Chapter 6 - Building with Oak
Three years after that New Year’s Eve, I stood in my kitchen preparing another family dinner.
The table looked completely different.
The formal white linen was gone.
So was the embroidered runner.
I had replaced everything with a simple oak table long enough for ten.
My mother was slicing bread.
Brooke arrived carrying a salad and complaining about graduate-school paperwork.
Margaret brought flowers.
Grant came later with sparkling cider.
He handed it to me.
“I checked. Nonalcoholic.”
“Thank you.”
He no longer called the penthouse his son’s house.
Or the family house.
He called it Claire’s place.
That tiny difference meant more than he probably understood.
Ryan arrived last.
Lily, now nearly three, ran toward him.
“Daddy!”
He lifted her into the air.
“Hey, bug.”
I watched from the kitchen.
Ryan looked at me.
“Need help?”
“Yes. Set the table.”
He saluted.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t start.”
“Starting nothing.”
My mother leaned toward me.
“You two are disgustingly domestic.”
“We’re married.”
“Again.”
Technically, we had never divorced.
But six months earlier, Ryan and I had chosen to move back in together.
Not because the old marriage had healed itself.
Because we had built a new one inside the legal shell of the first.
We marked the decision privately.
No vow renewal.
No giant celebration.
Just dinner at the restaurant where Ryan had once failed to tell me the truth.
At the end of the meal, he had taken my hand.
“I can’t promise I’ll never disappoint you.”
“Good.”
He looked surprised.
“That was supposed to be romantic.”
“I don’t want impossible promises.”
He smiled.
“Then I promise to tell you when I’m afraid.”
“I promise to ask questions even when answers are inconvenient.”
“I promise never to sign your name.”
I stared at him.
“Ryan.”
“Too soon?”
“Three years too soon.”
He laughed.
So did I.
May you like
Then I squeezed his hand.
“That one you can definitely promise.”
