I looked away.
He drew a shaky breath.
“I missed the appointment.”
I went still.
The appointment.
He had never named it before.
Eight months ago, when the bleeding started, I had called his assistant because Grant was in a private meeting. His assistant said he was unreachable. I went to the hospital alone.
He arrived the next morning with flowers and apologies and the devastated expression of a man who hated consequences but did not understand absence.
“You didn’t miss an appointment,” I said quietly. “You missed me.”
His face tightened.
“Yes.”
The word emerged stripped of defense.
Lena stood silently beside me, fierce as a guard dog in paint-splattered boots.
Grant looked at her. “I’m not asking her to come home tonight.”
“Good,” Lena said.
“I’m asking for one conversation tomorrow. Somewhere she chooses. No lawyers. No staff. No phone.”
I nearly smiled at that.
“You can survive without your phone?”
His mouth trembled. “I’d like to try.”
There was a time when I would have rushed toward the smallest opening in him and built hope inside it. Tonight, I let the silence stretch.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Four o’clock. The public garden on Cranberry Street.”
He nodded once.
Then he placed the ring on the stone wall beside him.
“I’m not giving it back,” he said. “I’m returning it to you. What you do with it is yours.”
He walked away without waiting for praise.
I did not pick up the ring until his car disappeared.
It was still cold.
The next afternoon, I arrived at the garden ten minutes early.
Grant was already there.
