I clear my throat and start singing The Song again. How many times has it been? Enough times that my voice is going hoarse, that’s how many times. The past is nothing but Baby Beluga. The future is nothing but Baby Beluga. It is all Baby Beluga, all the way down.

That’s mainly Rosie’s fault.

I’m half-kidding. Nothing is truly her fault. She’s eleven months old, which means that things like fault and responsibility don’t apply. She can’t help it if her little brain won’t relax unless someone is singing a pleasant song about a newborn whale.

That song is sending me into an early grave. I used to think it was fine. Have you heard kid’s music in your life? The obnoxious shit, not Baby Beluga. After that, Raffi seems like an angel sent to heaven. But today, I’ve had enough of the song. Especially the line about whether your mama’s home in the warm water or whatever. It makes me fucking furious, which is not something I’m going to add to the song. Still, Rosie cries if I skip the line, so I sing it every time, even if it makes my blood boil.

We’ve been driving for six hours. It’s taking forever to get to Lakewood, the town of my grandparents’ birth. It’s also where I’ll get to build a second life.

I hope.

Rosie missed her first nap and then her second. When she started screaming, I had to break out the big guns. How long has it been? I’ve lost track of time in the endless loop of my solo Raffi sing-a-long.

Wait.

It’s quiet.

How long has it been quiet? I have no idea. I’ve been caught up in the rage that comes around every ninety seconds at that stupid line. My heart goes to my throat. Nobody ever told me that a moment of quiet out of a baby can inspire enough panicked energy to power a city.

One look in the rearview mirror and my body sags with relief.

Rosie has fallen asleep, her head resting on the side of the seat, chubby cheeks pink. 

I don’t know when, but I can stop singing. Finally.

Without the song, the car seems deathly quiet, so I risk turning up the radio, just a little. The moment I do, Rosie snuffles in the back. So much for the alternative pop station, whatever the hell that means.

We’re forty miles out from Lakewood. That means I have forty miles to stew about this unholy situation with Serena. We were always a mismatch. She had her head in the clouds, and I had mine in the office at the software development company. I thought things would change once Rosie was born. What a stupid assumption. Serena was never going to stop looking for the next shiny object.

She found the ultimate shiny object in Pine Deep, the man with the dumbest name in all of America. Pine Deep. Jesus. I can’t think about it without wanting to smash whatever comes to hand.

That’s the bitch of it all. We were opposites. We were different. But that was supposed to make our love stronger. Instead, I’m left hating a man named after a tree, a hollow emptiness in my chest that aches around the edges all the time. Anger is the only way to survive.

Anger, and coffee.

* * *

The coffee shop in Lakewood wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t even my grandfather’s idea, and he’s the one who willed me the downtown property. It was my grandmother’s idea entirely. They never got around to it before she died, which means it’s time to get my revenge.

Did I say revenge? I meant a clean break. I’m leaving my old life behind and building something from the ground up. Renovations have been going on all spring. We should be able to open in a week or two and make my grandmother’s dream of owning a cute little café in downtown Lakewood a posthumous reality. 

My dream is to wring a fortune—or at least a nice living—out of the burning rubble of my marriage. Irony of ironies: Serena and I loved to visit coffee shops. We even signed up for classes together to learn how to make all of it at home, but the shop still lured us in.

That was all before Rosie was born. And before she fucking cheated on me with Christmas.

I’ll be damned if I let her take coffee from me. I camped out in so many cafés during college that my dorm room was almost an afterthought. There’s a lot to love about it—the harsh whine of the espresso grinder, the smell of the fresh brew, the ready access to boiling water should an idiot named Pine come in and try to convince me that my wife would be better off without me.

God, what a jackass.

I shake my head, trying to rattle away the thoughts as we pull off the highway. The outskirts of Lakewood are pastoral and lovely, with cottages dotting wide properties on the lakefront. We’re going to spend the summer in one of them. The owners keep one cottage for personal use, and the other—across a massive lawn, with its own separate section of sandy beach—will be for me and Rosie. In September, we’ll move into my grandfather’s old house. Renovations are everywhere. My entire life is under construction.

But we’re not going there yet.

We’ve been on the road all day, and before I do anything else, I need a coffee. It’s the only thing that will wash the taste of thinking about Serena out of my mouth.

I know exactly where I’m going to get it.

I’ve taken a few trips to Lakewood since I got the notice about grandpa’s property. I know as well as anyone else that there’s only one coffee shop in town. I intend to be a loyal patron...right up until I put it out of business.

Does that make me a monster?

Rosie wakes with a snort. In the mirror, I can see her rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists, getting her bearings...and opening her mouth to cry. As exhausted as I am—by the drive, by all of this—my heart twists in my chest at the sound.

I clear my throat. What’s another thirty rounds of The Song in the grand scheme of things? Nothing, that’s what.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’m still here,” I tell her, and then I sing.