“I do.”
She laughed.
He stayed for dinner and left afterward.
That became their pattern for several weeks. Time together by choice, followed by separate nights. It stripped reunion of its old automatic intimacy. They had to decide what they were building instead of falling into roles.
Thomas also began examining the part of his identity he had kept outside the marriage. He had treated work stress as something Leah should not have to carry. That sounded generous until he recognized the consequence: she knew the schedule but not the person living through it.
He told her when he was afraid before a deployment. He admitted when he felt guilty leaving. He described the strange disorientation of returning to a home where appliances, routines, and people had changed without him.
Leah listened without taking responsibility for curing those feelings.
“You can miss being needed here and still be proud of what you do,” she said once.
Thomas stared at her.
“When did you get good at this?”
“While you were busy making valve diagrams.”
He deserved that.
The next major test came when Thomas received preliminary notice of another long absence.
He read the message twice before calling Leah.
They had been living together again for three months by then.
The old fear arrived immediately: tell her, watch the progress collapse, defend the necessity, retreat.
He found her in the laundry room folding towels.
“I got notice today,” he said.
She stopped.
“How long?”
“I don’t know yet. It could be several months. Dates aren’t final.”
Leah sat on top of the dryer.
For a moment neither spoke.
“I’m angry,” she said.
Thomas felt his body prepare for argument.
“Okay.”
“Not at you exactly. Maybe partly at you. I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m scared we’ll lose what we fixed.”
Thomas sat across from her on the floor, the same tile where she had laughed during the flood months earlier.
