Chapter 13: Work and Weather
I returned to full-time work when Eli started a small daycare run by a woman who knew how to read a custody calendar without drama.
Spreadsheets again. Meetings. The relief of problems that ended at five o’clock. A colleague who had left lasagna years earlier left a note in my office on the anniversary week: Still no opinions. Still lasagna if needed. I taped the note inside a drawer. Kindness without curiosity is rare. I rationed my trust toward people who practiced it.
Dating remained theoretical longer than my sister preferred. When I finally tried, I told the truth early, without the video as a party trick: I had twins; one died after a transfer was declined while I was under; the father and I share a child and a history. Some men vanished. One stayed through coffee and then a year, then not. The ending was ordinary. Ordinary endings were a gift after a marriage that had broken in a hallway.
