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Then she says, more quietly, “You want children.”

It’s not a question.

I don’t bother pretending otherwise. “Yes.”

She nods. “We didn’t.”

“No.”

“We said we did,” she continues. “We talked about it like normal people. Timelines, names, schools, all of it.”

“We talked about it like we talked about everything,” I say. “As if deciding something meant we felt it.”

She smiles faintly. “We were very good at that.”

“We weren’t good at much else.”

“That’s not true.” She meets my eyes. “We were good at not hurting each other.”

“That’s not the same thing as being good together.”

“No,” she agrees. “It isn’t.”

Another pause.

“You would have made a good father,” she says.

I don’t respond. Because I don’t know if that’s true. Because I don’t know if I’m allowed to want that anymore. Because I don’t know what I’ve already done.

Before I can answer, the doorbell rings.

We both pause.

She glances at me. “Expecting someone?”

“No.”

The bell rings again, more urgent this time. I already know.

I don’t say it out loud. I walk to the door and open it.

Maggie is standing there, breath a little uneven, hair pulled back like she didn’t have the patience to deal with it properly. She looks like she’s been thinking too much and sleeping too little.

For a second, neither of us speaks.

Then she says, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

She steps in. And then she stops. Because Candace is still in the kitchen, leaning casually against the counter like she belongs there.

Maggie’s eyes flick between us. There’s a beat where the situation rearranges itself in her head. “Oh,” she says.

Candace doesn’t miss a step. “Hi. I’m Candace.”

Maggie blinks once. “Right.”

“His ex-wife,” Candace adds, because of course she does.