I wasn’t expecting a sudden personality change. I was watching for evidence of a gradual one.
Priya said: “How are you doing, actually? Not the kids, not Owen. You.”
I had to think about that one longer.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m genuinely tired. And I need some of my own life back.”
“What does that look like?”
I had a list. A Saturday where I didn’t have to be anywhere by eight-fifteen. A Friday evening I didn’t spend front-loading work because the next morning was a school morning. Dinner with Priya that didn’t have to happen at nine-thirty because that was the earliest I could swing it.
“Those are small things,” Priya said.
“Small things add up,” I said. “I know that better than I ever did.”
## The Conversation With Brooke
Owen did talk to Brooke. She called me the following week.
She was, as she sometimes is, disarmingly direct. “I want to apologize,” she said. “I knew things were going on longer than a few weeks — I could see that. But I let Owen handle the communication to you and I shouldn’t have. I should have called you directly much sooner.”
I said I appreciated that.
“Can I ask you something?” she said. “Did the kids seem okay? Through all of it?”
I thought about Ella asking if I would be her aunt forever. I thought about Max’s library books on the end table and the way he would come find me when he was stuck on homework with the quiet assumption that help was available.