She was warm and earthy and flushed and real, while he was married to an ice princess. He was enamored on the spot, even as her kids squirmed out of her grasp and made a beeline for the elaborate tree house perched in the branches of an oak tree in his new backyard.
“Guys, get back here! They know better,” she told Rick. “Sorry. They’ve been looking at that through the fence for years, dying to play on it.”
“The kids who lived here before we moved in were teenagers. I bet their parents wouldn’t have minded if they’d come over.”
“You bet wrong,” Rowan said with a laugh. “They were pretty fussy about their yard and my kids can be a handful.”
She cast a glance at the steps, where his four were contentedly reading or coloring with crayons. “Okay, I’m totally impressed. How do you get your kids to behave so well? You’ve got twice as many as I do.”
“Not for long,” he said, gesturing at her enormous stomach.
“Right. It’s another boy.”
“That’s good. Boys are easier.”
“Who said?”
“I did. We have three.”
It was months before he even mentioned that the older two of his sons belonged to Vanessa’s deadbeat first husband. “He was a lousy dad,” he told Rowan.
“Well, it seems like you’re making up for it.”
“God knows I’m trying.”
It was spring by then, and he was pitching a Wiffle ball to his boys and Braden while the girls set up housekeeping in the tree house and Rowan sat on his back steps nursing newborn Mick.
Vanessa had fed their babies formula, despite his protests that breast milk was healthier.
“I bottle--fed my boys and they turned out just fine,” she said, and made it clear that since she was the one who’d have to nurse, she was the one who’d get to decide.
She’d gone right back to work after her maternity leave was up. She had no choice. She was the breadwinner. When they were living in Westchester, she and Jake Mundy often caught the same weekday train into the city and the same train back to the suburbs at night, while their spouses entertained the kids and each other.
Those days were so pleasant, and so innocent . . . at first, anyway.
Rick eventually acknowledged, if only to himself, that something was starting to brew between them. He picked up on Rowan’s loneliness and wistfulness when she spoke of her husband. He felt the same way about Vanessa, whose commuting time had quadrupled with the move, and who was constantly stressed about the hefty mortgage payments they’d taken on and the volatile state of the economy.
Years later, discussing his failing marriage, his old friend Bob asked Rick if he had doubts about whether his wife truly loved him.
“No,” he said, “it’s the other way around.”
“She doubts that you love her?”
“Yes. And so do I.”
As that steamy summer traipsed toward fall, Rowan’s baby weight melted away and the circles beneath her eyes began to fade. She started laughing more, worrying less about her kids. They shared parenting concerns and confided in each other, sharing things they hadn’t even told their spouses. Nothing significant, really. Just little things that came up during the long hours they spent together; things their spouses weren’t around to hear or wouldn’t have found significant.
Months passed, a year and then two. They relied on each other the way neighbors do, borrowing items and carpooling, recommending pediatricians and babysitters and kid--friendly barbers. Their time together ebbed and flowed depending on the weather and the season and the kids’ schedules. He could count on seeing more of her whenever school was out for breaks and summer. He grew to dread September’s abrupt curtailment of carefree summer days spent with Rowan and all the kids in the yard or park or pool.
Then came the sunny Tuesday morning two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center. She showed up at his door barefoot with her youngest child in her arms, cell phone in hand.
“I’ve been trying to call you, but the lines are jammed,” she said breathlessly. “Did you hear?”