Claire knew immediately.
“To be her mom for a day?”
He nodded.
“Why did you really say yes?”
“I told you.”
“You told me the reasonable version.”
Claire smiled.
“That wasn’t reasonable?”
“You met a five-year-old in a park and considered rearranging your life before you knew our last name.”
“Fair point.”
He leaned against the counter.
“I’ve wondered about it.”
Claire set down the towel.
“The truth?”
“Please.”
She took a slow breath.
“That morning, I woke up alone.”
Ethan stayed silent.
“I don’t mean alone in the dramatic sense.”
She looked toward the living room.
“I had people I could call. I had employees. Acquaintances. Former classmates. My father.”
“But nobody there.”
“Nobody there.”
Claire folded the towel.
“I stood in my kitchen and looked at this ridiculous espresso machine I barely knew how to use.”
Ethan smiled.
“I remember that machine.”
“Very judgmental appliance.”
“Terrifying.”
Claire smiled too.
Then her face grew serious.
“I realized that if I didn’t go to work that day, I didn’t know what I would do with myself.”
Ethan listened.
“I didn’t know where I belonged when I wasn’t useful.”
That sentence sat between them.
Claire’s voice lowered.
“I had spent fifteen years making myself necessary.”
“At work?”
“Everywhere.”
She nodded.
“If people needed me, I knew who I was.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“I felt invisible.”
Ethan looked at her differently.
Claire continued.
“Then Maggie walked over.”
She smiled toward the sleeping child.
“She didn’t know my job. She didn’t care about my title. She didn’t even know my last name.”
“She cared about your braid qualifications.”
