My MIL kept licking the serving spoon and putting it back in our food

“Are you really going to make me leave?”

She stared at him.

“I’ll cover the deposit and first month. I’ll help you move. But I can’t keep the promise I made about us all living here.”

---

There was a pause.

I looked at the fee written beside the rental cost. I could still hear Noah asking about the zoo.

“You won’t need daycare.”

Mark didn’t answer immediately.

---

The quiet made me turn toward him.

I could almost hear him asking me to reconsider. I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t fill the silence for him.

He met my eyes, then looked back at Diane.

Mark didn’t answer

---

“No, Mom. We’ve arranged the early shifts. I’ll do the pickups.”

“You’re spending all that money because she can’t share a kitchen? I rented out my condo because you told me to!”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m helping with the apartment. It doesn’t make Claire responsible for what I promised.”

Diane looked daggers at me.

---

“I know,”

“And you have nothing to say?”

“I’d like you and Noah to keep spending time together. I don’t want us to keep living together.”

I wanted to soften it as soon as I’d said it.

---

Diane’s mouth tightened, but I let the sentence stand.

Mark slid the listing toward her again.

“Will you come and see it with me?”

“And you have nothing to say?”

---

She picked up the paper.

“I’m not happy about this.”

Neither of us tried to change her answer into approval.

***

---

She viewed the apartment with Mark and accepted it.

During the remaining weeks, I took Noah for his daycare visit and Mark began his early shifts. Diane kept her things packed in the guest room.

“I’m not happy about this.”

On the last morning of the six weeks, Noah hugged her at the door.

---

“Can the pelican visit?”

Diane crouched beside him.

“Of course.”

I helped him wave while Mark carried her suitcases out.

---

“Can the pelican visit?”

***

That evening, Mark found me in the living room.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought if it worked out, you wouldn’t mind that I hadn’t asked.”

---

“I might have still said no.”

“I know.”

“You needed to let me.”

“I’m sorry,”

---

He sat beside me, leaving space between us.

“Thank you for sorting out the move,” I said. “But I’m still hurt that you let me keep counting down to something you’d decided wasn’t happening.”

He nodded.

He didn’t ask whether we were okay now.

---

“But I’m still hurt.”

***

Over the next two weeks, we worked out the new mornings and pickups.

When Diane asked Mark about visiting on Sunday, he brought the question to me before answering.

---

We agreed on lunch.

***

One evening, Noah’s hands were sticky from a craft project. I turned off the burner, left the pot of soup on the stove, and took him to wash up.

Diane asked Mark about visiting on Sunday

---

When we came back, Mark had ladled the soup into three bowls.

He slid mine across the table.

I picked up my spoon and ate.

I didn’t check the pot.

---

Mark had ladled the soup into three bowls.