It started small.
An hour here. An hour there.
Beichuan would come down to the seventh floor for CRAFT — legitimate reasons, always legitimate reasons — and somehow it always ended with her walking him through something. A system note. An integration decision. A technical detail Guo had already covered in the report that apparently needed to be explained again, in person, by her.
She explained it. Clearly. Efficiently.
Then she sat back down and looked at the work she hadn't finished.
Again.
She got home late on Tuesday.
Luoli was already in his pajamas when she walked in, sitting on the couch with the nanny, eyes drooping.
He looked up when he heard the door.
"Mom."
"I'm here." She set her bag down and crouched in front of him. "Were you waiting?"
He nodded. Rubbed his eye with one fist.
"I wanted to show you my drawing."
"Show me."
He padded off and returned with a slightly crumpled piece of paper. A house. Two figures. One tall, one small.
"That's you and me," he said seriously.
"I see." She looked at it for a moment. "It's good."
He beamed.
She got him to bed twenty minutes later. Sat at the edge of the mattress until his breathing evened out.
Then she went to the desk and opened her laptop.
The work she hadn't finished was still waiting.
She started typing.
Wednesday was the same.
Thursday was worse — he'd had a question about the backend architecture that took the better part of an hour to walk through properly.
She got home to a sleeping Luoli and a covered plate on the counter with a note in the nanny's handwriting.
Luoli said to save you the good piece.
She stood in the kitchen for a moment.
Then sat down and ate.
Friday night, he sat in his study for a long time.
The glass in his hand had gone warm, untouched.
He'd told himself he would wait. Let her come to her own pace. That had been the plan since the corridor — patience, no pressure, no drama.
But patience had a limit, and his was quietly running out.
He set the glass down.
He picked up his phone.
Can we talk tomorrow. Whenever works for you.
He looked at it for a long moment before sending it.
The reply came twenty minutes later.
Luoli has a playdate at ten. I'm free after that.
He exhaled slowly.
I'll come by at eleven.
Okay.
He set the phone down. Didn't move for a while.
Tomorrow, then.