“I’m not going to take them from you,” she’d promised Ryan. “We’ll work this out.”
And they had. It went like this:
Ryan had the kids for two weekdays, then Shiloh had the kids fortwo weekdays, then Ryan had them for the three weekend days. The next week, it switched.
It was a chaotic way to split the kids fifty-fifty—Shiloh couldn’t plan a consistent workweek around it—but it meant that nobody went more than three days without seeing each other. And when Gus was still breastfeeding, Ryan had let Shiloh have him every night.
Once Ryan realized that Shiloh wasn’t going to keep the kids from him, the rest of the divorce came together smoothly. (Or came apart.) They sold the house and split their meager equity. Ryan earned slightly more money than Shiloh, so he paid a small amount of child support.
Of their shared belongings, he wanted everything they’d bought new, and she wanted everything they’d bought old.
They’d fussed over Junie’s books and toys, and Gus’s baby equipment.
“The balls on this guy,”Shiloh’s mom had said.“He should have his tail between his legs, taking whatever you give him.”
But Shiloh figured that in the long term, the kids were better off having a dad who would fight for them—who was willing to spend half his days taking care of them, all by himself.
She trusted Ryan to take care of Junie and Gus. He was sensitive and nurturing. He liked being a father.
Shiloh honestly believed that Ryan liked being a husband, too—he just wasn’t very good at it.
Maybe Shiloh hadn’t been very good at being a wife.
Shared custody meant that Shiloh’s nights were either loud and frantic, or long and quiet. She stayed late at work when Ryan had the kids, and tried to do most of her errands and housework on those nights.
Ryan planned his longest rehearsals for his off nights. They both worked a lot of weekends and leaned on their families for help, but they’d agreed to be present as much as possible when it was their turn to parent.
That’s what Shiloh hated about the arrangement—the feeling that she actuallywasn’ta parent on off days. That her kids only had a mother for half their life.
Ryan could say the same thing, Shiloh supposed, but she found her own loss more compelling. She was theirmother.
“You’re doing your best,”her own mother would say. (A woman who had never overly concerned herself with being present.)
But if Shiloh had been doing her best—her actual best—she wouldn’t have made the choices that led herhere. To part-time parenthood.
She’d wanted to stay home with her kids. Now she was only home with them two nights a week and every other weekend. If she thought about it that way, her whole life started to spin and swirl toward the drain. It wasintolerable.
But what could she do, except tolerate it?
Off, off. On, on. Off, off, off.
When Mikey invited Shiloh over for dinner again, it wasn’t hard for her to find a free night.
It was better this time. He’d only invited Shiloh and another old high school friend, someone who’d grown up with Janine.
The talk of the night was the incoming baby. Plans and logistics. Janine worked as a writer for a travel industry magazine. She was probably going to switch to freelance after her maternity leave. Mikey wasn’t a superstar by New York standards—he claimed—but by Omaha standards, he was making a really nice living. They could manage it.
“I’m trying to talk other artists into moving here,” he said over dessert. (Apricot torte from a local bakery.) “They could afford houses and studios—Omaha artists’ colony!”
“No one loves a colonist,” Shiloh said. “Our artist-to-sane-person ratio is perfect as it is.”
Later that spring, Janine’s sister threw a coed baby shower. Shilohbought a set of vintage baby dishes at the antique mall—a little ceramic cup and bowl with lambs painted on them.
Her mother took one look at them and said, “Hopefully that’s not lead paint.”
Shiloh had inherited a love of old things from her mother, but her mom thought Shiloh went overboard.“It’s like you’re buying every single thing we threw out when your grandma died.”
When the baby came, Shiloh told Mike and Janine to call her if they needed any help. But they both had big families, and Janine had her own friends. Shiloh went over to meet the baby—Otis—about a month after he was born. He was bald and healthy. Janine seemed exhausted. Mikey said he was going to take more time off work, maybe two and a half months. That was longer than Shiloh got at the theater for maternity leave.
