"That is the most complete sentence anyone has ever used to rearrange my chest," Theo said.
"Are you angry?"
"I am sad," Theo said carefully. "I am proud in a way that feels inconvenient. I am already worrying about flights and time zones and whether I will become a person who performs support while secretly auditioning resentment. I am telling you that now so it doesn't become a silence later."
Rowan stopped walking. The river moved on without them. "Thank you for not making me extract that with pliers."
"I've retired the pliers approach," Theo said. "Mostly."
They stood with their hands linked, not tightly. A bike bell rang. Somewhere a radio played a song from a summer that wasn't theirs. Rowan leaned her forehead against Theo's shoulder.
"I still want Thursday dinners until I go," she said. "And phone calls after. And visits that are visits. And the right to be irritable when distance is ugly."
"Granted," Theo said. "I still want the right to miss you out loud without turning missing into a verdict on your choice."
"Granted."
"And April is still not fully forgiven," Theo added. "Just so we don't get sloppy with triumph."
Rowan huffed a laugh into his shirt. "Correct. Minneapolis doesn't erase April. It just refuses to be April's hostage."
In the days that followed, their tenderness acquired an edge of practicality. Rowan sorted teaching notes into boxes labeled KEEP / COPY / LET GO. Theo helped her pack books and did not editorialized when she chose to keep a cracked paperback about compulsory figures. Bridie cried exactly once, in the walk-in refrigerator, then emerged with red eyes and a lemon tart she insisted was "structural support."
Otis, to his credit, did not joke for a full afternoon. Then he joked carefully: "Long-distance is just radio with worse hours. You already work in radio. You'll be fine."
"That was almost wise," Theo said.