PART 5: The Flight
Five years passed with the peculiar speed that belongs to parents of young children.
There were fevers and first words, cheap birthday balloons, endless mismatched socks, and long evenings when I worked after bedtime because a proposal still needed finishing.By the time the girls turned four, our studio employed nine people.
We had won a contract to redesign community rooms in several residential developments.
My finances were comfortable, though I still drove the same used hatchback and carried a canvas bag with broken handles.
I liked knowing exactly what we had earned.
The Boston trip had been for a meeting about one of those projects.
Seeing Nathaniel in the boarding line startled me, but I did not owe him either an explanation or a performance.
On the plane he asked whether I had remarried.I told him no.
He mentioned a development in Providence, a portfolio sale, and a business award I was apparently expected to admire.
