“No,” she said. “Let me guess. It will keep me awake during the show. Who’d you even hear this from?”
“Kate. She’s outraged on your behalf.”
“Ah.” Kate was the costume designer who’d asked Shiloh out a few months ago. Shiloh had said she wasn’t ready to date.
Tom was a Kate advocate.
Tom was a Shiloh-moving-on advocate.
He didn’t believe Shiloh when she said that shewasmoving on. That moving on as a divorced mother in your thirties could simply mean being less miserable. Enjoying a nice pear. Sleeping eight hours in a row. Wearing earrings.“That’s not moving on, Shiloh. That’s just being happy in a sad way.”
Tom would probably love to hear about Shiloh’s run-in with Cary...
If she had the heart to talk about it.
The play started. Gus climbed into Shiloh’s lap as soon as Daniel ran out of jelly beans.
It was obvious which actress Ryan was dating. Shiloh called it as soon as the woman walked onstage dressed like a carton of 2 percent milk. She had dark hair and a big chest. Ryan had a type.
Before Tom could confirm, Junie said, “I know her—that’s Jocelyn!”
After the play, they all walked across the street to a gourmet ice cream shop. “Ice cream is at the top of the food pyramid,” Junie said confidently.
“That means it’s the very best,” Daniel said.
Tom and Daniel were both from bigger cities. They’d moved to Omaha eight years ago so that Tom could get a full-time theater gig on his résumé. The plan was always to move on.
Shiloh would be devastated if they ever did.
“What are you doing this weekend?” Tom asked while they were waiting for their sundaes. “Doesn’t Ryan have the kids?”
“I am doingso much,” she said.
“Oh,” Daniel said, “are you going to enjoy a nice pear?”
Shiloh frowned at Tom. “Do you tell him every dumb thing I say?”
“Daniel and I have no secrets.”
Thirty
It was probably good, on balance, to have had children with someone who would eventually want shared custody.
Ryan had refused to leave the house the night that Shiloh tried to kick him out.
He’d sat on the couch with his arms folded. “I’m not leaving my children. I am notphysicallywalking away from them. If you need to leave—leave!”
So Shiloh woke up the kids and strapped them into their car seats, both of them crying, while Ryan followed her around the garage swearing the whole time that he wasn’t going to let her take themorthe Subaru station wagon. Then he actually stood behind the car, so she couldn’t pull out.
Finally Shiloh got out and told him that he was traumatizing Junie in a way that she may never recover from.
“Or maybe you’re traumatizing her, Shiloh! By separating her from her father!”
They stood in the garage shouting at each other.
Somehow the story had shifted fromwhat Ryan had donetowhat Shiloh was doing. This was aboutherhurtinghim. Ryan was a father, fighting for his family.
They only stopped shouting because Gus was screaming loud enough that they could hear him from outside the car—and Shiloh’s breast milk had seeped through her bra and T-shirt.
