"I keep worrying about Oliver," she said. "He's quiet when he's hurt. Colin says I'm poisoning him against his father by being upset. But I'm not telling him details. I'm just not lying anymore."
"Being sad in front of your child isn't the same as asking him to take sides."
Nora looked relieved, then cautious. "You don't have children. I shouldn't put you in the position of giving me advice about mine."
"I don't know how to raise a teenager," I admitted. "I know what it was like to be a kid who could tell the adults were hiding something. My parents separated for a year when I was thirteen, and everybody acted like we wouldn't notice if they lowered their voices. It was the pretending that frightened me."
She listened, and I told her something I had not thought about in years. My parents eventually reconciled, but for that year I had become obsessed with practical tasks. I fixed a broken fence, learned to change an oil filter, and rearranged the garage so carefully that the tools could be found with the lights off. I believed if the physical things stayed in their proper places, the family might do the same.
"Is that why you restore buildings?" Nora asked.
I hadn't considered it. "Maybe partly. Mostly I like looking at something people have given up on and figuring out how it can carry weight again."
She gave me a searching look. "You know marriages aren't buildings."
"I'm starting to realize that."
We finished our breakfasts and agreed to exchange any facts the other person needed for making decisions, but not to spend every evening turning our lives into an investigation. Nora said her therapist had suggested she limit how often she reread old messages. I told her Rebecca had warned me against letting anger turn into impulsive financial decisions. Both pieces of advice felt disappointingly sensible.
Outside the bakery, Nora pulled up her coat collar against the wind. We stood on the sidewalk for a moment, awkward again, unsure what people who had met under such circumstances were supposed to say goodbye like. I held out my hand in a businesslike gesture. She looked at it and laughed for the first time without sadness immediately following.
"Really?" she asked.
"I thought a handshake was neutral territory."
She shook my hand. "Coffee again sometime, Reid. Not because we have another disaster to discuss. Just coffee."
"I'd like that."
When I got back to my truck, Sabrina had sent four messages. The first asked whether I had eaten; the second said she had scheduled a couples counseling consultation; the third asked why I wasn't answering; and the fourth said Colin's wife had been contacting people at the firm, which was making a painful personal matter unnecessarily public. I read the messages twice, then called Rebecca before replying.