Once, eight months pregnant with David, lying on her back in bed, thinking, I am so happy already. How could having this child be better than preparing for him? Later that night the pain had started, and the problems that had nearly caused the loss of her own life and David’s.
She had allowed the same thought in the night she held Sophie for the first time. She’d wanted a second child badly, had wanted David to have the sibling neither she nor Val had. When the doctors had said she couldn’t have another, adoption was an easy second choice, not second choice at all. Val had been for adoption all along, even if the process took far longer than they’d anticipated. She remembered when Sophie’s seizures had started, the first ones a terrifying absence, moving on to other, even more terrifying variations.
And she’d been stupid enough to let that thought into her head when David came home from his last deployment and said he’d left the military. Finally, she thought. Finally I can stop worrying. Stupid. She was a numbers person, a facts person. She allowed herself one superstition, but she couldn’t even get that right. It was a statistical fact: every time she had that thought, something went wrong.
Or maybe she took the wrong conclusion from the numbers. Maybe perfect happiness was impossible, and all good was temporary, all good came with a chaser of bad, because otherwise how would you differentiate?
David was hiding something. He went to work every day as he had since he’d returned stateside. He came home different. Before, at dinner, he’d talk about interesting trainings, or at least he did when Sophie was out. He’d talk about what it was like filming promos, or, if pushed, the surreality of being recognized.
No stories now, no matter how she and Val pried. The funny thing was, he didn’t look like he was avoiding her questions. She couldn’t get anything out of him. How was your day? Fine.
She knew what a bad patch at work felt like, when everyone was on her about something or an election loomed close. He didn’t look stressed, though. Muted; like he’d run out of things to say, but he didn’t mind. On the nights he ate dinner with them, he closed his eyes while he chewed, didn’t volunteer anything, didn’t ask any questions. Other nights, he came home late and went to his room and shut the door.
He was an adult. She resisted the urge to pry: Is something wrong at BNL? Is it Milo you’re hanging out with or someone else? None of it was her business, even if he was living under their roof. He’d always been an open kid; he would talk when he was ready.
That was what she figured, until the day she followed him by accident. She had finished a project early and couldn’t start on her next until she got one additional document that hadn’t yet arrived. A good excuse to head home, except when she left the office, the day she ran into was so perfect she felt like it would be a disservice to the planet not to acknowledge it in some way. Perfect days were a rarity.
She shouldn’t have followed him. Wouldn’t have if she hadn’t pulled up behind his car sitting at a four-way stop as if it were a red light. She waved, but she couldn’t catch his eye in his mirror, so she put on her flashers and waited as other cars stopped at the intersection, eyed him, then proceeded. When someone honked at both of them, she waved them around.
Just when she was going to get out and ask if he was having car trouble, he started moving again. She followed. Not to spy; spies had discretion. She tailed him from right behind, so he could easily have seen her if he’d looked. That made it okay.
He crawled through several intersections, nearly causing accidents at each, and she followed him, a strange entourage. A parade of two.
He drove past four schools, a hospital, and two business parks, and each time she assumed he would pull in, step out with a display-in-a-box, but he kept going until he reached the waterfront park’s lot. She pulled in a few spots away.
Again, she hoped he’d lace his running shoes or, really, do anything to indicate purpose. He walked into the park with what seemed like no intent whatsoever. The funny thing was, this had been exactly where she’d been considering going; they hadn’t been to this park since before David had deployed, though it had been a favorite when the kids were younger.
The playground had been updated, the splash pad, too, and the long corridor of weeping cherry trees that ran along the seawall was still stunning. The trees were older and fuller than she remembered. People sat on the benches that punctuated the trees: a couple of women with matching haircuts and a wire-haired mutt twining around their feet; two older men engaged in some handheld game battle; a little girl trying to drag the woman she was with toward the splash pad. Parent? Sibling? Nanny? Julie was no good at telling ages anymore; Val had always been better at that, since she worked with teenagers.
The next two benches were empty, and if her afternoon in the park hadn’t turned into a David hunt, she’d have considered sitting to watch the water. No, more likely, she would have pulled out her phone or her tablet. She wasn’t good at doing nothing. Not in the same way as Val, who craved motion; hers was something else. She often thought their compatibility came partly from how she and Val both lacked an essential stillness; it meant they each understood the other’s activities, even if they didn’t share them.
She kept walking. The mutt she’d passed went flying by, trailing a leash. She reached to grab it but missed, then
