Chapter 11: The Quiet Recalibration text
Edward called once, three days later, from the short-term rental.
The conversation was brief and careful. He said the children were adjusting. He said he had started a temporary contract job. He did not ask to return. He did not attempt to reopen the terms of the notice. I told him I was glad the work had appeared and that Dylan and Sarah were welcome to visit on the schedule we had already kept—library days, an occasional dinner, the ordinary grandmother arrangements that did not require anyone to live under my roof. He accepted the boundary without argument. Whatever understanding he had reached about the night Linda pointed at the back door, he no longer tried to negotiate it away.
Linda did not call. The absence was cleaner than another round of justified feelings would have been.
