Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~6 min read
Chapter 26: Together
Yara said: “Why can’t you both go?”
She said it in the particular tone she used for things that seemed obvious to her and mystifying in other people’s failure to have thought of them — not unkind, just gently puzzled.
They were sitting in Yara’s living room, all three of them, which Amara had organized with the deliberateness of someone who has recognized that a problem has exceeded her individual capacity and requires outside resource. Yara was on the armchair. Theo was on the couch with his hands around a mug of coffee, slightly stiff in the way of a person operating in a social setting that is not entirely familiar, doing it anyway. Amara was on the other end of the couch.
They had told Yara the impasse. Yara had listened with her feet tucked under her and her expression cycling through several stages — engaged, sympathetic, briefly exasperated, and then the particular look of someone who has located the obvious solution and is organizing how to present it.
Why can’t you both go.
Amara looked at Theo.
Theo looked at his coffee mug.
“I could apply for a visiting scholar position,” he said, slowly. “At Oxford. I have sabbatical credit that the department owes me — two years of accumulated leave that I never took.”
“Your book,” Amara said.
“I can write the book anywhere. I’ve been writing it here for eighteen months to deeply mixed success.” He paused, with the dry self-awareness she loved most in him. “The library access at Oxford would, in fact, be substantially better.”
“You’d come with me?”
“If they’ll have me.” He was looking at her now. “It’s not guaranteed. The visiting scholar application takes time and Oxford’s program is competitive. But—”
“But you’d apply.”
“If you want me to.”
“If I want you—” she stopped. Looked at Yara, who was watching both of them with the expression of someone trying very hard not to say *obviously.* Looked back at him. “Yes. I want you to.”
“Then I’ll apply.”
“Your job here—”
“My sabbatical credit has been sitting unused for two years. The department is contractually required to approve it if I submit properly.” He set down his mug with the decisive precision of someone who has arrived at a conclusion and is done being uncertain about it. “I won’t make you do a year apart to preserve something I can bring with me. That’s — that’s not the choice I want to make.”
“But what if it doesn’t come through?” Amara said. “The visiting scholar position — what if Oxford doesn’t approve it in time?”
“Then I’ll rent a flat nearby. Come on the sabbatical. The visiting scholar title would be useful but it’s not the only way to be in the same city as you.” He looked at her steadily. “I’m not talking about following you, Amara. I’m talking about — being where you are. On my own terms, in my own work. Just — where you are.”
She looked at him.
“Your career here,” she said. “Your position. The department.”
“Will be here when I come back.” He said it calmly. “The sabbatical preserves my position. One year. We come back, you’re on the job market with a year at Oxford on your CV and publication momentum from the fellowship, and we’re in the same city.”
“What if I’m not on the job market here? What if the opportunities are elsewhere?”
“Then we have that conversation when it comes.” He held her eyes. “I am not making myself small for you. I’m not following you like luggage. I am — choosing the same direction. For a year. On the terms that make it right for both of us.”
She felt Yara studiously examining a point on the ceiling.
“You’d do that,” Amara said.
“I’ve wanted to finish that book for two years,” Theo said. “The Bodleian has archives I’ve been trying to access remotely for a semester. This is not a sacrifice, Amara. It’s a very good solution for my work that also means I don’t lose a year with you.” He paused. “If you want me there.”
“I want you there.”
“Then we’re going to Oxford.”
The room was very quiet for a moment.
Then Yara put down her tea. “I feel like I should have said that four weeks ago and saved everyone a lot of agony.”
“You did help,” Amara said.
“I said three words.”
“Three very important words.”
“The words were free. I take payment in being right.” She picked up her tea again. “Also I’m getting an online ordination and officiating whatever ceremony you two eventually have, so start preparing yourselves for that emotionally.”
“We’re not—” Amara started.
“Obviously not yet,” Yara said. “I said *eventually.*”
Theo, beside her on the couch, said nothing. She looked at him. He was looking at his coffee mug with the particular expression she’d come to recognize as the one that meant he was feeling something he wasn’t ready to say.
She was not going to push him on that. She was patient. She had demonstrated this conclusively.
They stayed at Yara’s for another hour, the three of them, talking about Oxford and sabbaticals and the logistics of relocating for a year and the research Amara was going to do and the chapters Theo was finally going to write, and it felt like a plan solidifying in real time — each element clicking into place with the satisfying inevitability of things that should have been obvious sooner.
On the walk home, she and Theo were side by side in the summer evening, and she slipped her hand into his and he held it without comment, which was how he did things — quietly, completely, without needing to make them into something larger than they were.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For the Oxford thing. For choosing — that direction.”
“Don’t thank me.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m doing this for my book and for library access.”
“Obviously.”
“And for you.” A beat. “Primarily for you.”
She smiled at the sidewalk. “I know.”
They walked the rest of the way in the comfortable silence that had always been one of the things she liked best about him — the way quiet with him was never absence, just the shape a conversation took when all the necessary things had been said.
They were going to Oxford.
Together.
She held that word.
It was the right shape.
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