PART 4:

Emma watched her father laugh at something Jake said. It was not the polished social laugh she had grown up hearing at dinner parties. It was the other one, the one that surfaced only when Martin Lawson was briefly entirely off duty. She had not seen that laugh in years. That evening, there was a bonfire.

Martin had gotten the cruiser running by 4:00 and had taken it out on the lake for 20 minutes with an expression of unguarded satisfaction. Carol made her pulled pork that took 6 hours and was worth every one. There were folding chairs and the specific scent of wood smoke that attached itself to everything and did not apologize.

Afterward, when the fire had settled to coals and Carol and Martin had gone inside, Jake and Emma walked along the waterline. Their footsteps crunched on the gravel shore. The stars were the kind that only appeared this far from a city. “Your parents are different from how you described them,” Jake said. “How did I describe them?” “Pressure. Expectation.

” “The impression that they were a problem to be managed.” Emma was quiet for a moment. “They are those things. They’re also just two people who miss having you around.” She stopped walking. Jake stopped a step later and turned to look at her. “Don’t,” she said, but without heat. “Don’t what?” “Don’t make it simple.” “It isn’t simple.

” “I know it isn’t,” Jake said. “I’m not making it simple. I’m just saying what I see.” Emma looked at him for a long time. The moon had come up fully by now and the lake was silver and still. “Do you ever think about it?” she asked. “What?” “Being with someone again.” “Actually with someone.” Jake looked out at the water.

“I think about whether Lily needs it. Whether she needs someone to be there in the way I can’t be sometimes. Whether I’m enough.” “That’s not what I asked.” A pause. “No,” he said. “I don’t think about it. Or I didn’t.” She kissed him. It was not dramatic. It was quiet and brief and it happened the way things happen when two people have been standing next to the edge of something for long enough not to fall.

“Exactly.” A step. Jake was still for a moment. Then he kissed her back. They stood there in the gravel at the edge of the lake and there was nothing performed about it. No audience. No agreement. Just two people who had found, without planning to, that the distance between them had been closing all weekend and was now gone.

“This isn’t in the contract,” Emma said when they stepped back. “No,” Jake agreed. “We should probably be careful.” “Yes.” They walked back to the house in a silence that had changed entirely. They returned to the city on Sunday evening. The drive mostly quiet in the way that comfortable silences are quiet. The agreement was technically complete.

Emma signed a transfer for the $10,000 Monday morning and sent it to the account he’d given her. Jake thanked her by text. Emma replied, “You were very good at it.” He replied, “So were you.” Then nothing for 3 days. The specific suspended silence of two people who are not sure what the rules are anymore.

On Thursday, Emma was in back-to-back acquisition meetings from 7:00 in the morning until 6:00 in the evening. On Friday morning, she was reviewing a due diligence report when her phone rang with a Claremont area code she didn’t recognize. She almost didn’t answer. “Miss Lawson?” The voice was a woman, elderly, slightly breathless. “This is Diane Carter, Jake’s mother.

I’m sorry to call you. I found your number in Jake’s phone and I” A pause. “Lily had an episode. They’re at Claremont Memorial. Jake asked me not to call you, but I thought you’d want to know.” Emma was out of her office in under a minute. She drove the 3 hours to Claremont without stopping. She arrived at the hospital at 10:02 in the afternoon and found Jake in the waiting area outside the pediatric unit, sitting forward in a plastic chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped, staring at the floor. He was still in work clothes.

There was engine grease on his left forearm that he hadn’t noticed. He looked up when she came through the doors. The expression on his face, the brief involuntary relief of it, was not something Emma was prepared for. “You didn’t have to come,” he said. “I know,” Emma said. She sat down in the chair beside him.

He told her what had happened. Lily had come home from school complaining of tightness in her chest, not unusual. They’d managed it before, but this time the inhaler hadn’t brought it under control the way it normally did. He’d been under a car when his mother called. He’d driven to the school in 11 minutes. “She’s stable now,” he said.

“They’ve got her on a nebulizer. The doctor says she’s going to be fine. It’s just it went faster than it usually does.” Emma nodded. She didn’t offer reassurances or cheerful reframings. She sat with him in the way the situation actually required steadily, without performing comfort. After 40 minutes, a nurse came out and said that Lily was awake and had asked for her father. Jake stood.

He looked at Emma with a question in his face that he didn’t ask aloud. “Go,” she said. “I’ll be here.” He was inside for 20 minutes. When he came back out, he had Lily with him, small and pale and wrapped in a hospital blanket, clutching a stuffed rabbit that Emma suspected had been through several medical emergencies.

Lily looked at Emma with the frank, direct gaze of children who have not yet learned to approach strangers at an angle. “Dad said you came,” Lily said. “I did.” “He said you drove a long way.” “3 hours, roughly.” Lily considered this. “That’s a lot of driving.” “It is.” “Dad doesn’t like driving long distances. He says highways are psychologically corrosive.” Emma looked at Jake.

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