"Mid-try," Lottie confirmed. "Best category we've got."
They walked the path under bare summer trees that would, soon enough, hold string lights again. Theo carried the second print in a stiff envelope because Rowan had asked him to keep one in New York while she took the other north. Ownership, for once, meant stewardship rather than destiny.
"What if we become people who are only good at beginnings?" Theo asked.
"Then we practice middles," Rowan said. "Middles are where most of the dignity lives. Beginnings get all the music. Endings get all the speeches. Middles get the dishes and the calendar and the choice to stay kind when kindness is inconvenient."
Theo considered that. "You should coach adults."
"Adults hate being coached."
"I don't," he said. "Not by you. Not about ice, anyway. About everything else I reserve the right to be occasionally impossible."
"Granted," Rowan said. "Occasionally. Not as a lifestyle."
They sat on the same bench where they had first opened Ned's envelope. Without ice, the place felt stripped and sincere, like a theater between productions. Rowan rested her head on Theo's shoulder.
"Ugly honest," she said. "I'm afraid success in Minneapolis will make me arrogant about leaving, and I'm afraid struggle there will make me bitter about choosing. I'm trying to plan for neither fantasy."
"Ugly honest," Theo said. "I'm afraid I'll make my life here smaller so that waiting feels virtuous, and I'm trying not to confuse waiting with pausing my own becoming."
"Good," Rowan said softly. "Become. I'll become too. We'll compare notes like people who respect each other's momentum."
A taxi passed on the avenue beyond the trees, yellow and ordinary and somehow still capable of looking like a prop from their first night. Theo watched it go. "Do you think Ned would mind if we wrote him from Minnesota once in a while?"
"I think Ned would mind if we turned him into a mascot," Rowan said. "But a real letter, once in a while, with no performance in it—he'd keep that."