He found me at the river.
Not the tributary — the main river, the one that ran along the northern boundary, the one he had told me about the first night driving through the dark, the one whose sound came through the river window. I had been coming here more frequently as the pregnancy progressed, not for any reason I could fully name, simply that the water's continuity was the thing my body wanted when nothing else would settle it.
He appeared beside me with two coffees.
His, with the sugar.
Mine, without.
He sat on the bank without comment, the way he had learned to sit — close enough to be felt, far enough not to press.
We watched the river for a while.
"The name," he said.
"Yes," I said.
We had been circling it for weeks — since the morning at the river when he asked her to sta
