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Even after six years away from New York, Andy hasn’t forgotten the hush that falls over Miranda’s street when the weather is cold. It’s early November; at 9 p.m., night fell hours ago, and the navy-grey sky is punctuated with meandering flurries and the twin puffs of their breath.
As soon as they enter the townhouse, Miranda disables and immediately re-enables the subtle but impressive security system mounted by the front door. Then she leads Andy upstairs, not even stopping to deposit their coats in the closet. In the hallway, most doors are closed, and the corridor is dark and full of shadows. Andy can’t see the ornate vases and carefully-curated oil paintings that she knows line the walls. She can’t see the clean lines of the furniture, the always dustless wainscotting. She can barely see Miranda aside from the glow of her white hair, but the hand that’s been gripping her fingers from the moment they got out of the car is strong, and she must walk quickly in order to keep up.
In the bedroom, every lamp is already lit, and the room blazes. When the door is shut—and locked—behind them, Miranda sighs with relief. “It’s awful,” she says, “being here alone all the time. I ask Marcia to turn the lights on in my room before I come home.” They’ve spent the evening out, eating and drinking, getting used to each other again after a year of letters, letters which never quite dared to express love. Despite the question looming ahead, the question of whether or not they are really getting back together, they’ve kept the night lightweight and, Andy thinks, happy. But now, here in her home, Miranda practically vibrates with tension.
Andy doesn’t point out that Marcia, the housekeeper Miranda hired when the girls no longer needed a nanny, is here around forty hours a week and that at least ten of those overlap with times Miranda is in the house—information Andy knows because Miranda has explained as much tonight. Her reticence is wise: Patricia is dead and the family has not adopted any other animals. Caroline and Cassidy are college freshmen in California and Oregon respectively. Miranda has been unmarried for six years, the longest stretch since the day she married her first of her three husbands. To her, that is alone. And Andy doesn’t know what to say.
Miranda walks to the vanity table and takes off her watch, earrings, necklace, bracelets. Each belongs in its own velvet-lined compartment of a large jewelry box, and Miranda takes her time returning them to their homes. From outside the range of mirror that could catch her own reflection, Andy looks at Miranda’s. Miranda has, of course, aged some in the six years since they last saw each other. Her frown lines have deepened, as have the creases of both worry (Runway) and mirth (Cassidy and Caroline) at the corners of her eyes. She’s gained a little weight, is softer in her face, waist, breasts, hips. Andy wants to touch every difference, can’t wait to memorize her body again. She joins Miranda at the mirror, standing just behind her with a hand on her waist. “You okay?” she asks.
Instead of answering, Miranda looks up and makes eye contact with Andy’s reflection. Andy has changed too: her cheeks have lost some of their apple-y fullness, and her hair, still long, is accented with a few strands of early grey. She used to be so shiny and young and pert; though she is still young by almost any standard, she no longer gleams with youth. Standing here with Miranda, Andy is mostly grateful for the way her own appearance has changed. Most people don’t notice—or at least they don’t point out—the grey hairs or the just-starting crows’ feet, but Miranda will if she hasn’t already, and this is a good thing. “Please stay the night,” Miranda says, although they had already decided she would. That decision was why dinner was so happy; they’d gotten that one aspect of the big question out of the way almost immediately.
“Okay.” Andy pulls Miranda closer, overwhelmed by the dual sensations of familiarity and danger: the day-softened perfume, the rich fabric of her dress, the scent of her hair product, the warmth of her skin. She watches in the mirror as Miranda closes her eyes in another expression of relief. Then they step backward to the bed and keep all the lights on as they strip to nothing and make love with each other for the first time since they were twenty-four and forty-nine. Andy tries not to be frantic, but it’s hard to slow down, to be gentle after all this time.
“How did I give this up?” Miranda mutters when they wind down, although Andy still has four fingers inside of her and has for a long time, has held steady as Miranda straddled her and writhed and writhed. They are still now, Miranda lying on her back and Andy tucked against her, but when Andy starts to slide her fingers out, Miranda cries, “No, no—stay.” When there is a silence, she adds, “Tell me things. Anything.” When they were twenty-four and forty-nine, Miranda had lacked the patience for idle conversation, but Andy takes her at her word and talks. About Chicago, and her decision to leave it and come back here. How she loves that city and wants to visit it with Miranda. Her brand-new position at the New York Times Magazine. Her apartment—which, considering the circumstances, she is quick to downplay despite it being her favorite yet, easily the best place she’s ever lived. Miranda soaks it all in with rapt eyes.
Andy talks to Miranda about Miranda. “I missed you so much,” she says. “You feel so good.” She brushes her thumb across Miranda’s labia, twists her still-buried fingers slightly. Miranda shivers; Andy has always been able to set her nerves alight. “You cold?” Andy asks, just in case, and when Miranda shrugs they figure out how to pull the top sheet and duvet over them without having to adjust the most important part of their current position.
Sex with Miranda had always been groundbreaking. They’d spent weeks on foreplay, sleeping together without sex every night. And then, when it finally happened, it was clear to Andy that until Miranda she’d never truly known stamina and grace. They had a few months of fireworks before doubt took over; when Miranda broke up with her, it was the greatest hurt she could imagine. It took over five years in Chicago to rebuild, to even consider returning to New York. Now, back in Miranda’s city with a new job and a new apartment and a new resolve, she knows herself, and she understands that she did not truly know herself or Miranda during those first tumultuous months together. She is smart enough to recognize that Miranda will always have hidden parts, unreadable parts. But there are already fewer than before. And at thirty years old, she understands very acutely that this moment—staying deep inside Miranda during a conversation after sex—is the most intimate she has experienced in her life.
As intimate as the moment is, there is fear in this house, and loss. The room, which looks so familiar, feels entirely changed from the dim, plush room from her memories. Andy has never seen it lit so brightly, but she is frightened and can’t explain why until she realizes that fear is flowing from Miranda like a stream. Even so, Miranda’s hips are canted as if to suggest that Andy should stay between them forever. She holds Andy’s free hand in one of hers, and the other rests on her belly. Andy doesn’t think it’s there to hide the rounded waistline, the change six years can bring; it seems, rather, like Miranda is acting without considering her pose, is consumed with other concerns. Other than those first months of sleeping, Andy doesn’t think she has ever seen Miranda entirely at ease, and if she didn’t know how afraid Miranda was she would think this moment came close.
“No spouse,” Miranda says, turning her head to the side to make eye contact with Andy, the lilt of a question in her voice although she knows the answer. “No kids of your own.”
“I just wanted you,” Andy says, the words scarier than the feeling of the lonely, closed-off house. She certainly wasn’t celibate for the past six years (she has been, admittedly, for the past two), though she suspects Miranda—the former serial wife—was. For Andy there were other girlfriends—not many, and none serious—and Miranda can ask if she wants more detail than the hints she’s already been given. But none of them mattered in the end; Andy had some half-hearted fun with them, but she didn’t give any of those relationships the chance to stick.
“There was a break in last year, while I was in Paris,” Miranda says, apropos of nothing verbalized but very on-topic considering the fear in the room. “No one was home and no one got hurt. It was an expert job—they figured out how to disable the old alarm system and everything.”
“Oh, Miranda, I’m sorry. What was taken?”
Miranda shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. The big TV.” Andy knows the one. It had been a late-in-the-marriage gift from Stephen, one of those gifts that seemed to interest the giver more than the recipient. Miranda and Andy had laughed and laughed at its size and Andy couldn’t remember ever actually watching anything on it. On the rare occasions they had watched television together, they’d used the small TV in Miranda’s study because there was a buttery leather loveseat in that room, so soft, and deep enough to cradle them when they inevitably ended up getting distracted by each other’s bodies. “Some jewelry.” She chuckles. “Shoes.”
“Still. Scary.”
“Material things—for me, with my means, they’re replaceable. Not that I bothered. And I know it’s silly to worry when . . . when there are people with nothing. Those people, I think, are actually the ones with something to lose. I shouldn’t be so afraid. But I hate being in this house.”
Andy is curious. The Miranda she knows kept—and surely still keeps—spreadsheets of possessions, of gifts given and received. She doesn’t ask Miranda why she hasn’t moved to a new place, figuring she’ll find out or she won’t regardless of any question she might ask. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “You aren’t alone, you know. I’m here.”
“I didn’t agree to dinner with you because I’m afraid of being alone,” Miranda says flatly. “If that were the case, I’d have found someone else to spend my time with six years ago. You have to understand: it’s good to see you.”
Andy smiles at Miranda’s signature understatedness. It’s good to see you, she says, with Andy’s fingers buried inside her and the precarious room so well lit and the house a dark mystery around them. “You too.” She adjusts her fingers. “You’re still soaked,” she observes before Miranda has a chance to beg her to stay, and Miranda twitches in response. Sometime in the last six years Andy has figured out a thing or two about g-spots, and she curls her fingers upward, presses especially firmly with the pads of her middle two fingers. “That feel good?” she asks.
“Y-yes. Just stay inside.” Andy presses harder, moves her fingers in little pulses, and Miranda can’t keep still, slides her hand down from her stomach and touches her own clit to help the unexpected orgasm along, continues to grip Andy’s hand. “Oh God. Please. Please stay,” she says as she rides the high. Says “stay” again as she comes down.
They repeat this cycle for a long time: they talk, Miranda has another orgasm, and Miranda begs not before the orgasm but during and after, for continued closeness, for more words. Again and again, until they are both in pain. At that point Miranda’s breaths are thrilled and fast as Andy extracts her pruney fingers centimeter by centimeter. Andy whispers “I’m here” the whole time, sticks little kisses in between the words, cups Miranda with her damp hand as soon as her fingers are all the way out.
Later, still naked, so tired, Andy neatens the covers while Miranda gets ready for bed. When she comes back, Andy tells her to get in bed, and turns off Miranda’s lights herself: the lamp near the door, the overhead fixture, the small one on the vanity, the lamp on Miranda’s nightstand. When the golden glow of her own nightstand lamp is the only light remaining in the room, she slides into bed beside Miranda, the room recognizable again. She looks carefully at Miranda’s freshly-scrubbed face for the first time since they cleaned up for bed, and her heart swells with love and sadness for every moment that passed while they were absent from each other. “I missed seeing you like this.”
“Plain, you mean?”
“No, bare. I didn’t even have any pictures of you ready for bed, or any pictures of you alone, looking at me. It was so hard, seeing you in magazines all the time, knowing there was this other aspect of you fading from my memory—”
“I’m sorry,” Miranda says. The hardest words for her to say.
Andy shuts off the light, and in the dark her fingers find Miranda’s face. She runs her pointer and middle fingers across Miranda’s forehead, down her nose, over her lips and just barely into her mouth. Miranda bites at the fingers as they pass. “I love you,” she says as soon as Andy’s fingers leave her mouth, easy words now, an utter relief to say them to Andy after so many years of keeping them to herself.
**
When they wake up and look at each other in greyish morning light, both their eyes fill with tears. “I love you,” Andy whispers, continuing last night’s conversation. She reaches for Miranda, places her hand between her legs again as if to say I’m still here.
But Miranda pulls away. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she says frankly, and Andy can’t keep her eyes off her as she makes her way to the ensuite. Miranda pulls the door mostly closed but leaves it ajar, something she never would have done six years ago. Andy drifts to the sounds of the flushing toilet, a gush of water from the faucet, a toothbrush in Miranda’s mouth, a harsh spitting noise.
“We both need to shower,” Miranda says, but she slides back into bed. The mixed message works in Andy’s favor: other than a quick trip to the bathroom for Andy herself, neither of them get up for an hour. They must talk more, and kiss more. They must reassure each other.
“I can’t do this if you’re going to freak out,” Andy says, summoning every ounce of her courage as the hour nears its end. “If you break up with me again, that’s it. I’m not trying to make this an ultimatum, but if that happens, I won’t be able to be friends with you. It would just be too hard.”
Miranda is solemn. “I know,” she says. “I’m ready this time.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“And we can’t just pretend Chicago didn’t happen. It’s been six years. And you broke up with me. So don’t conveniently forget that, okay?”
“Okay.”
It’s surely insanity to believe her. Insanity to start this up again after so many years spent rebuilding. To commit, undeniably, because they are both so serious and it is in neither of their natures to just try something on for size. But the agreement doesn’t feel like a scattering of the life Andy has built post-Miranda. It feels like a strengthening. A homecoming.
**
That night, Andy wonders if she should call Miranda again so soon, but the phone rings before she can decide. “Hey,” she says, delighted.
“Are you busy?”
“Not at the moment . . . ended up going into work for a bit this afternoon but I’m home now. What’s up?”
“I’m free. Could I come see your new place?”
“Um, sure. Yeah. Absolutely.” Andy is a bit stunned; she and Miranda only ever spent a couple days here and there together at her last apartment in New York. Already, she has been preparing to kiss this great apartment goodbye. Better a too-large house with Miranda in it than a cute apartment without her.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
Forty-eight minutes later, Miranda buzzes up, clutching a bag much too large to be a purse or laptop case, and Andy realizes she intends to spend the night here. She drops the bag to kiss Andy, shrugs off her camel trenchcoat and hangs it on the coat rack, smiles as she takes the whole place in. In the living room, which is painted a pale sage, the venetian blinds are open to the rising evening. Andy’s street is noisy; the outside is like a restaurant kitchen and the inside is like a dining room just removed from that chaos. She knows Miranda won’t have eaten yet, so there is a thrown-together soup simmering; the air is all ginger and garlic and the rich earthy scent of greens, the starchy smell of rice cooking on the stove. Through Miranda’s eyes, Andy notices the scratched-but-shiny wood floors, the IKEA furniture she purchased at twenty-four (she has saved every piece of furniture she bought in the early days of her relationship with Miranda, even though that meant paying to move cheap but still-decent particle board to Chicago and back). She shows Miranda the small but suitable kitchen, the tiny hallway that serves almost no discernible function, considering the bedroom is right there too (a small room that should only contain enough space for a bed, two nightstands, and a small chest of drawers, though she has forcibly reclaimed one corner for a miniature home office) and the bathroom is just off of that room. Near the kitchen entrance is a diminutive but useful storage closet, only half full since she sold or gave away almost everything apart from her furniture and clothes and some kitchen essentials. This apartment is smaller than her last place in Chicago but, actually, much larger than her most recent Manhattan dwelling.
Miranda may be smiling, but she is almost certainly unimpressed. It’s probably been six years since she’s even had to think about life on this level. And Andy isn’t even poor anymore, she’s middle-everything, and if Miranda says one cruel word—
Her voice cuts through this line of thought. “You found a great place. It’s a lot bigger than a Reed College dorm room, I can tell you that much.”
**
On their third night, Miranda is already on her way over when she calls.
**
On the fourth, a night Andy must work late: “All right. I can leave Runway by six. If you messenger me a key I could beat you home and make you dinner.” So Andy has a key cut on her lunch break (there’s no way she’s giving up hers, even for an afternoon) and sends it over, heart pounding.
Miranda’s dinner: oysters, because November has an “r” in it. Mashed potatoes. Arugula salad with almonds and oranges and a homemade vinaigrette. A strange but delicious meal.
“Are oysters really an aphrodisiac?” Andy asks later, in bed. Her limbs are like jello.
“I don’t think we’re in a position to discern that,” Miranda pants. Her hair is stuck to her forehead. She is naked. Her posture reads full joy. “Too much additional input.”
**
On the fifth: “Don’t wait up for me, I’ll let myself in. It won’t be past midnight.” But of course, Andy wakes up at 11:35 p.m., if not when the door creaks open then certainly when the deadbolt clicks and the chain is engaged. Miranda lights her way to the bedroom: the living room light is already on, so she flips the kitchen light on, then goes back to flip the living room light off. Lights the hallway, darkens the kitchen. Darkens the hall when the bathroom is lit.
“Hey, honey,” Andy mumbles. If it’s too early for endearments, she can blame sleepiness, and is in fact soon half-asleep as she listens to the sounds of Miranda getting ready for bed.
The bed dips and they lie in the dark together. They are clearly not going to have sex tonight, and Andy is reminded of the first weeks after she left Runway, when she and Miranda got best sleep of their lives. It was the same sleep she’s slept for the last four nights—mostly, though she has occasionally woken up in the night and had to reconfirm where is is, who she is with, what she is doing. Tonight, now that Miranda is here, she can already feel herself slipping into a deeper rest than anything she accomplished alone. “Okay day?” she murmurs, her voice hoarse.
“Mmm,” says Miranda. She scoots a bit closer, kisses Andy on the cheek, and they don’t speak again until morning.
**
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all at Andy’s apartment. There is dry rosé, and Miranda laughing about the wrongness of the season but drinking it anyway. A roll of thunder, also out of season, that startles them awake at three a.m. A half-serious fight over Scrabble. A grey fleece blanket. A mercury warning on a can of tuna. A night lost to Wikipedia articles about cults. Two forgotten umbrellas and a third day of rain. Kisses like frosted glass. Kisses like guitar, acoustic but fast. Kisses like a kite strung with a key and flown in a storm.
**
Somewhere in the midst of those days, Lily throws Andy a “welcome home” party and Andy and Miranda show up together because Lily gets it this time around, has invited them both, and not just in the murmured “you can bring her if you want” way that Miranda used to get included. Lily is, honestly, too busy with her husband (a second marriage, a happy marriage), son, and career to worry much about with whom Andy spends her time. She is simply glad her oldest friend is home.
Andy and Miranda both wear black, both wear tall leather boots; they look matched but not twinned. On the couch in Lily’s apartment, Miranda’s figure creates the perfect amount of fierce, precise negative space, and Andy sinks into its every edge. Andy is warm, warm, warm: she’s drinking whiskey and she lives in New York again and she’s got a healthy amount of oxytocin in her system because she and Miranda had sex between work and the party. She remembers how she used to be shy about her friends around Miranda, so worried she would think they were all kids, so worried she wouldn’t take them seriously and, by proxy, lose some of her respect for Andy. Of course, they were kids and—she realizes this with a start—Miranda was less confident then, too. She had been so self-conscious about her desire for someone as young as Andy, eager to keep it between only them since she was convinced no one but them would understand how not-sordid it was. So she was standoffish at gatherings, never letting her love show.
There are ten or twelve people at the party tonight, and they are interested, they are curious, but they are sophisticated; as such, they are not shocked or grossed out or confused. Other than the actual children—Lily’s two-year-old, her co-worker Mark’s six-year-old twins—everyone present is an adult capable of acting like an adult.
**
After the eleventh night, Andy stops counting. Her chest of drawers is littered with Miranda’s makeup and perfume and hair products. She has compressed her clothes by sheer force of will into half of the drawers and given up two feet of hanger space in the three-foot closet because Miranda, who goes home once a day to pick up outfits, and sometimes to retrieve a meal Marcia has made (Marcia cooks less now, and has started packaging the meals in tupperware right off the bat), never seems to return any of the clothes she brings over. Andy has given up the dream of sleeping in Miranda’s ridiculously comfortable king-sized bed any time soon.
The week before Thanksgiving, Miranda arrives pulling a large suitcase. She never over-explains, but tonight she says, “So I don’t have to keep going back to the house for clothes all week. Marcia has the week off, anyway. And I hired a courier service to deal with the Book.”
“To have it delivered here, you mean?”
Miranda nods. “Is that all right? It seemed easier.”
“Yeah, of course,” Andy says slowly. It’s incredible to think that, for the first time in decades, neither of Miranda’s assistants will have to worry about delivering the Book. She ushers Miranda through the front door, reaches for the suitcase. Even on wheels, it’s heavy, and she’s impressed that Miranda just climbed three flights with the thing.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a garment steamer, would you?” Andy can hear now that Miranda is a bit winded.
“Um, I have an iron. As you know. Is that similar?”
Miranda rolls her eyes. “No matter. It’ll wait till morning.” She heads to the couch, where she collapses with a sigh, kicks off her shoes, and closes her eyes.
She looks so worn out and peaceful and relieved to be where she is—relieved to be home, Andy realizes—that Andy hesitates before walking over and taking a seat on the couch next to her. But she must understand, and, suddenly, that has to happen now. “Miranda?” she says tentatively. “Are you moving into this apartment?’
Miranda’s eyes flash open and she sits up straighter. She glances around. “Not intentionally,” she says.
“But you are, aren’t you?”
There is a long pause. “I think I must be.” She raises a hand to her lips.
“Um,” Andy starts. “Yeah. That’s great, but we should probably talk—”
“Yes,” Miranda says quickly.
But neither of them say anything. Miranda breaks the silence first, not with words but with a bark of laughter.
“You can move in. You can move in times a thousand. But I want the loveseat,” Andy says. “The one from your study. I can’t believe I’ve been back this long and haven’t gotten to fuck you in it once.”
“I gave it away the week you moved to Chicago.”
“Oh.” Andy swallows her disappointment. After the split, Miranda let herself lose everything, and Andy kept everything: the IKEA furniture, every note, every email. She wonders if their old messages are even in Miranda’s email archives anymore. “Okay, well, what do you want to keep?”
“The art. The photo albums. The girls’ school mementos. My clothes. The seafoam green sheets, the grey silk sheets, and the goose down duvet. My pillows, maybe? Although I actually like yours.”
“Well, of course you’re keeping stuff. But I’m talking furniture here.”
“I don’t need any of it.”
“But what do you want?”
“None of it,” says Miranda.
“What?”
“I don’t need any of that furniture. It means nothing to me. I don’t want to live in my house stuck into your house.”
“But that glorious mattress—”
“A king-sized bed would never fit in this apartment. If you like we can buy a nicer queen-sized mattress for our bed. But if we brought my bed here we wouldn’t be able to walk into the bedroom.”
Andy likes the thought of their bedroom turning into a wall-to-wall bed. To enter the room they’d have to crawl on top. Still, Miranda has a point.
**
“I clean shit up on Saturday afternoons,” Andy says on a Sunday in early December. They’ve been watching a movie on Andy’s laptop, and now that it is over the room is full of blank blue light. “You’re rarely here then, so you may not have noticed. But you can admit it looks nice in here, right?” Andy gets up and turns on the light, realizing the dim glow of the screen doesn’t demonstrate her point particularly helpfully.
Miranda nods, a frown on her face. She is obviously trying to figure out where Andy is going with this.
“So, I clean up on Saturday afternoons. But if you’re busy then, well . . . when will you be around?”
“What are you asking me, Andrea?”
“Look, I know you’re used to Marcia taking care of a lot of this type of thing.”
“Say it. Go ahead.”
“Miranda, all I mean is . . .”
“Good grief, Andy. Ask me to clean more. With you. On Saturday afternoons.”
“Would you please help me clean up on Saturday afternoons,” Andy says. Her sentence lacks a question mark.
Miranda’s frown deepens. “Yes, certainly. Although—”
“I’m not hiring someone to clean this extremely small apartment. And neither are you, before you get any ideas.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say. I was only going to point out that you’re the most passive-aggressive person I have ever met.”
“No I’m not!”
Miranda raises her eyebrows at that. “That’s hilarious,” she says dryly.
Andrea continues the argument that night at dinner. “You don’t make it easy to ask for things, you know.”
“It’s not fair to make me drag the truth out of you.”
“Well, sometimes you’re mean,” Andy snaps, and to her surprise Miranda acquiesces. She sighs. “I’ll try to be less passive-aggressive.”
“Be aggressive-aggressive. I can take it.”
“Be nice. I can take it.”
They are both a little wounded then, but they laugh and the feeling fades.
The following Saturday, Andrea runs a few errands midday, and she returns home to Miranda in the kitchen, elbow deep in soapy dishwater. “Thanks, Miranda,” she says casually.
Miranda nods. “Tell me when you need something I’m not giving you,” she says. “And I’ll try to return the favor.”
**
Caroline squints the second the video “hangout” connects. “Hey Mom,” she says, making eye contact not with Miranda but with the room behind her. “Where are you?”
Miranda grins. “At Andy’s,” she says.
“At Andy’s?” Caroline squeaks. “Seriously?”
Miranda nods, suddenly nervous. She finds herself projecting her daughters’ concerns even though she has waited eagerly for this moment, has, in particular, looked forward to telling Caroline that she and Andy are back together. Normally, she tries hard to make her treatment of the twins equal; perhaps this first semester of the girls studying and living apart from each other has relaxed Miranda’s definition of what “equal” means. She and Caroline have a special understanding when it comes to Andy. Six years ago, when her relationship with Andy ended, both girls were concerned about their mother and sad to see Andy go, but Caroline was the one who asked questions and listened to Miranda’s answers. Even months later, Miranda was occasionally on the receiving end of a hug and an abrupt “You miss her?” from her older daughter.
This time, Caroline’s many questions are delivered with the slight, awkward lag of a dorm room internet connection. “Are you in Chicago? Oh, she moved back? Are you back together? Please tell me you’re back together. Hot damn! Sorry, Mom. Oh my God.” The girl’s smile is huge. “Okay, wait a sec, I’m gonna connect Cass. We were just chatting.”
Miranda had no idea such a thing was possible, but suddenly she is looking at two windows within a single screen, each one containing a daughter. She wonders why they haven’t done this all semester.
“See?” Caroline says to her sister, gleeful. Miranda hasn’t even had a chance to say hello yet. “She’s at Andy’s.”
“Hey, Mom,” Cassidy says, giggling. “Is this why you didn’t want to chat from work this time? The big reveal?”
Miranda shrugs. “Maybe.”
She lets her daughters chatter for a while, her eyes darting amusedly from one to the other. She is still nervous about the other part: the part where she tells them she is better off at Andy’s place than her own, that she wants to give up the house Caroline and Cassidy have considered home since they were four years old. But her nervousness is a tinge that darkens her happiness only a little; it isn’t taking over, it isn’t everything.
When she tells them, their mouths drop open. Cassidy speaks first. “But what about when we bring our husbands and kids home for the holidays?”
Miranda and Caroline burst into laughter, but force themselves quiet when they notice that the grainy image of Cassidy’s face looks hurt. Still, Caroline cannot help but editorialize: “Cass, you don’t even have a boyfriend.” Miranda intuits that this must mean Caroline does; they will discuss this, and soon.
“Seriously, guys! I’ve always imagined bringing my own family back to the house someday.”
“I’ve imagined it too, Cassidy,” Miranda says. She hesitates before continuing. “But I’m not happy in that house anymore. I’m happy here. And I’m not going to keep an idea alive when I’ve been given the chance to do something that feels right.”
Caroline nods. “Is the apartment big enough for us to sleep over?”
“I’ll always have room for you,” Miranda says. “No matter what. Besides, we’ll have one more Christmas at the townhouse. And I can’t imagine that Andrea and I will stay in this apartment forever. But I’ll bring you by when you’re home, okay?”
Andy comes home from work while Miranda and the girls are still talking. Miranda motions her over, and she looks at her daughters’ faces as they watch Andy wrap her in her arms. She’s torn, then, between the larger image of the kids and the smaller image in the corner of the screen depicting herself and Andy, who is clearly emotional about seeing the girls again.
In the years since they last saw each other, Andy respected Miranda’s need to keep her family for herself. She never parented the girls, not really, and it would have been inappropriate to contact them. But it’s strange and wonderful to see them again, and suddenly she’s sad about her long-standing promise to visit relatives at Christmastime. It’s probably for the best, though: the twins will have uninterrupted time with their mother in their house, and she’ll see them for New Year’s.
**
Although Andy has a fine enough time in Ohio, she’ll never spend Christmas without Miranda again. When they speak on the phone at night, Miranda’s voice sounds different, small against the imagined background of the big house.
When Andy gets back to New York, she stays with Miranda and the girls at the townhouse most nights. Miranda seems more at ease in the house when everyone is there, but she isn’t entirely at home, and her demeanor at night is a sort of diluted version of their first night back together. The bed is as heavenly as Andy has been romanticizing it to be, but it’s no fun if Miranda can’t relax in it.
“It’s already different here,” Cassidy observes over breakfast one morning.
“Yeah,” Caroline says. “I can tell you don’t really live here anymore.”
The twins stay over at a friend’s house for New Years’s Eve, so Andy and Miranda are able to sleep at the apartment. Late in the morning on January first, the girls are smart enough to text their mother for her whereabouts, and they drag themselves to the apartment instead of the townhouse. They're tired and mascara-smudged and happy and maybe hungover, though neither Andy nor Miranda ask for confirmation. It’s a miraculous day, a day they are all free. When daylight fades, it’s easier—and not only easier, but happier—to crash at the apartment together, cramped and impatient at taking turns for the shower and tired enough that all four of them sleep extremely well.
**
Miranda closes on the townhouse in early February. Andy goes with her to the signing in midtown, and afterward, as they walk out to the car, Miranda tries to explain exactly how the money she has made on the sale will affect her financial portfolio. Andy’s mind drifts during the conversation; she realizes with bittersweetness that their lives together will necessitate a considerable legal and financial education on her part. There will be wills and power of attorney and investments to contend with, and the strange cold intimacy of that knowledge will aid one of them after the other is gone. Try as she might to put the thought of out her mind, Andy knows she will very likely be the one left behind.
But they are both fine now, and quite alive. They’ve been busy in the new year, helping Marcia find a new place to work, throwing themselves back into their own work after the lull of the holidays, getting the townhouse sorted for the big move. Their muscles burn, as they had to take one last load of odds and ends to the temperature-controlled storage unit themselves. Although Miranda had been serious about downsizing, there was still her decades-large clothing collection to consider. When the twins were home, they culled their own possessions some, but Miranda had wanted them to enjoy the holidays rather than spend the whole time focused on the move. Now they have a storage unit filled with a priceless museum of fashion and an equally priceless collection of elementary, middle, and high school artifacts. The apartment is almost comically full of art, and the previous week's appointment to upgrade the renter's insurance policy was itself a comedy.
In the car, Miranda rummages for her wallet and pulls out a credit card. She asks Andy for her phone, fiddles for a moment, then hands it back to her and asks her to log onto her student loan account. When the phone is back in Miranda’s hands, Andy watches her entire student debt of $22 thousand disappear in a matter of two minutes. “Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God.”
“I should have done this six years ago, but I didn’t think about it,” Miranda says. “I’m sure you’ve already paid that down quite a bit.”
“I have. But it’s fine. Thank you so much, Miranda.”
Miranda leans over to kiss Andy briefly on the lips, then they each settle into their own thoughts for the remainder of the drive home. The act of generosity would seem random to someone who knew Miranda less well, but Andy understands why it has happened now. Miranda is saying what’s mine is yours. They won’t marry, almost certainly not, and generally that doesn’t matter to either of them. But in lieu of a wedding day, this is the day of their official combination. They have for their currency not wedding rings but an exchange of dwellings: both their names are on the lease, they own no individually-held property. When they buy a house someday, they’ll purchase it together.
**
There is a storm that night, the mercurial kind that can’t decide if it’s rain or snow. The temperature inside the apartment reflects the weather, and Miranda shivers as she joins Andy in bed.
On this almost ceremonial night Andy would certainly prefer it if they were both naked, but because it is unusually cold in the apartment she wears a large t-shirt and Miranda is back in the silk pajamas she has almost entirely given up. Miranda starts to reach for the hem of the t-shirt, then retracts her hands and rubs them together so she doesn’t freeze Andy with her fingers. Andy’s heart lifts. “Thank you for letting me live with you,” Miranda says, and her fingers bypass the edge of Andy's shirt to warm up her still-cold skin.
“Any regrets?” Andy asks, trying to keep her tone light. “There’s a house on the Upper East Side with top-of-the-line central heat. I hear it just sold for 8 million.”
Miranda smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. Then she changes the subject: "What do you want tonight?"
Later, sweaty and warm and afterglow-adrift, Andy will think back on that casual Don’t worry. A throwaway phrase, perhaps, but Miranda is right. And actually, Andy isn’t worried. She’s lived just long enough to understand how inevitable it is that more terrible things will happen to them but that much, even most, of what is yet to happen will be good. She is suspended in love, which is at once the safest and most dangerous place.