September arrived the way it does in Seattle, with a quality of light that is different from summer, sharper and more golden, the kind that makes ordinary things look considered.
I was seven and a half months pregnant and the world had narrowed in the way that the approach of a significant event narrows the world, not unpleasantly but with the specific focus of something coming that will reorganize everything else around its arrival.
Damien had begun working shorter hours.
I noticed before he announced it, the way I noticed most things about him now, from long practice and genuine attention. He was home by six, which had never been a consistent feature of his daily life before, and the evening hours had a quality of presence that was different from the evenings of earlier months, more d
