Tom is almost walking now. He likes to pull himself up to standing, cruising around the living room in his tights, delighted at his newfound mobility. Cate watches him, fascinated. It is extraordinary, she thinks, this urge to stand, to walk; extraordinary to watch the human animal evolve before her eyes. Everything he comes across he puts in his mouth: pencils, elastic bands, scraps of food from the floor. He becomes enamored with putting pencils in holes. She buys plastic guards for the outlets. It becomes imperative to get out of the house.

On a sunny Sunday in March, a week before his birthday, he takes his first steps across the living room; one, two, three, and then he sits on his bottom. She applauds, calling to Sam where he sleeps upstairs, and he rushes down, rubbing his eyes and blinking. They coax and wheedle and Tom manages another few steps. Sam takes out his phone and manages to catch it, sending it immediately to Alice. Cate sends it to her dad.

Often, on the weekends, she straps Tom in the stroller and walks over to the community garden, where he and Nora toddle on the ground, amateur naturalists investigating stones and eating earth, while she and Dea dig over the beds for the new season’s plantings. She likes the work, likes the way it makes her sweaty, likes the sweet smell of the soil.

She goes for walks. Sometimes she goes with Dea; sometimes, if she is alone, while Tom naps in the stroller, if the weather is fine she simply sits on a bench in the sun. When he wakes there is often a short gap of time in which he comes to himself, in which he looks out at the world from his seat, not looking for her, not looking for anyone. She sits behind him, letting him have this moment, a minute when she is not immediately there hovering over him. It occurs to her that it begins so early, this process of letting go—of not inserting yourself between your child and the sun.

They are tentative with each other, she and Sam, but they have grown easier, grown closer. Still, they give each other plenty of space, as though whatever small fire has been rekindled will be smothered with too little air. But Tom sleeps in his own bed now, and sometimes, in the quiet of the early morning, it is easy to turn towards Sam, curling into his frame in the night, waking with her arm over his chest.

She texts Hannah every day, just a single line to check in.

One morning in early April, she bikes up the hill to the university, arrives in the office and opens her email. She sees it immediately. A message from Hesther—subject line Lucy Skein.