“I think,” he says at last, “I think maybe there’s too much pressure to be happy, Gillian. People make it sound like we’re supposed to feel that way all the time, unless there’s something wrong. But I don’t think happiness is a default setting. I think it’s a gift. I think most of the time we’re just…normal.”

“Normal?”

It sounds so…underwhelming. But maybe, in a way, also liberating. Not to be chasing happiness. Not to think there’s something wrong with me if more of my days feel ordinary, unpunctuated by magic, than not.

I wonder if he’s right. Or if his standards are just too low. If this is his way of saying that he’s not that happy in his life with me but he’ll settle for it anyway.

“Ask me something else instead,” Oliver says then, and his eyes meet mine, unflinching. “Ask me,” he says, “if I feel alone.”

I swallow.

But I do it.

“Do you feel alone?” I say, and saying the words is like standing on a tightrope over a deep valley.

Oliver keeps his eyes on mine.

“Never, Gillian” he says.

*

We go out to the diner nearby and talk for a long time, and come back to our room and talk some more. We talk about the future, and the past. We talk about Hannah Feldman. Oliver has told me that he still hasn’t managed to email her. He’s been trying to find the words but doesn’t know what he should say. At some point I look up and make a spur of the moment suggestion.

“You should write it now,” I say. “You should just write it.”

“Gillian…it’s late.”

I look at him. “You’ve been procrastinating about it for a week already. You might as well just write it.” I take a breath. “You should invite her to the house. If you want to. If she wants to meet me too, I mean. Maybe we could even invite Jeff—he’s her biological uncle, after all. And Dinah, and Josie.”

Oliver swallows.

“Are you sure?”

I nod.

I wonder how hard it’s going to be for me to control my face when I see hers. If the resemblance will be too much.

Oliver sits down at the small hotel desk, pulls out his laptop. I pour us both a drink. I hear the keys tapping, slowly. When he’s done he turns the screen around to me.

“Will you read it?”

“I don’t need to see it, Oliver,” I say.

“Gillie. I need a second opinion. Read it?”

I read it.

Is it a good letter? Does it say the right things—enough and not too much; does it set the right boundaries? I have no idea.

“It’s perfect,” I say, and kiss his temple. “Hit Send.”

He glances at the time.

“Maybe it’s too late.”