Catherine looked toward Lily, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil in her hand. "She'll be glad to see you," she said. "Call her yourself and ask when would be good."
Richard did. He arrived on Saturday with the book, a little uncertain in his expensive jacket and less confident than he had seemed when he drove up to the broken fence. Lily opened the door and stared at the cover before she looked at his face. For a moment she seemed to be deciding whether to hope.
"You remembered?" she asked.
"I wrote it down when you mentioned it. Then I lost the notebook for a while. I found it cleaning my desk."
Lily took the book carefully. "You could have ordered it online."
"I know. I wanted to bring it."
They sat on the back steps for an hour and a half. Richard asked about the history presentation, and Lily told him how nervous she had been and how proud she felt afterward. She also told him that she did not want to be treated like a problem to be divided between two legal teams. Richard listened without correcting her, and when he apologized for sending the custody petition, he did not explain away the fear it had caused.
Catherine stayed inside. She made tea, took a few sips, and found herself standing by the kitchen window more often than necessary. She could hear portions of the conversation, and she would later confess to Daniel that she listened because she was human and because hearing Lily laugh with her father was both a relief and a grief she had not anticipated. She did not go outside to make the moment about her.
Daniel was finishing a gate repair elsewhere that afternoon. When Catherine called later, he listened while she described the visit and said she was glad he had not been there to make Richard feel judged. Daniel understood what she meant. He did not want Lily to think a new relationship required her to choose between adults who cared about her, however imperfectly. The better outcome was a wider circle of people willing to show up.
"She told him she didn't want a custody arrangement," Catherine said. "She wanted a father. She said those were two different things."
"She's twelve," Daniel said. "She has a gift for making the important part impossible to miss."
"She's herself," Catherine corrected gently. "Not just her father's daughter or mine."
Daniel smiled into the phone. "You're right. That's better."
As October moved into November, the four of them formed habits without making announcements about them. Friday dinners alternated between the two houses when schedules allowed, though Daniel's small kitchen required more choreography than Catherine's. Noah discovered that Lily loved to organize complicated projects but disliked letting other people change the plan midway through. Lily discovered that Noah could make an argument about anything, including the correct way to stack plates in the dishwasher.