The morning of our first anniversary I woke at six to the sound of October rain on the windows.
Not the dramatic rain of the night on the gravel driveway, not the rain of any particular confrontation or turn, just the ordinary October rain of a city that does this regularly and has made its peace with it.
Rose was asleep in the monitor’s green light. Damien was already awake beside me, which was not unusual, the four-hours-a-night habit having survived into new parenthood through some combination of determination and biology.
I turned and looked at him.
He looked back.
“A year,” I said.
“A year,” he said.
We lay in the October morning and I thought about October last year, the conference room on the fourteenth floor and the car ride that covered all the distance between my old life
