"I don't want to be an opportunity," Lily said. Richard looked at her, surprised by the firmness of the sentence. She told him she did not want two adults arguing over where she belonged; she wanted her father to come to the school presentation, answer when she called, and remember the things she told him. "I don't need a better arrangement," she said. "I need you to be my dad."
Richard listened longer than Catherine expected. He apologized without arguing about Catherine, and he asked Lily what kinds of visits she would actually enjoy. She suggested the bookstore, a science museum, and occasional dinners with no business calls at the table. He wrote those things down in the same small notebook where he had once recorded the book title, and Lily noticed that this time he kept the notebook in his pocket when he left.
That evening Catherine told Daniel about the visit. She admitted she had listened to fragments through the kitchen window, and he teased her gently for being human. Then she said Lily had smiled after Richard left, not the polite smile she used when an adult asked about her grades but a real one. Daniel was glad, though he reminded Catherine that the important part would be what Richard did next month and the month after, when the memory of the conversation was less vivid.
Catherine understood. She had become more attentive to the difference between a dramatic promise and a repeated action. She asked Daniel whether he ever worried that her life would overwhelm his, and he answered that her life was busy and complicated, but so was his. "We don't have to solve the whole calendar tonight," he said. "We have to keep telling each other the truth when the calendar gets hard."
Their first ordinary disagreement came two weeks later. Catherine suggested an expensive weekend away during Noah's school project exhibition, having forgotten the event despite Daniel mentioning it twice. Daniel told her he was disappointed, not because he expected her to memorize every detail of his life but because he needed her to understand the commitments he would not rearrange. Catherine almost defended herself with an explanation about an exhausting week, then stopped and asked when the exhibition began.
She attended with Lily, and the four of them spent an hour examining small bridges built from craft sticks, cardboard, and a spectacular amount of glue. Noah's structure carried more weight than he expected, though not as much as a rival project with reinforced joints he had failed to notice. He was disappointed for about three minutes before deciding that the rival's design contained several principles worth studying. Daniel watched him approach the other student and ask how the supports worked instead of accusing the judges of unfairness.
"He goes back to where the problem started," Catherine whispered. Daniel smiled and replied that the habit was not always convenient. Lily offered Noah a detailed opinion about the loading method, and the two disappeared into a debate so cheerful that the adults stopped following the technical argument. Catherine looked at the crowded school hall and realized she had missed dozens of ordinary events like this while telling herself there would be more time later.