The first four months out here I made about a fifth of what I’d made the year before.
By month ten I was at sixty percent. By month sixteen I was past where I’d been.
That’s the real timeline. Nobody puts that part in these stories and I think leaving it out does people a disservice.
But Here’s the Other Part
He’s home.
He’s home at six most nights. He’s home two Saturdays out of three. He takes one Friday a month and he and Olive have gone to a tide pool, a cheese factory, a minor league baseball game, and something called a wooden boat festival that neither of them can adequately explain to me.
Olive is ten now. She has a green room and a soccer team and a best friend named Imogen.
She has never once said anything about missing a birthday, because he hasn’t missed one.
Months Later, in Our New Kitchen
