things. He promises tomorrows he never shows up for." I let it land. "You'll learn."

Her smile flickered.

"Amara." Rowan was beside me now, low and urgent, one palm out like he was gentling a dog. "Don't. You're embarrassing yourself. This is exactly the drama I keep telling you about."

"What drama," I said. "I'm just standing here."

"See -- that. That tone." He softened his voice into the reasonable one, the one that used to work on me. "You always assume the worst. You twist everything into a knife. You're going to scare Maisie. Is that really what you want, in front of her?"

Carla laughed, delighted.

I didn't wait for the next line. I lifted Maisie's bike with one hand and took my daughter's fingers with the other.

"He's all yours," I told Carla -- and I meant it, and only I knew how completely I meant it.

Maisie hadn't cheered. She walked beside me, quiet in the way that costs more than crying, and didn't look back at the fountain once.

That night the training wheels came off the bike for good and went into the box, set down beside the red collar, careful, like they weighed something.

Rowan came in. "What are you doing?"

"Taking off the parts that hurt," I said, and I turned off the light.

He caught my wrist in the dark -- gentle now, the reasonable voice back on. "We're turning a corner. You feel it too, right? Give me a few weeks. I'm going to fix all of it."

I gave him no answer.

He didn't know how few "todays" were left.

How many remained -- and which one would he waste next?