I GET BACK to the lake as the sun’s starting to fade. Lucie’s car is in the driveway, but there are no lights on in the house and they’re not at the beach.
My frustration is made worse by the fact that I know I shouldn’t be frustrated, that I shouldn’t care at all. I change into shorts and a t-shirt and head for the path that circles the narrow end of the lake to the north. There’s a little footbridge that lets you cross from one side to the other and Lucie takes the twins up there on occasion. I start jogging in that direction, hoping it’s where she’s taken them now and telling myself to anticipate disappointment when I’d have no right to be disappointed anyway.
Nothing can come of it whether I find her or not.
I hear them before I see them. Sophie is chattering away, and I run faster toward the sound until I come round the bend and find them.
Sophie’s in the middle of telling a story and Henry’s examining a log.
It’s exactly what I don’t want, and yet this thing in my chest soars when Lucie looks up, when her eyes come alive. As if she missed me as much as I missed her.
“Well, hello there, Monroe family,” I say, coming to a stop.
“My last name is actually Boudreau,” corrects Sophie, skipping toward me. “Did you know that if you drop a penny from the top of the Empire State Building, it will kill someone?”
Lucie and I exchange a grin. “I’ve heard that,” I say to Sophie. “I didn’t know if it was true.”
“It’s not,” Henry says quietly to Sophie. “The wind resistance slows it. I told you that.”
“Not if an alien is riding on it!” she says with a scowl before stomping ahead. “You don’t know everything, Henry!”
“How the hell does your kindergartner know about wind resistance?” I ask Lucie.
“My friend, Molly,” she says with a smile. “She’s determined to turn them both into scientists. I think Sophie might be a lost cause.”
The twins are arguing loudly about the potential size of an alien. Lucie is still smiling, and it hits me out of nowhere—this wave of longing.
I wish all of this was mine.
20
LUCIE
“You said no life jackets.”
My daughter has her arms folded, and she’s staring me down, as much as someone who is four feet tall can stare down a grown-up.
I groan. “Sophie—”
“You promised.”
I’m not sure I actually promised they could swim without life jackets today. I think I merely suggested it was possible, and now I’d like to suggest it’s not. I’m always outnumbered with them. I could save one drowning child—I can’t save two. But they both know how to dog paddle, and I guess, at some point, it’s sink or swim…literally.
“Okay,” I say with a sigh, and she runs out the back door gleefully, screaming, No life jackets! at the top of her lungs.
I’m grabbing my beach bag to follow them when my phone chimes.
JEREMY
Do you ever bother to even take the kids anywhere, now? Or is it just easier to put them in front of the TV all day?
There’s a brief ping in my gut, as if I should question this text more carefully, because how does he even know we’re home? But there isn’t time, with my kids running headlong toward the water and toward Caleb, who stands on the dock.
A thrill climbs up my spine at the sight of him, only in part because he’s currently shirtless. He has a tattoo high on the back of his shoulder, one I never noticed before. I want to inspect it up close, except if it’s for his wife, I’ll wish I hadn’t. Sophie is talking to him, and when he glances up at me as he replies, I walk a little faster. God only knows what she’s told him.
“Mommy!” she shouts. “Caleb says we can go on his boat, which is way better than ours!”
“Full disclosure,” he says as I approach, “I never claimed my boat was better. That was her.”
He also didn’t suggest this outing. My hands go to my hips. “Sophie, did you ask Mr. Lowell to take us on his boat? Because we’ve discussed this.”
“We call him Caleb,” she scolds. “And he said it was fine.”
“You do not invite yourself into other people’s homes, or onto their boats.”
Caleb shrugs. “It’s okay. I’m not doing anything.”
I still don’t want to reward Sophie for a behavior we’ve had several conversations about, but the twins are already scrambling aboard. “Yes, they’re monsters who will steal your youth and your disposable income,” he adds, “but I doubt your kids can do that from the inside of my boat.”
I’m laughing as I concede. He helps me climb up, his hand warm and rough and so much larger than mine. For just a moment, his eyes are on my face and we’re standing close and my stomach tips, a tiny but thrilling rise and fall.
“Thanks,” I whisper, looking away. It would be a lot easier to stop picturing him as Prince Charming if he’d stop fucking acting like him.
I go to the back and Sophie and Henry snuggle up beside me while Caleb unties the boat then jumps in—surprisingly graceful for his size.
He takes the seat up front and backs away from the dock carefully, his tricep popping when he moves the throttle, his bicep bulging as he grabs the wheel.
Jeremy started going soft months after we got married, while there is nothing soft about Caleb. He’s long and lean, ridiculously muscular for a guy who does nothing but work. I picture him flat on his back, spread out for me like a banquet, and feel a deep pinch of desire, so sharp it steals my breath.
Sophie leaves me at last and goes to the front of the boat. “Come on, Henry,” she says—bossy, parental—and he follows happily. For the next ten minutes, she delivers a nonstop dissertation on pandas to Caleb while he drives, and then he cuts the motor and comes back to sit with me while the twins take turns pretending to steer the boat.
“Thanks for this,” I tell him. “Obviously, it’s the highlight of Henry’s year.”
“It’s kind of fun to have some company,” he says. “I’m happiest surfing, but this is a close second.”
I smile to myself. “I remember you guys with all the surfboards in the back of someone’s truck.”
“You sound like you did nothing but watch my life from the window.”
I laugh. “A bunch of hot, teenage surfers staying at the house next door to me? Find me one pre-teen girl who wouldn’t have been obsessed.”
His grin turns sly. “Obsessed, huh? This is getting interesting.”
I’m not about to let him know just how obsessed I was. “Why’d you move to the lake instead of the ocean if you’d rather surf?”
He hesitates. “I didn’t really buy this place for myself. My mom always pictured renovating and retiring here with my dad, hosting all the grandkids.” He gives me a half-hearted smile. “I guess she wanted your fairy-tale thing too. I’m trying to give her the house at least.”
“It’s not my fairy-tale thing. Everyone wants to matter to another person. Everyone wants someone to grow old with. It doesn’t have to include kids.”
He shakes his head, watching Sophie march toward us. “I don’t. Life’s a lot easier when you don’t matter to anyone at all.”
Before more can be said, Sophie appears in front of me.
“Swim time!” she announces.
My arms fold over my chest. Stripping down to a bikini in front of my boss was not part of the plan. “That was before you cajoled your way onto someone’s boat.”
Caleb laughs. “It’s okay. I like it out here.”
“Fine,” I say to Sophie with a sigh. “But you’ve got to keep the life jackets on because I’m not going in with you.”
“You said we didn’t have to!” Sophie cries. “And you put on your suit.”
“Go ahead,” says Caleb, who probably thinks I’m simply being polite. “Seriously. Just remember this the next time you start crafting some plan that’s going to cost me ten grand.”