Page 115 of Wreckage and Rain

"Tell me why."

I look at her. The woman who, a few days ago, stood under the Vibes marquee and let me put my hands on hers for the first time since everything. The woman who is still mad at me, by every right, but who got in a car, drove, ate cornbread, and slept in a B&B room across the hall from mine because she decided this was worth one more try.

"Because he should have been a better father, a better person," I say. "And I shouldn't have spent my whole life trying to earn him. The cracking on son is the closest he's ever come to admitting any of that, and I think the truth is he's going to die before he gets the rest of the way there. I can't wait for him. I've spent my whole life waiting. I'm tired."

She nods.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"You did the right thing."

"Right and good aren't the same thing today. It still feels like shit."

"Yeah."

She reaches across the gap between our rocking chairs and finds my hand. We hold each other on the porch of a yellow Federal house with a haint-blue ceiling and we rock. Slow. In sync, like our chairs found the rhythm on their own.

The sun starts to drop. The light goes pale gold, the harbor catches it, and the city goes briefly luminous. The kind of light that makes tourists stop on the sidewalk to take a photo.

We watch it.

"I'm giving up the Logan Square place," I say.

She turns her head. "You just signed that lease."

"I rented it so I could be near you without asking you for anything. I didn't think I had the right to ask yet." I keep my eyes on the harbor. "I'm done hedging. I want to live in Chicago for good. Not a rental I can walk away from."

She doesn't say anything.

"I want us to look for a place to buy," I say. "Together. When you're ready. Not because my company's there. Because you're there."

"A place to buy," she says.

"A place to buy. Only if you want it. I'm not asking you to decide today. I'm telling you what I want, so you know it."

She looks out at the gold water. I make myself wait.

"I want to look," she says. "I'm not giving you a closing date. But I want to look."

"That's enough."

"It's a start."

"I'm going to see your mother tomorrow," she says.

"Alone, or do you want me there."

"Alone."

"I trust you."

"That's a new sentence in your mouth."

"I have a lot of them now."

She laughs. The smallest laugh. Then she stands, still holding my hand, tugs me up out of the rocking chair, and puts her arms around my waist, her face against my chest. We stand on the porch of the B&B at twilight while the city we used to live in turns gold around us.