The nursing examinations were in January.
She'd been working toward them since September with the particular focus of someone who understood that this was both a professional milestone and a personal one — the completion of a version of herself that had been interrupted. She studied in the evenings after Daniel's bedtime, at the kitchen table with the anatomy module and the pharmacology module and the clinical procedures manual, and she studied well, the way she'd always studied when circumstances allowed: thoroughly and without drama.
Leonardo had learned to occupy the flat quietly during these evenings. He'd moved from arriving with wine and conversation to arriving with his own work and the understanding that the kitchen table had divided hours. He worked on one side, she worked on th
