The legal order remained in effect through its specified term. I followed the conditions and kept the records, but eventually stopped checking every day whether the expiration date was approaching. Clara explained the options for seeking an extension if new facts justified it and encouraged me to assess the actual circumstances rather than live inside possibilities. No further unwanted contact had been reported, and my neighbor hadn't seen the familiar sedan for months. I continued using the cameras because they were useful for ordinary home security, not because I expected Minerva to appear whenever the doorbell rang.
One afternoon the doorbell did ring while I was home alone. My heart jumped before I could reason with it. I opened the app and saw a teenager from down the street holding a basketball. He had accidentally bounced it into my flower bed and was asking whether he could retrieve it. I went outside, got the ball, and spent five minutes talking with him about the high-school team. Afterward I stood in the doorway for a moment, aware of how quickly my body had moved from alarm to an ordinary conversation.
Healing, I was beginning to understand, wasn't the day I stopped having that first reaction. It was the day the reaction no longer decided what happened next. The doorbell could ring and I could check it without building the rest of my evening around the possibility of trouble. I could receive a strange message and decide whether it required attention rather than treating it as a summons. I could be hurt by a memory and still get on with dinner.
Rebecca and I didn't rush into living together. In fact, that was one of the decisions I valued most about us. She liked her house and the garden she'd built behind it. I liked mine, with my father's workbench and the kitchen I'd finally learned to inhabit as a place of rest. We spent evenings at each other's homes, discussed how we would manage finances if we ever decided to combine households, and allowed those conversations to be practical rather than romantic tests.
There was a Saturday when Rebecca brought a stack of documents to my kitchen table. She was considering refinancing part of her mortgage and wanted another set of eyes on the terms. We spent an hour reviewing interest rates, fees, and the difference between the monthly payment and the total cost. At one point she looked up and said, "You're enjoying this far too much."
"I read contracts for fun," I admitted.
"Then I'm dating a very strange man."
"You knew that before you agreed to coffee."