Carlos drove home. The house was dark except for the kitchen under-cabinet lights Amara always left on. He stood in the family room and looked at the cream sofa and the fireplace and the staircase and felt, for the first time in months, not rage and not tenderness but a plain, heavy sorrow for the ordinary evening that had been stolen from them the night Julian came downstairs shining. He went upstairs. Amara was awake in bed reading. She set the book down when she saw his face.
"I almost didn't come home," he said.
Amara's almond eyes did not fill immediately. Deep warm-brown skin, thick natural curls loose on the pillow, full lips parted. "Thank you for telling me before the almost became a fact."
"I'm not promising forever tonight," Carlos said. He removed the charcoal jacket. The gold band stayed. "I'm promising tomorrow morning. Breakfast. School drop-off. Then we keep doing the work. If the work stops meaning anything, I will say so out loud. I will not disappear through any door, front or back."
Amara nodded. "I can live inside tomorrow morning. I have been living inside smaller units of time than forever for a year. Forever got us into mythology. Tomorrow morning might get us into something real."
There was the February when Amara's sister, Imani, flew in from Atlanta and refused to pretend the affair had been a minor weather event.
Imani was older by three years, sharper by temperament, a public defender who specialized in seeing through stories people told to survive their own guilt. She sat at the kitchen island with Amara while the children were at school and Carlos was at work, and she said, without raising her voice, "You risked those babies' whole sense of home for a man who used the back door like a teenager. I love you. I am also furious with you."
Amara flinched, then steadied. Olive had long since left her wardrobe; she wore a soft cream sweater that day, gold studs instead of hoops, curls pulled back. "I know."