We discussed the apartment. Rachel had found a small place she could rent beginning the following month, not far from Olivia. She wanted to take the dining table she'd purchased before we lived together and the two blue armchairs her aunt had given us. I said yes to both. We reviewed the joint account, agreed to pay the remaining utilities, and decided to divide the balance after the last bill cleared.
Then she said, "Could we postpone canceling everything else? The photographer, the florist. Maybe just for a month."
"What would the month change?"
"We might feel differently."
"I might. You might. But I'm not going to keep vendors waiting and tell our families we have a wedding date when I don't intend to marry you."
She bit her lower lip. "You seem very certain."
"I'm certain I can't marry you now. The rest of my life doesn't have to be decided in this cafe."
She looked toward the counter where a barista was struggling to coax an espresso machine back to life. "I keep thinking that if I'd come home Thursday instead of going to Henry's, we'd still be planning the wedding."
"Maybe we'd still be planning it," I said. "But the letter would still have been hidden. You'd still have sent that email. I still wouldn't know about my father."
She closed her eyes. "That's true."
When we stood to leave, Rachel asked whether she could hug me. I almost said yes immediately. Then I realized I wasn't ready to carry the comfort of that moment into another week of confusion. I told her gently that I didn't think it would help right now. She nodded, and for once she accepted a no without asking me to explain it twice.
Outside, I watched her walk toward the train station. There was no victory in it. She was someone I had imagined growing old beside, a person whose handwriting I could recognize from across a room, whose preferences I knew down to the type of coffee she drank when she was sad. Now I was beginning the slow work of learning how to care about a person without agreeing to remain part of their most damaging habits.
That night I finally moved our engagement photograph off the shelf. I didn't throw it away. I placed it in a drawer with the wedding folder and closed the drawer carefully, as if the past might bruise if I handled it roughly. Then I called Leah, asked whether Dad liked visitors on Saturdays, and made a plan to go north again.
The second visit to Wisconsin was less dramatic and, in some ways, more difficult. Nobody cried when I arrived. Dad was sitting at his small kitchen table sorting medication bottles into a weekly organizer, and Leah was arguing with him about whether the labels were still legible. He asked me to pass the magnifying glass from the counter, and I did. For ten minutes we were simply three adults dealing with a problem, which was a kind of intimacy I hadn't expected to find there.