“Would you like more coffee, Cary?” Junie asked.
“I’m good. Thank you.”
“Ring the bell for service!” she said, running out.
“Shhhhh!” Shiloh hissed after her.
“She really does look like you,” Cary said.
“Don’t tell her that. She’s desperate to look like her dad.”
“Doesshe look like her dad? That doesn’t seem possible.”
“I don’t know. Kids are like water—you see other people’s faces pass over them. Sometimes she’ll smile at me, and I swear she looks just like my mother.” Shiloh squinted at Cary. “You don’t... I mean, did you say? Do you? Have kids?”
“No.” Cary pulled his chin into his neck. “I mean.” He shook his head. “No.”
Shiloh laughed. “Sorry.”
“I’ve never been married,” he said.
She looked down at her coffee.
“AndI don’t have kids.”
Shiloh was still holding Junie’s coffee cup. She set it aside, with Cary’s. “Was that intentional?”
“I don’t think so...” He frowned. “Some people might say it was intentional.”
Shiloh could never raise just one eyebrow—but she made her version of that expression, peeking up at him.
“It just hasn’t gone that way,” he said.
“It still could. You’re only thirty-three.”
“In my prime hooking-up years.”
Shiloh rolled her eyes.
“We’ll see,” Cary said, more quietly.
She tried not to smile. “Is the problem that your life, your lover, your lady, is the sea?”
“You nailed it.”
She grinned at him. “That really sucks for you.”
He gestured at her with his mug. He was smiling, too. “I didn’t know that you wanted kids.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, I didn’t want them at eighteen. But then...” She shrugged. “I was married, I was settled at my job—myfertilitywas waning. It felt like the next thing.”
“That sounds practical.”
“I didn’t want to miss out on a chance to make my life feel bigger,” Shiloh said. As soon as she said it, she winced. “What a rude thing for me to say! I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t rude. It’s how you felt. Is that how you feel now—like they make your life feel bigger?”
“Insomeways.” She tipped her head, considering. “I suppose I feel more invested in the world now...”
