“No.”

“There’s one called The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. It’s awesome. There’s an episode about how hair goes white overnight and deer that eat humans and death by molasses. One time they talked about monks who turn themselves into mummies,” she says. “I could send you a link.”

Wyatt nods gravely. “I would very much like that.”

A smile transforms Meret’s face. “I just started playing tennis. The coach says I’m a natural.”

“I’ll bet you are. I was the highest ranked singles player at boarding school when I was your age.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He hesitates. “I haven’t played in a while. Maybe you could show me a few tricks, one day.”

“Maybe,” she says. “One day.”

I watch them for a little while, trading conversation as if it is a checkers game, one red piece taking one black one and vice versa, until each holds the full measure of the other’s color. An hour passes, and then another. I wonder what Brian is doing. If he is sitting somewhere in his own house, wondering how a stranger might be stealing his daughter’s allegiance.

As if I have conjured him, the door opens, and Brian steps outside. Wyatt immediately stands. I realize that where I am sitting, with my back against the porch wall, I am equidistant between them.

Brian stares at him, his jaw locked. Wyatt doesn’t blink under his regard.

It’s like a pissing contest. Even Meret can’t stop looking from one man to the other.

“It’s getting late,” Brian says to Meret. “You’ll never wake up in the morning.”

She rises from the swing. “I hope we can pick up where we left off,” Wyatt says. I can see her struggling to figure out what to do: shake his hand? Hug him? Neither?

He steps off the porch, off Brian’s property, saving her from making the decision. “Well,” Wyatt says awkwardly. “Good night.”

I take a step toward Wyatt, but Meret grabs my wrist before I can join him. “You’re not leaving again, are you?”

Brian and I have not talked about it: where I will stay, if I will stay. But Meret’s face is so guileless, so fragile. I have just come back to her; how could I leave again?

“No,” I say, as if I never intended anything but this. “Of course not.”

At this, Brian turns and walks into the house. Meret waves to Wyatt, and follows. “Come say good night,” she tells me.

Wyatt stands underneath the field of stars. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I…”

“I know. I get it.” He takes the rental car keys from his pocket and flips them in the air. “Meret needs you tonight more than I do,” Wyatt reasons. “I’m willing to share.”

“You’re terrible at sharing.”

“Okay, that’s true,” Wyatt admits. “I’m willing to share this once. But I’ll be camped out at the curb at first light.”

He starts down the driveway, but turns around.

“She’s remarkable,” Wyatt murmurs, a grin playing over his mouth.

“I told you so.”

“You’ve been dying to say that to me, haven’t you?” He laughs.

I watch the taillights of the rental car disappear down our road, and then turn to the house where I’ve lived for fifteen years. I know every loose plank in the floor and where there is water damage to the ceiling and which rooms have the newest coats of paint, but tonight, it seems unfamiliar. A mausoleum, a crypt.

I find Brian making up the bed in my office. “You…you don’t have to do that,” I say.

He turns around, his cheeks reddening. “I figured you’d want to…I didn’t think…”

Now my face is burning. “I mean, yes. But. I can do it. You can…you can just leave everything.”

He sets the quilt and pillows down on top of the sheet he’s already tucked around the sofa cushions. He’s a foot away from me, and I suddenly remember being on the honeymoon we took with an infant Meret and my brother, to Miami. Kieran had spied a red-spotted newt that darted underneath a hedge before he could get a good look. Brian had spent a half hour laying a minute trail of crumbs and sugar, waiting for the little lizard to inch into the sunlight again.

The difference between him and Wyatt, I realize, is that Wyatt will dig till he finds something. Brian will wait until it comes to him.

“I’m going to say good night to Meret,” I tell him.

“I’ll leave my door open so I can hear you,” Brian replies, just before I cross the threshold. “If you need anything in the middle of the night, just call.”

Wyatt and a nursing staff have been monitoring me at night; this will be my first stretch alone. Brian realized that, even if I didn’t.

I know, without him saying it, that he will wake up like he used to when Meret was little and wheezing with the croup. That he will tiptoe down the hallway, and listen for my even breathing.

* * *

—

IN MERET’S BEDROOM, I lie down on top of the covers beside her, the way I did when she was tiny. Moments before she tumbles into sleep, her voice curls like smoke over her shoulder. “It’s just like it used to be,” she murmurs.

But it isn’t.

When I slip away, the door of the master bedroom is ajar and the lights are off. I go into my office and lie down on the couch. I stare at the ceiling, but I toss and turn, unable to grab sleep every time it darts within reach.

Finally I give up and reach for my phone and FaceTime Wyatt. He looks like he’s been in a deep sleep when his features swim into view. “Dawn? Is everything all right?”

Too late, I realize that when the phone rings this late, it is usually bad news.

“I’m fine,” I say immediately. “How did you know it was me?”

“Who else knows I’m in America?”

I crawl into bed and tuck him into the space beside me.

“So,” Wyatt murmurs. “Are you checking up on me? Making sure I didn’t bring any other nascent Egyptologists back to my room?”

“I just missed you.”

“I wish you were here,” he says, his voice soft.

“I wish I were, too.”

“Why do you look like you’re on the verge of tears?”

Because, I realize, getting what you want isn’t instant gratification. It’s a slow pulling apart, a realignment of bones and sinew. There are aches involved. There is bruising.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t sleep.”

“You can’t sleep without me,” he corrects, so cocky that it makes me smile.

Suddenly I feel guilty, dragging him into my insomnia. “You were tired, and I woke you up. I’m a terrible girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend,” he muses. “Is that what you are?”

Given that he still technically has a fiancée and I still have a husband, I don’t know what else I could be. I feel like I am in seventh grade again, whispering to my crush. I feel my heart hammering, while I try to figure out how to respond. “Co-parent?”

“So clinical.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“Are you.” Wyatt’s voice licks the inside of my ear. “How about my other half, then. My heart. My love.”

I fall back against the pillows, filled with stars. “Those work,” I manage.

“Good. Now, may I go back to sleep if I promise to dream about you?”

“I suppose,” I say, grinning. “Good night.”

“Olive,” he sighs. “You have to hang up.”

“You first.”

“Count of three?”

“One,” I say.

“Two,” he whispers.

I disconnect the call. I feel so buoyant I am barely touching the mattress. I close my eyes, but after a few more minutes, I give up and pad downstairs to the kitchen.

Suddenly I’m grounded again. Brian sits in a small pool of light cast by the hood of the stove. In front of him is a bottle of whiskey. He turns when I stop a few feet away from him, looking at me as if my appearance is inevitable. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his hair is spiky with sleep, or lack thereof. He stands up, immediately alert. “Are you all right? Does something hurt?”

Everything, I think. Just not the way you imagine.

“I’m fine. I just wanted some water.”

As I run the faucet and fill a glass, I hear Brian sink back down at the kitchen table. I turn around and stare at him. “You don’t drink,” I say.

He lifts his glass and drains it. “There’s a lot of stuff I never did before that I’m doing now.”

It is so strange to be here in our kitchen, to see him in the flannel robe I bought him two Christmases ago, to know what it is to be held by him and how our bodies fit together and to think I will likely never do that again. I will never kiss him, I will never taste the salt on his skin, I will never pull his hips to mine.

We’ve sat here dozens of times before in the middle of the night—celebrating a promotion of Brian’s, talking about a client of mine, worrying about a fever Meret has, crunching numbers for a monthly budget. This is familiar ground, and also completely unfamiliar.

How do you undo intimacy? How do you go back to being acquaintances, when the other person knows every inch and groove of you, every irrational fear, every trigger?