A few weeks ago, I might not have been able to design a planner that was this right for Lark. But since that day at my apartment, a lot has changed between us. Sure, she’s not yet up for coffee shop visits, but she will go on the occasional walk—half-planned tours through parts of Brooklyn that even I don’t get to all that often. Sometimes I tell her things about the neighborhoods, about clients I have in various spots around town; sometimes she tells me things about LA or about the actors she’s known and worked with. We talk occasionally about the job—the walls that she’s still not ready for me to start on—but mostly we simply get to know each other in the kind of tentative, non-heavy-topics way of a new friendship. For the most part, she avoids bringing up the living land mine that is Cameron, who’s been in and out of town on location shoots, but I notice the way her mood fluctuates according to his movements—she’s lighter, more talkative, more adventurous when he’s gone.

It’s been good to have the company, because the relationship between me and Lark isn’t the only thing that’s changed since I got back from Maryland with Reid. First of all, Sibby’s gone, moved in to her new apartment with Elijah, her last day at home over a week ago now. When I’d come back that Sunday, flushed with all the feelings for Reid I was no longer ignoring, Sibby was home, waiting for me. And I could tell that she’d practiced, the same way I had. “Meggie,” she’d said, using her long-dormant nickname for me, “I didn’t mean what I said, bringing up your family that way.”

“I know you didn’t,” I’d answered, and I’d meant it. I’d forgiven Sibby even before I’d gotten all the way across the Bridge that night we’d fought, but forgiveness didn’t really fix what was wrong between us. She may not have meant it, about my family, but she had meant everything else. And that meant the only kind of fighting I could do, the only kind of practice that would help her, was the kind where I gave her the time and space away from me that she’d wanted, until she was ready—really ready—to talk again. She’d seemed relieved, for those last few days of being my roommate, that we could play polite for the time being, that I was willing not to press it. On move-out day, I’d helped her carry the last few boxes down to the rental truck Elijah had waiting at the curb, and we’d hugged each other tight, both of us holding back tears.

“It’ll be better, Meggie,” she’d said, and I’d nodded my chin against her shoulder, hoping she was right.