Marnie says in a dreamy voice that makes Patrick almost groan out loud: “Start from the beginning. You’re in love with somebody? Tell me the whole story.”

And then Tessa, dabbing at her eyes, sits back down next to Marnie and starts in talking about some professor poet named Richard, and blah blah blah . . . Italy . . . never in love before . . . overwhelming . . . just a year . . . and she goes on and on, until Patrick, frankly, can’t take any more of the embarrassment of it all. He looks over at Fritzie at about the three-minute point, and says, “Hey, kid, why don’t you and I go up on the roof before the storm gets here and see if we can see all the way to the river?” It’s lame, but it’s the only thing he can think of, and she considers the option for a moment, cocking her head, and then she looks at her mom and Marnie and accepts, but only if Bedford comes, too.

And there it is. He knows, watching the storm clouds roll in, that when he goes back into the kitchen, everything will be different. And by the time the first flash of lightning and crack of thunder happen, Marnie comes up to the roof to tell him he’s right.

CHAPTER NINE

MARNIE

“So can we go over this one more time?” Patrick says to me three days later. We’re alone at last in the kitchen of the basement apartment—his old apartment, where he lived when I first came to Brooklyn—and we’re cleaning it because Tessa and Fritzie are going to be staying here for a few weeks. And then Tessa will go on to her tryst in Italy, and we’ll have Fritzie for an even longer, longer time. Through the school year.

There had been some talk about how ten months was perhaps too long for a child to be away from her mother—but I found myself making the argument that if Fritzie is going to be left with us, at least she should be allowed to complete the third grade in one place. When I said that, Patrick went into a coughing fit and almost had to be revived.

“Tell me just so I can explain it to the part of my brain that is still not understanding,” he says. “Why, again, are we doing this to our lives?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I answer him cheerfully. Then, rather crudely, I point to the general direction of his penis. “Mostly because of that guy.”

He comes loping over and leans against the counter, thrusting his hip out, with his hand against the cabinet above my head. He’s grinning down at me. The provocative sexiness of this pose is not lost on either of us. “That guy, huh?” he says.

“Well. Yes. And it is the right thing to do,” I say, looking up at him. “You dog, you.”

“Yep. That’s me, the guy leaving a trail of unintentional babies. How’s our own little situation going, by the way?” He reaches over and touches my abdomen. “Any news from that front?”

“Won’t know for another week,” I say. “Although, just as a heads-up, the consensus around Best Buds is that my hair looks particularly lustrous lately, which is a sign of pregnancy hormones. So brace yourself. Just saying.”

He groans and buries his head in my neck. “How is it that in the space of one week, I’ve possibly become the father of two? Tell me that.”

“Um, because you’re just ridiculously lucky? As well as devastatingly handsome and virile? And women can’t resist you?”

“Marnie,” he says, and his voice has turned serious. “You know, don’t you, that I never had any interest in Tessa? It was just an idiotic mistake, my hooking up with her. So . . . you’re not insisting we keep Fritzie because you’re trying to show how magnanimous and forgiving you can be, are you?”

“Are you kidding me? Patrick! I know you didn’t love her. I’m insisting we keep Fritzie because she’s your child, and she needs a home. And she needs you. And also her mother is involved in some kind of epic love story—”

He’s shaking his head. “Aha, that’s it! You’ve sniffed out what is possibly the Greatest Matchmaking Project of All Time.”

“Patrick, that is not—”

“Oh, yes, it is. Don’t forget I’ve seen you run across restaurants and leap through dog parks to make sure two people get together. So I can see where an intercontinental love story would be just your thing.”

“No. No! I’m doing this for Fritzie. If anybody ever needed a family, it’s her. It’s heartbreaking what’s happening to her. And she’s like a little adult, trying to manage her feelings. It just kills me, how she’s trying to be so brave when her mom is going off and leaving her.”

“What I want to know is why can’t this Poetic Giant Among Men get a larger pensione in Italy if he wants to take up with a woman who has a child? You’d think that would set off some alarm bells for Tessa. She should say no.”

“Patrick, she can’t say no. She wants what we all want in life—for somebody to hold us in bed and say they can’t live without us. And she hasn’t ever, ever had that. So maybe now that she’s found Richard, this is what’s going to make her a better person. Love might save them both.”

He rolls his eyes so hard that he falls to the floor pretending he’s dying. That’s when I know I really have him.

So I sit on him. “And maybe, you old cynic, she’ll have more love to give to Fritzie and end up being a better mother. Isn’t that what love does for all of us if we let it in? Maybe this was meant to be. Set up by the universe . . .”

At the mention of the universe, he closes his eyes and folds his hands on his chest, corpse-like.

“Yes, Patrick. Yes! Deal with it. Set up by the universe. Lots of things are going to be set in motion that we can’t see the end of. That’s the way the whole system works.” I put my face up against his and kiss him five hundred times across his cheeks and nose and forehead.

“So fine,” he says. “But how did my life get tangled up in this? I don’t even like her.”

I laugh and poke him in the arm. “Oh, really? The evidence would indicate that you must have been quite fond of her for at least two happy evenings of your life.”

“Oh God, Marnie. She wasn’t interested in me, and I was a jerk. Just showing off.”

“And, if I may ask, oh careful one, was this another condom breakage situation?”

“No. This was all stupidity. I figured she was forty years old, so she must have the birth control situation all figured out. I think I was probably embarrassed to bring it up.”

“And see there? You got a great kid out of it. Proof once again that the universe works in mysterious ways.”

He makes a face and I roll off his chest onto the floor next to him. “I like the kid,” he says in a voice that means just the opposite. “No, I do. I like anybody who’s not above criticizing the Little Mermaid’s wimpiness and who’s bold enough to throw a dinner roll at a man’s face at dinner. But if you ask me if she feels like mine, if I feel any connection to her, I’d have to say no. I just don’t. You and Tessa say she looks just like me, and I suppose she might have some resemblance. Maybe. And Tessa says there was no one else. So—she’s mine. But it’s not ringing any bells for me, to tell you the truth.”

“So? Maybe that will change. Maybe you’re supposed to change in all this, too, Patrick. Get to know a different kind of love. You know? It’s possible. The fates . . .”