I believed my mother had skipped my wedding.

Nia and I met in person for the first time since the wedding three weeks after I had received the audit results.

She had chosen a coffee shop neither of us had ever been to together.

Neutral ground.

She was already there when I arrived, seated at a table near the window with a cup of coffee she hadn't touched.

I sat down across from her.

She looked tired.

Not in a way that asked for sympathy — just honestly tired, the way people look when they have stopped performing for a while and have not yet figured out what comes next.

"How's your mother?" she said.

"Better.

She got the apology letter."

"I know.

My mother told me." A pause.

"I'm glad."

"Are you?"

"Yes," she said, and she meant it.

I could tell the difference now.

We sat with the noise of the coffee shop around us for a moment.

Someone at the counter ordering.

Milk being steamed.

The ordinary sounds of a place where nothing was at stake.

"I've been seeing a therapist," Nia said.

"Since the wedding.

Twice a week." She looked at her coffee.

"She's been helping me understand why I thought I could manage everything by keeping it separate.

The compartments." She touched the rim of the cup.

"I've been doing it my whole life.

With my mother.

With Marcus.

With everything my family decided was too complicated to say out loud." She looked up.

"With you."

"I know," I said.

"I don't think I'm the same person I was being when we were together.

I don't mean that as an excuse.

I mean it as — something I'm trying to understand."

"I've been thinking about it too," I said.

"About what was real and what wasn't." I wrapped my hands around my own cup.

"The gallery opening.

Knowing who I was from the start.

I can't fully separate that from everything that came after.

I've tried."

"I know."

"I don't know if I ever will be able to."

She nodded.

She did not try to talk me out of it.

"I don't want to waste your time," she said.

"Or mine.

So I need to ask you directly.

Is there anything left to work with?

In your honest opinion.

Not what you think you should feel.

What you actually feel."

I looked at her.

The woman across from me was not the person I had thought I knew.

But she was also not entirely a stranger.

The exhaustion in her face was real.

The fact that she had chosen a coffee shop we had never been to together — that was a kind of consideration I recognized as genuine.

"I don't know," I said.

"And I think that's honest."

"That's enough for me to work with," she said quietly.

"If it's enough for you."

"It might be," I said.

"I need more time."

"I know." She looked at me steadily.

"I'll wait."

"Don't wait if waiting damages you."

"That's mine to decide."

"Fair enough."

We finished our coffee.

We talked for another hour — carefully, slowly, with the particular carefulness of people who know they are not on solid ground and are choosing each step with full awareness of that.

When we stood up to leave, she didn't reach for me.

She just said my name.

"Michael."

I turned.

"I know it's not the right time to say this.

But I want to say it anyway." She looked at me with the tiredness still there, and underneath the tiredness something that was neither performance nor strategy.

"I'm sorry.

For the gallery.

For the silence.

For all of it.

Not because Patricia's watching or because it helps my position.

Just because it's true, and you deserve to hear it said plainly."

"I know it's true," I said.

She nodded once and walked out.

I stood in the coffee shop for a moment.

The barista behind the counter glanced at me and then looked away, trained by her profession to notice nothing.

The dog owner from the courtyard would have moved on hours ago.

I walked home in the late afternoon light, and for the first time since the ballroom doors had swung open and changed everything, I did not feel cold.

Not warm yet.