Six months after our divorce, my ex-husband showed up at my door with his fiancée and a wedding invitation in hand—but the second he saw the newborn in my arms, all the color drained from his face, and the perfect life he thought he’d built started falling apart right in front of me.

At Leo’s first birthday, the Seattle sky surprised everybody by showing off.

No rain. Just pale blue and sunlight through the trees.

We held the party in Maya’s café after hours, the tables pushed back, balloons taped modestly to the windows because Maya said anything more was tacky and she ran a respectable establishment, not a suburban carnival.

Leo wore a little cream sweater and spent most of the party trying to chew on the ribbon from his gift bag.

Maya baked the cake herself—yellow cake with vanilla frosting, simple and beautiful. Robert brought wooden blocks. Carol brought a silver frame that I privately thought no one should ever give a one-year-old, but she also brought herself under control, which was the real present. Mrs. Gable dropped off a hand-sewn bib and cried when Leo smeared frosting on it.

Ethan arrived last, not because he was late, but because he had stopped to pick up a tiny raincoat Leo did not need that day at all.

“Planning ahead,” he said when Maya mocked him.

“Obsessive,” she corrected.

He smiled.

Actually smiled.

That still startled me sometimes.