Daniel’s hand was resting on the table, next to his wineglass, and the next thing Rebecca knew she was putting her own hand over his.
“Did you go to the parent-teacher conferences?” Daniel Economics asked. His eyes were very brown, such a deep, chocolate brown that she could scarcely see where the pupil ended and the iris began.
“Peter went,” she said softly. “He was so good like that. He traveled a lot for work, and so when he was home he liked to be really involved with the kids.”
“That makes sense,” said Daniel Economics. “Because I think I would have remembered you, if you had gone.” He paused. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Does it get better? I’m still—I’m still in so much pain. Nearly all the time.”
Not yet,is what Rebecca was thinking. But she said, “A little bit. No, let me revise that. It gets a lot better, but only a little bit at a time. So you hardly notice it. And then one day you turn around, and it’s not as bad as it once was.”
“That’s really good to hear.” He reached across the table and touched her hair. He looked as surprised by this as she felt. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what made me do that. Other than the fact that you have beautiful hair.”
“Thank you,” she said. She got quite a lot of compliments on her hair, which was a dark chestnut color with a natural but manageable wave. It was one of the only features that marked her and Alexa as related. But people didn’t usually go around touching it. For some reason this seemed as un-strange as her putting her hand over his hand.
“Maybe we can be in pain together, sometime,” he said. “Maybe we can just talk, sometimes. Maybe we can be our own therapy group. With better cookies. Or real food, maybe. Maybe a meal!”
“I’d like that,” she said. She drained her glass.
He called the next day, and the day after that, and the first time Morgan had a sleepover and Alexa had plans, Rebecca went to Daniel’s house and he cooked her dinner—she deemed the restaurant scene in Newburyport too risky to bear witness to whatever it was they were doing. Which was what? Well, she wasn’t entirely sure. But after dessert it crystallized. No pun intended (dessert was ginger sorbet with pieces of crystallized ginger scattered throughout). Daniel could cook! Rebecca had cleared the plates and was about to put them in the sink when Daniel came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned, and her mouth found his without even looking for it. Then they were kissing, and then they were kissing some more, and then hewas leading her into his bedroom, and clothes were coming off, and off.
So that, it turned out, was what they were doing.
After, while Daniel took a quick shower, Rebecca was perusing the shelves in his living room where there stood a few framed photos. There was one of Daniel and what she figured were his parents and the dead twin, standing in front of a boat with crystal-green water behind them. There was one of a young girl who she figured to be the left-behind daughter at an earlier stage of life. And there was one of...Gina? MOM Squad Gina?No, it couldn’t be Gina. But it was, in a photo with a bunch of other people. Here was Gina’s husband, Steve, wearing a Red Sox cap. Here was Gina and Steve’s daughter, Callie, much smaller and younger, but recognizable by her naturally curly hair and her crooked smile. And here, holding a baby who must be the now-seven-year-old brother of Callie, was Gina!
“What is Gina doing on your bookshelves?” she called to Daniel. He came out with a towel around his waist and damp hair. Rebecca looked modestly away. He had a very nice chest—he confessed to doing one hundred push-ups every day, in sets of twenty-five—but still she felt shy; seeing a man in a towel in front of her, a man who was not Peter, made it seem all the more real, what had just occurred. A blush crept onto her cheeks.
Daniel stood next to her and looked at the photos too. Rebecca pointed at Gina.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Gina. I don’t know why I keep this photo up here anymore! It’s from another life. So, Gina’s husband—”
“Steve,” said Rebecca.
“Yes. Steve. Steve is the brother of my ex-wife, Veronica. If you can believe it. So I guess technically Gina is my ex-sister-in-law? She and Veronica were good friends, and they still are.” He madea face. “I guess that makes her kids my ex-niece and ex-nephew? But you don’t lose a niece and a nephew in a divorce, do you? I hope not. I love those kids. I guess that’s why I keep the picture up there, even though Veronica the Cheater is rightthere.” He jabbed a finger at a lithe blond woman who was also in the photo. “I still see them. They live over on Jefferson.”
“Oh, I know where they live,” said Rebecca. “Believe me.” Jefferson was only a few streets away from her own house. Her heart sank. Here she thought she had found someone new, unsullied by history or connection, but she should have known better: there was no such thing in a town of this size. If Gina found out about this, she’d shout it from the rooftops, just as she had about the sleeping bag. Every time Rebecca thought about Gina she thought simultaneously about the sleeping bag and felt a rage so potent it threatened to seep out of her pores.
“We can’t tell anyone about—this,” said Rebecca. She made a motion that indicated his towel and her own fully clothed self. “Especially not Gina.” She winced.
“Why not?”
“It’ll get out, someone will tell the girls. I’m not ready for a bunch of questions. I’m just—” She let out a little puff of air. “I’m still just trying to figure things out. You know?”
He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes. He smelled like Irish Spring and also like the ginger from the dessert. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “We don’t tell anyone until you are one hundred percent ready. And that’s assuming that there’s something to tell—that you want to dothis” (he imitated her hand gesture) “again.”
There were so many emotions swirling inside Rebecca that she couldn’t have given a name to each of them even if she’d wanted to. But a few were recognizable: relief, fear, sorrow, joy. Hope.
“I think I do,” she said. “Want to do this again. Yes, please, actually. I really think I do.”
Now, at the beach, with Sherri, Rebecca said, “It’s been really hard on Morgan. She and Peter were very close. She’s done some funny things since Peter died. She’s become really klutzy, tripping over everything. She wet her sleeping bag at a sleepover! She’s never wet the bed, ever, not even when she was toilet training. And everybody found out about it.” It had been Gina’s house where it happened, almost a year ago now. It had been Gina who had whisked the sleeping bag away to be washed. “So naturally she doesn’t go to big sleepovers anymore.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” said Sherri.
Morgan and Katie were at the edge of the water taking turns doing handstands, probably videoing for Instagram. Katie’s handstands were solid but Morgan kept toppling over.
Two skinny teenage boys, hairless as hippos, were throwing a Frisbee back and forth. Many of the empty spots in the beach had filled in. Colorful umbrellas and their fancier cousins, pop-up beach tents, now occupied nearly every available space. The sand was shimmering with the heat. “Anyway, I’m so happy to see Morgan like this, making a new friend. Playing. She’s still a kid, and I want her to act like a kid.” She paused. “It’s an entirely different story with my older daughter, Alexa. She has a different father.” She paused and reached for a bottle of sunblock and squirted some out, rubbing it on her arms. “So in this funny way her grief is more, I don’t know,complicatedthan Morgan’s. Less clear-cut. I feel like there’s a wall between her and Morgan that wasn’t there before. Maybe it got too high before I noticed it, I don’t know. I don’t know how to break it down.” She paused again and then realized she’d just spilled at least three-quarters of her life storyto a virtual stranger. “I’m sorry! I haven’t talked about most of this with anyone. I guess I had a lot saved up. Am I getting too personal, for a first date?”
