“Well”—he scooted down so that we lay face-to-face—“I know a girl who’s into small living spaces. Won’t take anything too grand.”
I huffed. “Your realtor lady is obviously favoring the higher end of our price range.”
“Our realtor lady, Marion. And I noticed that.”
“Maybe I’ll have a talk with her.”
“You do that, little bird.” He tapped my nose and I scrunched it. “You can always e-mail her. Still, let’s at least see the larger places. Room to grow…”
I rolled onto my back. Room to grow.
“You want children,” I said. Matt stayed quiet and I continued calmly, the awareness forming as I spoke. “What you sent me today, Chapter four. You said you pictured me as a child, playing on the lawn of my parents’ house. You said it made you feel … sadness. You want to give me a home. And you want children, don’t you? I mean, you really want them.”
I glanced at him.
He sat up, avoiding my gaze.
“You don’t have to tell me, then. I know. I just don’t know how important it is to you.”
“Don’t say you haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what I want. If you’d talked to me a few years ago, I would have said I never wanted to get married. You made me want marriage, though, and you make me want…” He shrugged.
“I have thought about it.” I sat up and forced him to look at me. “Matt, I’ve gone so far as to picture it. A little boy with your beautiful eyes. A girl with sandy curls. But I’m confused, too. I’m scared. I never really wanted kids. There’s so much to consider.”
His eyes widened.
“We have to be careful.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “We could be happy. Too happy.”
“Too happy?” I frowned.
“Yes, God. Don’t talk about them. A boy … a girl. Stop that.”
Whoa, where was this coming from?
“I thought you—”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped, and I flinched. They were figments of my imagination—those small children, the boy and the girl—but when Matt said, Don’t talk about them, ferocity reared inside me. It was an instinct to protect … what didn’t even exist.
I stared at my hands, dazed. I didn’t want children. And now, mysteriously, part of me did. And I already loved the children that I wanted Matt to give me.
This new self-awareness stunned me into silence.
But suddenly Matt didn’t want children? He’d just said—
The power returned with a rising whirr. The AC chugged to life.
“Thank God,” Matt said. He grabbed his pants and kissed my shoulder. “I’ll fix the clocks.” He scrambled out of the tent.
Chapter 24
MATT
Hannah and I viewed homes with Marion twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
After Hannah got off work, we dined quickly and Marion picked us up in her Prius, the car and the woman always looking freshly polished. She was middle-aged and pleasant—not the pushy woman I expected, but a knowledgeable and confident realtor.
She avoided talk of my books, which I appreciated, but she had obviously done her research. To me, she often said, “This room would make an ideal office or library,” and to Hannah, “This area is great for newlyweds—private, but with so much to do nearby.”
We traipsed through three to five homes per day.
Ranch-style homes, two-family homes, suburban monstrosities, luxury townhouses.
The more we saw, the less we knew what we wanted, and the longer Marion’s listing e-mails grew. I pitied her—and us. That July was insufferably hot and we attacked house-shopping like a New Year’s resolution: at first with great energy and excitement, by the second week with diminishing zeal, and toward the end of the month with forbidding faces, dragging steps.
Marion pulled into a neighborhood just outside Denver.
“No,” I snarled. “Too suburban. Head to the next.”
She took us to a country home with a stunning view of the mountains.