Cherry knew he was cold—she was cold, too—but she didn’t want to rush Stevie. Cherry felt bad about how often the dog was alone lately. They stood in front of someone’s house while Stevie sniffed an evergreen bush.
“Your ex didn’t want kids?” Russ asked.
Cherry was surprised by the question—Russ didn’t usually mention Tom outright. Maybe he felt like he needed to know more about him, in the wake of theThursdayrevelation.
Or maybe Russ had been thinking about what Cherry had said, about wanting a baby...
“I think he did, actually,” she said.
Russ’s head was down. Very focused on the ground. “Was there a problem?”
“Several,” Cherry said. “But mostly we just couldn’t agree on when to try.”
He looked up at her. “You never tried?”
She shook her head.
Russ looked thoughtful, like he was doing the math. Cherry was thirty-six, and she’d been with Tom for more than a decade. The ideal time to try for a baby had definitely come and gone.
At first it had been Cherry who wanted to wait. She and Tom didn’t make any money when they met. Daycare would have been crippling. And having a kid would have slowed Cherry down; she might never have been promoted. Plus it felt like they should spend some timebeingtogether, just the two of them.
Once Cherry was promoted, it was even harder to think about slowing down. She had new responsibilities, new ambitions—and by then it was clear that she needed to be the one with a stable salary. Tom was constantly on the verge of quitting his job at the ad agency. She wanted to be in a place where he could quit or take a pay cut, and their family would still be okay.
When they got to that place, and Cherry told Tom she was finally ready to have a baby, or to try—he wasn’t ready anymore.
Maybe Tom never would have been ready, whenever Cherry had called his bluff.
He said he wanted to talk about it more. But Tom didn’t actually want to talk about anything, ever.
He said they should see how they did with a dog. But once they had a dog, he said it was hard to imagine taking care of a new person on top of Stevie. He’d already started traveling forThursday. It was the beginning of the end.
Cherry should have gotten pregnant when they met. She should have stopped handing him condoms. She should never have started taking her temperature and carefully tracking her menstrual cycle.
Now she had nothingbutfinancial stability. Literally. Nothing.
Stevie tugged on her leash.
“I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject,” Russ said.
Cherry huffed out a sad laugh. She let Stevie pull her forward. “Didn’t you?”
“I guess I did...”
Cherry looked over at Russ. His face was kind. He looked like he liked her and was trying to figure her out.
She forced herself to shake off some of her bitterness; none of it was about Russ. “It’s okay,” she said. “I think this is probably a better-sooner-than-later conversation. What about you? Did you plan on only having one kid?”
Russ shook his head. “No, but... by the time Liam was old enough for us to try again, it was clear that our marriage was on thin ice.”
“I’m sorry,” Cherry said.
“Ope,” Russ said, motioning at Stevie. “There she goes.”
Cherry looked at Stevie and sighed. She pulled a plastic baggie out of her pocket. “I can’t believe this is my job.”
He laughed. “For someone whose life revolves around a dog, you are the most reluctant dog owner.”
Cherry was crouching over. “My life doesn’t revolve around a dog!”
