After the kids were asleep, Liam in the guest room, the girls in their shared bedroom, Ethan and Clare sat on her back porch, despite…
The winter wind carried snow that would fall later, covering the landscape in temporary white. But inside the captain’s house on the bluff, warmth and…
They shared custody of Liam with the kind of civil efficiency that probably looked healthy from the outside and felt slightly hollow from within. But…
Liam took a decisive bite of sandwich, studying his father with the unsettling perceptiveness 9-year-olds sometimes possessed. Are you worried about work? Sort of, Ethan…
Clare would laugh at one of Ethan’s dry observations about institutional bureaucracy, and the sound would be exactly the same as 17 years ago. Ethan…

The sound was hideous. It was the sound of metal striking concrete, a discordant, violent noise that had no place in the sacred silence…
The moment stretched impossibly long, the cafe sounds receding into background noise. “Okay,” Ethan said finally, setting down his coffee with deliberate care. “Can we…
We’re both stubborn, and we both care deeply about our work. But the difference between this and your marriage to Thomas, between this and my…
Somewhere in the darkness, the Atlantic moved against the shore with patient rhythm, the same rhythm it had kept for millions of years, indifferent to…
” The wedding planning happened slowly over months with input from everyone. They decided on December, a year and a half after that first chance…

