Chapter 26
Our Time
Elise
For several nights, Nolan, Ivy, and I ate dinner together. The arrangement was still new, but it had begun to feel natural. Ivy asked Nolan about photography, music, and every embarrassing story I had never told him.
On Friday, Ivy instructed both of us to dress nicely. She refused to explain why.
Nolan waited for me outside the school gate in dress pants, a button-down shirt, and black Converse. I wore a floral dress and sandals.
“You look lovely,” he said.
“You look like a man who was threatened by a fifteen-year-old.”
“That is exactly what happened.”
Ivy appeared behind him with a small envelope. “You’re late.”
“For what?”
“Our time.”
She handed Nolan the envelope. Inside was a reservation at the restaurant where he and I had first eaten together after finding each other again.
“You planned this?” I asked.
“You two are terrible at making decisions. I’m helping.”
At the restaurant, Ivy sat across from us and asked questions while we tried to eat. She wanted to know how we had met, why we had separated, and whether we had loved each other before she was born.
Nolan answered plainly. “Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you stay together?”
“We were young. We made mistakes. Other people made choices for us.”
Ivy looked at me. “Did you want to find him?”
“Every day.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I tried. I didn’t know the messages never reached him.”
She absorbed that. “That sounds like a story adults tell when they want to avoid blame.”
“You’re right to be skeptical,” Nolan said. “You should judge us by what we do now.”
After dinner, Ivy led us to the park. She had placed candles around a small blanket and brought a portable speaker.
“This is excessive,” I said.
“You lost fifteen years. You’re allowed one dramatic evening.”
Nolan glanced at me. “She gets that from you.”
“I get it from both of you.”
We sat beneath the trees. Ivy played one of Nolan’s old photographs on the speaker, a song I remembered from college. For a while, none of us spoke.
“Mom,” Ivy said, “are you happy?”
“Yes.”
“Dad?”
Nolan took my hand. “I am.”
Ivy smiled as if she had expected that answer. Then she pulled a second envelope from her bag.
“This one is for both of you.”
Inside was a piece of paper covered with handwriting. It contained a list of reasons we should stop pretending our relationship was temporary.
-
You look at each other when the other person is speaking.
-
You both become less annoying when you are together.
-
I should not have to keep arranging your dates.
-
You are already a family.
At the bottom, she had written: “Please make a decision before I graduate.”
I laughed until I cried. Nolan held the paper as if it were a legal document.
“She has a point,” he said.
“She always has a point.”
Ivy stood. “I’m going home with Maya. You have two hours.”
“Two hours for what?”
“To talk.”
She kissed my cheek and left us beneath the candles.
Nolan watched her go. “She is terrifying.”
“She’s yours.”
“She’s ours.”
The word settled between us.
“Ivy has already lost one father,” I said. “She has Julian in her heart, and no one can replace him.”
“I don’t want to replace him.”
“I know.”
“I want to be the father who shows up now.”
“You already are.”
He took a small box from his coat pocket.
My breath caught. “Nolan.”
“It’s not a surprise. I want you to know what I’m asking.”
He opened the box. Inside was a simple ring, warm gold with a narrow line of green enamel.
“I bought it years ago,” he said. “I carried it through two apartments and one marriage. I never knew why I kept it.”
“You’re asking me now?”
“I’m asking whether you would let us have our time. Not the years we lost. The years we can still choose.”
I touched the ring but did not take it.
“I love you,” he said. “I love Ivy. I know our history is complicated, and I know love does not erase the people who came before us. I’m not promising perfection. I’m promising to stay.”
The park blurred through my tears.
“I don’t want a perfect life,” I said. “I want an honest one.”
“Then be honest.”
“Yes.”
He stared at me. “Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you. This time, I’m choosing it.”
He put the ring on my finger and kissed my hand. Then he knelt again, more for the ritual than the question.
“Elise, I love you. Will you marry me forever this time?”
“Yes. Forever.”
Ivy returned before we had finished crying. She took one look at the ring and screamed loudly enough to frighten the pigeons.
“Finally!”
We married at the courthouse with Ivy as our witness. She wore a blue dress and held the bouquet. Nolan wore his old leather belt with the uneven eyes I had made for him years earlier.
Afterward, he kept our photograph in the studio. We named the studio the Louvre, after Marian’s pottery room. Elise taught music there. Nolan worked with his cameras. Ivy spent afternoons making ceramics and correcting our decisions.
The years we lost remained part of our story. They did not disappear because we found each other again. But the life we built afterward belonged to us.
Ivy later said she was glad our mistakes had brought us back to her. She said she had two fathers who loved her and two parents who had learned that time was not something to waste.
She was right.
We had lost enough of it already.
The first morning after the wedding, Ivy knocked on our bedroom door before sunrise.
“Are you both awake?”
Nolan opened one eye. “No.”
“I can hear you.”
“Then you have your answer.”
She pushed the door open and held up three mugs of coffee. “Mom, your students are waiting. Dad, your camera meeting starts at nine.”
I sat up and looked at the ring on my hand. It still felt unfamiliar, not because I doubted the choice, but because I had spent so long believing a promise was a trap.
Nolan reached for my fingers beneath the blanket.
“Our time,” he whispered.
I smiled. “Our time.”
Downstairs, Ivy had placed the wedding photograph beside the old photograph from the park. In one, we were young and unaware of what we were losing. In the other, we were older, surrounded by the life we had chosen.
Ivy studied both images.
“Which one do you like better?” she asked.
“The second,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because we know what it cost to get there.”
Nolan leaned over the frame. “I like the first one.”
“Of course you do.”
“We look reckless.”
“We were reckless.”
“And happy.”
I took his hand. “We’re happy now.”
“Different happy.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “You two are going to be unbearable.”
“We deserve it,” Nolan said.
She smiled and carried the mugs toward the kitchen. We followed her, still holding hands.
The morning was ordinary, and that was the greatest gift we had earned.