I brought a new household calendar to the May meeting, though the old one still had months left in it. Nadine had said there was progress she and Rowan could discuss with me. I heard progress and bought clean squares. Before leaving home I had written my class hours in pencil, leaving room for the rearrangement I expected to make when she returned.
Rowan saw the calendar when I put it on the table. They didn't comment. Nadine sat across from me, her coat still buttoned, and said the active evidence-gathering phase was ending. Nearly two years had passed since she began cooperating. I had counted those years in meals and school terms, but hearing the span spoken aloud made it seem newly substantial.
"Ending," I repeated. "Not just slowing down?"
"That phase is ending," Rowan said. "I can't discuss what follows in detail."
"But the apartment—"
I stopped because I could hear how quickly I had leaped past what they had actually said. Nadine looked at the calendar. I opened it anyway, as though the object might explain the question more reasonably than I had.
"I thought we could begin putting things back," I said.
Rowan's expression didn't change. "I'm not making a promise about immediate changes to protective arrangements. I don't have a date to offer for that."
I had heard versions of that sentence before. What angered me now wasn't that it was new, but that I had come ready to be finished with it. I rubbed at a pencilled class time until it smudged under my thumb.
"So what does ending mean for us?"
"It means what we've told you about the evidence gathering," Rowan said. "I understand that's less than you hoped."
I wanted to ask enough questions to force the shape of the rest into view. Instead I closed the calendar. Rowan couldn't give me a household, and the fact that I had brought one in outline didn't make it theirs to complete.
We finished the limited part of the briefing. Rowan confirmed that the established contact arrangements remained in place and asked whether I had a safety question. I said no. My remaining question belonged to Nadine, and I asked whether we could speak alone after the meeting.
Outside, we stood beside the car without getting in. The day was warm, and a crease from the calendar's binding had pressed into my palm. Nadine said she had hoped I would be pleased.
"I am pleased you're reaching the end of that work," I said. "I don't know yet what I'm pleased about for us."
"I want to come home, Ellis."
There was a time when that sentence would have answered every question I allowed myself to ask. I looked at her and realized I had been saving it like money, expecting it to purchase a return to the life we had before the offer.
"Do you want to repair the marriage," I asked, "or do you want the house to work again?"
She pulled back a little. "That's an ugly distinction."
"It isn't meant to be. I want you home too. But I don't want us to get there and discover I meant one thing and you meant clean towels, the girls nearby, no more arranging a visit."
"You think that's all I miss?"
"No. I think we haven't said what else has to change."
She unbuttoned her coat, then buttoned it again. "I've tried to ask before changing things."
"You have. December was different. Other visits have been different. That matters to me." I waited until she looked at me. "It doesn't erase how the separation began. We still need to talk about what being married lets either of us decide alone."
Nadine said she didn't know how to answer beside a parked car. I said that was fair. For once I didn't turn her lack of an immediate answer into either refusal or reassurance.
We agreed to talk at the next scheduled visit, without telling the girls that a homecoming had been arranged. I put the calendar on the passenger seat rather than asking her to take it. The pencilled hours remained where I had written them.
Driving home, I felt the relief I should have felt earlier: a long part of Nadine's work was ending. Beneath it was a different uncertainty, one no investigator could settle. This time I knew whose conversation it had to be.