Two weeks later

---

“You need to pack a bag,” I tell her casually, masking my emotions as best I can, which is Olympic-level stoicism. “We’re going away for a long weekend. Two days.”

She drops the pen in her hand, shock crawling into the pores of her beautiful face. “We’re what? Two entire days?” Skepticism fills in for surprise. “What’s the business meeting about? Don’t tell me we need to look at plastic storage crates again at some factory in the middle of nowhere. Because the difference between them is–”

“Not business. Pleasure.”

Deep suspicion radiates from my wife’s face, arched eyebrow and pursed lips on display. “You haven’t taken me away for a pleasure trip since our honeymoon.”

We both squirm.

“And we know how well that turned out,” Shannon adds under her breath, breaking eye contact and looking back at the work I interrupted.

“No fire ants where we’re going. Promise.” Our honeymoon debacle, involving outdoor sex and an unobserved but extremely obtrusive fire-ant hill, rarely comes up as a topic of conversation.

For a reason.

I shift in place, body invoking the memory. I shut it down.

Fast.

At the mention of fire ants, her head tips back up, a lock of hair hanging in front of her ear, just long enough to brush the papers she’s working on. “No fire ants? No business? Why, Mr. McCormick,” she says in a flirty tone, leaning back in her desk chair, revealing a deep V-neck sweater that plunges as she stretches, nipples hardening. “Are you propositioning me?”

“When am I not propositioning you, Shannon?” My pants are tight suddenly, the feeling a welcome change from tactile memories of fire ant bites. “You have an open invitation to sex with me. Any time.”

“But corporate policy says employees cannot fraternize.” She bats her eyelashes.

“No, it doesn’t. We made it clear to the HR team that–”

“Shhhhh,” she chides, one finger up to her lips. Then she licks them seductively and says, “Are you here for my employee review?” Her fingers play at the edge of her shirt, pulling it down so the lace of her bra shows. “Because I do have some areas that need improvement.” She looks at my erection. “Big improvement.”

“Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

Before she can answer, I’m on her, pinning her in the chair, kissing her with the kind of pounding urgency that makes everything else fade away.

Breaking the kiss, she gives me an intense, smoldering look that conveys deep longing.

I’ve got something long and deep for her, too.

“Who booked this mystery getaway?” she asks with a grin.

“Booked?”

She huffs, as if my answer is expected. The smile drops like Bitcoin after a butterfly flaps its wings. “Yes, booked. You have to reserve plane tickets, a hotel room, maybe parking, restaurant reservations, events...” Droning on, she makes her point with her voice.

“I’ve got it covered,” I assure her.

Cynicism doesn’t look good on Shannon, but by God does she embrace it fully in this moment.

“You’re taking me on a two-day vacation with no plans?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Have you scheduled anything?”

“No.”

“Then you have to say that!”

“I have plans.”

“Two days of sex is not ‘plans’, Declan.”

When did I marry an alien?

All the emotion I’m holding back rushes straight to my eyebrows, which shoot up like a Jeff Bezos rocket. “That absolutely is ‘plans.’ A two-day vacation of nothing but sex would be the best plan a man could–”

“You have ideas. Plans are not the same as ideas.”

“What is the difference?”

“One involves actually following through. Operational details like not sleeping in the street on a bench, or–”

“When have I ever made a promise to you and not followed through?”

Relentless when she needs to be, she’s in the zone right now. My words force her to pause and consider.

“Fair enough, but Declan, you can’t just go on a two-day vacation without making reservations. Not one that will be fun, anyway. Our life is too overscheduled to wing it.”

“I never said that was the case.” That is totally the case.

Tilting her head, her eyes sparkle as she watches me, picking through my secrets like an archaeologist at an ancient site. “You’re serious. Two days alone together? No work of any kind? Where were you thinking?”

“Portland. I want to try every coffee shop in the city, but other than that, no. No work.”

“Define ‘try.’”

“Go there and drink coffee. Not schedule meetings and study their espresso machines for efficiency and taste.”

“Can we take the ferry to Peak’s Island?”

“Peak’s what?”

“Peak’s Island! My dad took us there once when we were little.” A wistful softness makes her look so eager, more vulnerable, and oh, so appealing.

“What is it?” I’ll buy the entire island if it makes her look like that all the time.

“It’s a fun little place to go in the summer. Like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard without all the snooty rich people,” she says, catching my eye and losing that sweet face to a mortified mask.

I don’t have to say it, but I do. “You mean people like me.”

“No! NO! I didn’t. I meant people like your father.”

“That is the worst save in the history of verbal saves, Shannon. There’s nothing wrong with Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, and whatever you don’t like isn’t the fault of monolithic ‘rich people,’ which, by the way–” I gesture at her beautiful chest and, for a moment, forget my point.

“Yes?” her breasts ask.

I shake my head, just slightly. Being overcome with lust for her is still as frequent an occurrence as ever. Add breeding–er, making a baby–to the mix, and I’m essentially a baseball bat in a pair of pants these days.

“But you can’t stand your dad! I thought it would work,” she confesses.

“Wrong. Try again.” At the mention of my father, the antidote to my arousal issue is administered. Nurse Shannon couldn’t have come up with a better cure if she’d tried.

Wait.

Nurse Shannon. Shannon in a white uniform, with a front-zip top, and–

Damn it.

I pull out my phone and start texting AlcheMyAssistant as Shannon’s words die in her throat. I need the best hotel room in Portland for two nights, I text. In less than a second, the autoreply from the app kicks in.

Working now.

With a grin, I stop, then give her a quick kiss. “Settled. Plan activated.”

“You sent someone a text and they’re magically scheduling everything? Do you have a travel agent now?” The tone of relief in her voice makes it clear she thinks I should have professionals running my life.

“Something like that. But better.”

“The only thing better than a travel agent is an assistant.”

“If you say so, dear.” She shoots me a half smile, giving me a knowing look, the joke an older one.

I owe Dave big time. He, of course, can’t know that. AlcheMyAssistant is a lifesaver. Dave was right. Dave deserves a raise. Too bad Dave doesn’t care about money.

How does anyone not care about money? It’s like being asexual. I don’t understand that, either.

“If you’re fumbling your way through the dark with some new system, then that’s great,” she adds.

“Fumbling? I don’t fumble, Shannon.”

“If you say so, dear,” she sing-songs back to me. “When are we leaving?”

“Thursday. Around two. I’ll have Andrew lend us one of the planes.”

“It’s a two-hour drive to Portland, Dec. Let’s just do this the way all the poor people do and use combustion engines with rubber tires that stay on the ground.”

“Why drive when we can fly?”

“Anterdec jets aren’t yours anymore,” she points out. “You can’t assume they’re yours to use.”

“Of course I can.”

I text Andrew quickly. I need a jet for Thursday. Two p.m.

His reply is instantaneous. Have your non-assistant rent you a few hours from one of those jet shares.

Ha ha, I type back. Have the jet ready for us.

No

That’s his entire response.

Little bro has learned well. Mostly from me, because that’s the exact reply I would give him if he made a similar request.

What’s Gina’s number? I’ll arrange it with her.

I get a laughing emoji.

You need an assistant, Dec, he replies. But you need perspective more. My jet isn’t yours to use.

“You know,” I say slowly to Shannon, finding the emoji with a big middle finger that goes up and texting it back to Andrew, “let’s drive after all. It’s a pleasant route.”

“Why the sudden change of heart? And how would you know it’s pleasant? You’ve never...” Her eyes trail down to my phone. She smirks. “Andrew’s not letting you use the jet, is he?”

“What? No. He would. He will. I just changed my mind.”

“Since when have you ever chosen driving over flying?” That eyebrow quirk makes my insides scramble for a few seconds. She’s almost flirting with me. We’ve been together long enough for old habits to be filtered out, but not long enough for the dynamic between us to go boring.

“Since you told me you’re more comfortable driving.”

She beams. “You remember that?”

“Of course I do.”

A kiss is my reward. “Thank you. I know you were raised with helicopters and jets and yachts, but it’s all still too much for me sometimes. A good old-fashioned car trip isn’t just nostalgia.”

“It’s your comfort zone. Our vacation is about meeting your needs, Shannon. I want you to be happy.”

“If it’s our vacation, we should both be happy, Dec.”

“Two days alone with you will do that for me. I don’t need a stupid plane to be happy.”

She smirks. Damn. I overplayed my hand.

“Now I know Andrew refused to let you borrow the plane.”

Before I have to come up with an answer, her phone rings. More and more, her phone rings. It’s a sign of the shifting landscape. We’re husband and wife. CEO and COO. We’re equals in every way, but underneath it all, we’re still a man and a woman.

And hopefully soon, a father and mother.

Holding up one finger, Shannon shows me a newly manicured finger, her engagement ring rubbing up against the wedding band I placed on her finger two years ago. I can tell from her side of the conversation that this is a human resources issue, something involving state labor regulations.

I take the moment to text Dave.

Yes, that Dave.

Thanks for the tip about AlcheMyAssistant, I tell him. They’re managing everything.

I don’t expect an immediate reply, but I get one.

No problem, he says. Not everyone can be up to date on service apps.

It’s not about being behind, I type back quickly.

Of course not, he says.

I start to put the phone away, but it buzzes again.

He added a smirking emoji.

Son of a bitch.

Just surprised an anarcho-primitivist is so up to date on technology, I add.

I’m an anarchist. Not a Luddite. Disruptive technology for the win, he shoots back.

I’m double-thumbing my answer when Shannon breaks my concentration. “Don’t forget–dinner at Mom and Dad’s tonight.”

Demons rise up out of my blood and make noises as I abandon the text.

“That’s tonight?” they growl, disembodied and pure. Evil has a function, after all.

“Yes.” She sighs. It’s a wind tunnel straight to Hades.

“Your mom is like a tranquilizer dart in my ass. Unexpected, painful, and within a few seconds I’m drooling and unable to speak."

“At least you’re out cold in that scenario. I’m the one who has to listen to her most of the time,” Shannon shoots back.

“This isn’t a competition, Shannon. We’re both miserable around her.”

“Not every single second, Dec.”

I don’t say a word. The demon is waiting. That’s what good predators do.

“Oh, come on! Everyone has redeeming qualities,” she insists.

Silence.

“I mean, even James has some.”

I snort.

“And don’t even think you can talk your way out of it,” she says, as if I weren’t standing here with all of the forces of darkness teeming through me. “We’ve postponed twice already.”

“Where’s a nasty case of the stomach flu when you need it?” Inspiration strikes. I grab my phone and text to AlcheMyAssistant: Get me out of dinner with my in-laws.

I get a damn autoreply.

Sorry, sir, but you have reached the contractual limits of our service.

Dave was wrong. Huh.

Turns out this app can’t fix every part of my life.

---

---

The drive to my parents’ house in Mendon is an easy one once we get onto the Mass Pike, but the process of winding through the city traffic just at the beginning of rush hour is stressful. By the time we’re on the Pike and cruising along, we’re both silent. Dec is tense, but then again, he’s always tense when we go to dinner at my parents’ house.

“Mom knows,” I remind him. “One of her yoga students’ granddaughters saw me buying an ovulation predictor kit and the gossip grapevine worked.”

“I know.”

“I’m not quite sure what we’re walking into.” He knows she’s been texting me. He has no idea she’s been texting me thirty times a day, though.

“I’m sure it will be fine. Your mom has chilled out lately.”

If I were the one driving, I’d slam on the brakes right now. I openly gawk at him. “What?”

“It seems as if she’s mellowed. Is someone medicating her?”

Emotion–actual caring–comes out of his mouth.

Or at least a reasonable facsimile.

“Declan!” I sigh. “That’s not funny. It’s not kind to make fun of someone for–”

“Not making fun. Genuinely curious. She’s mellowed out.” Eyes scanning the road, he takes the journey from a position of relaxed vigilance. It’s Declan’s natural state. Ready to leap and act in an instant, he’s not anxious. Never nervous. Always present and aware, in a state of calibrated perfection. It makes me swoon inside, but I don’t mention that right now.

Because he’s being a bit jerky.

“She is texting me thirty times a day about the baby,” I blurt out. “That is the opposite of mellow.”

He tilts his head to and fro, as if weighing that information. “For Marie, that’s still restrained. I’d consider her at normal level if she tried texting me. I haven’t received a single text.”

I glare at him. “That’s because you ordered Grace to block my mother from your phone.”

“Oh. Right.”

We settle into a companionable silence, one I’m slowly getting used to. Declan is by nature intense. Not brooding or awkward. His steely presence is intimidating. He doesn’t use words to fill space or to kill time. Small talk for him is a waste unless it greases wheels and makes for a smoother journey, a means to an end.

At home, in the intimate hours, he reveals himself to me, the soft truth of a man who turns out to be more emotional than I ever imagined. The cool exterior isn’t a contradiction. Not per se. With Declan, what you see is what you get.

I, fortunately, get so much more.

Not that what you see isn’t enough. If all I had was that, I’d be thrilled. But the slow revelation of our layers, of the ragged edges of the souls we all polish on our way through life, is breathtaking. Sometimes it’s surreal. Interacting with people has its own reality. Being with Declan when we’re stripped down naked, in body and spirit, almost makes time itself ripple, like stirring the surface of water and seeing fractured realities.

We can be in bed, my ear against his chest, lulled by the steady thrum of blood through the four chambers of his heart that loves me with every fiber, and as I stroke the dusting of hair on his chest, I pause to absorb it all, every touch, every breath, the simple complexity of all the actions we took in the past to get to this moment.

Sometimes I cry.

He never expects an explanation, simply tightening his hold on me, as if he’s keeping me close so the surreal doesn’t pull me away from him into a different dimension where we aren’t together. If there is such a place as hell, that would be it.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asks, shattering my thoughts, deeply amused. His grin makes his dimples show, eyes amused and curious as he glances at me, darting his attention between maneuvering the SUV on the road and paying attention to me.

I melt.

“Just thinking about you,” I reply, the words empty and rote because what I was really doing was so heady, so impossibly evocative, like emotion had its own flavor.

“Your face changed,” he says, eyes on the road, voice controlled. “You looked otherworldly for a minute there.”

“My mind was a million miles away.”

“Past, present, or future?”

“Yes.”

Laughter, rich and open, pours out of him. “My wife, the quantum physicist.”

“No. Just in love.”

“That might very well be the same thing, Shannon.” His throat moves with a lusty strength as the words come forth. Arousal, normally a slow simmer quickening to a boil, sparks on me, lighting up my skin before moving inward. I’m ablaze, my belly tight and warm with need, my legs parting slightly as if readying.

When I meet his eyes, he doesn’t look away until forced by danger to protect us, the highway drive fast and unrelenting.

“Your face changed again,” he says in a choked, deep tone.

“How so?”

“You look like you want to climb into my lap and ride me right now, Shannon.”

I grin.

He groans.

There are no easy stops between here and my parents’ home. No fast exits until I-495, and at that point, we’re less than twenty minutes away. If it were an option, I’d beg Declan to pull the car over by the side of the road so I could do what he just described.

“Of all the times not to have a driver,” he says, voice thick with meaning, his chest rising slightly faster than before, fingers gripping the wheel. We’re turned-on, married adults who want each other but can’t do anything about it for hours.

“No one tells you about this part,” I blurt out.

“What part?”

“The part where we’re both turned on and can’t do anything about it.”

“Can’t do anything about it?”

“I mean now. Right now. This very minute.”

“Not when we’re on the Pike going seventy-three,” he says, slightly dazed. “But there’s a service plaza in Natick...”

“How would you know?”

“The sign. Back there,” he says, thumbing toward the direction we just left.

“I refuse to have sex in a service plaza, Dec.”

“I wasn’t suggesting the service plaza. The car will do.”

“Declan McCormick, are you propositioning me to have sex in our car at a service plaza on the Mass Pike? What kind of woman has sex in a car at a rest stop?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met a woman who has had sex at a rest stop.” He leers at me. “Yet.”

“You’re serious! You really want to stop?”

“Do you?”

This is a new game we’ve started to play lately, one with ill-defined rules. If I had to name it, the game would be called Who are you, really?

“I have to confess,” I say, reaching for the thick, tense heat of his right thigh, “that I know we can’t stop.”

“Right.” Tension seeps out from his clenched jaw like a snake hovering, ready to strike but unsure of the target. “We can’t.”

“We really can’t.” I move my hand up his thigh, the contrast between the thick cloth of his trousers and the coiled muscle beneath turning me on even more, my words in stark contradiction to what my hand is doing.

“Then don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Torture me like that.” For a split second, his eyes drop to my hand, but race back to the fast-paced road.

“Torture?” I croon, not moving a muscle. His breath quickens.

“I mean it, Shannon. We can’t stop.”

“There’s always Framingham,” I joke. “I know. I’m kidding. I’m sorry.” Retracting my hand feels like defeat. I lean back against the leather seat and let the headrest ground me. A long, frustrated breath does absolutely nothing to reduce my unquenchable need.

He laughs.

Laughs!

“What’s so funny?”

“You. Us. This.”

“This? What is this?”

“You’re right. No one warns you what it’ll be like when you’re with someone forever. I’ve never even heard of a couple in a situation like this. We have all the time in the world in regular life, but a simple drive to your parents’ house and we’re suddenly revving–with nowhere to go.”

“It’s crazy.”

“It’s life. And yet,” he says, slowing slightly as he gets into the middle lane, the Framingham service plaza now here and... gone. “And yet knowing you want me so much, even in daily life, in the middle of the most domestic, humdrum parts of our existence, feels like we’re cheating the universe.”

“Cheating?”

“Yes. Cheating. Not in the classic sense. We haven’t done anything wrong, or hurt someone else on the way to this kind of relationship. More that what I get from you, Shannon, is unearned. I feel like I’ve been handed the best deal of my life without having to work for it.”

“Why would you ever have to work for love?” I ask.

He just blinks. Over and over.

The silence stretches on for so long, I start to worry. Have I offended him somehow? That’s my go-to. When it gets awkward, I start inventorying all the ways it might be my fault.

“We do,” he says slowly, the blinking slowing down like his words. “We do work for love. We work damn hard for it.”

“We work to get along, sure. To make sure it’s all fair. To make sure the other feels wanted and needed and important. But the love itself doesn’t require that we work for it. I love you, Declan. I just do. You get my love by being you.”

More blinking.

“Dec?” I ask softly.

“I’m thinking.” He looks more like he’s feeling. The art of learning when to continue prying and when to back off is one that is subtle and not easy to perfect. I figure that’s the point of half a century with someone: by the time you understand them so intuitively that you’re a pro, you find relationship nirvana.

And then they die.

Wait. Hold on. Now I’m crying.

“Shannon? What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to die some day.”

“You just leapfrogged from how you love me because I’m just me to thinking about my death?”

“Yes.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

“You can’t die.”

“I... wish I could control that.”

“I mean it!”

“I know you do,” he says, taking his hand off the steering wheel and patting my knee. His double take as he looks at me just fuels more tears. “Are you crying?”

“You’re going to die!”

“A minute ago you were ready to have sex with me in a service plaza, Shannon, and now I’m going to die. You’re going to die, too. We all die one day.”

“And that isn’t faaaaaaaiiiiiiiiir,” I wail.

His sigh is so familiar.

As Declan calmly flips on the turn signal and moves the car onto the exit ramp, I try not to succumb to the chest-cracking feeling that won’t let go of me. Without thinking, I move my hand to my belly, wondering. It’s too early to know, and it’s only day fifteen of my cycle. Why am I suddenly obsessed with Declan dying?

Wiping my tears carefully with my pinkie fingers, making sure my mascara doesn’t run, I sniff and say, “I know I’m being ridiculous, but we don’t have each other forever.”

“We’ve talked about this before,” he says kindly, turning right onto the familiar road that takes us home.

Er, to my parents’ house, I mean.

“Yes. Just because we talk about something once doesn’t mean it’s magically resolved.”

“You’ve taught me that lesson quite well, honey.”

I whack his shoulder.

He gives me a half grin, complete with dimples. I wonder what those dimples will look like on our child.

My fingers tickle my belly.

But I can’t help myself, laughing through the tail end of my strange tears. “You make my life so much easier yet oh, so much harder, Declan McCormick.”

“How so, Shannon McCormick?” All the pieces of my childhood rush past me in a blur as we drive the last half mile to my parents’ house.

“If you think I am going to sit here and list it all, you’re crazy.”

“You’ll have to show me, then.” I love the smile on his face as we pull into Mom and Dad’s driveway.

It fades quickly as Mom appears.

“Shannon!” Her eyes go straight to my midsection. “You look great!” Her hug is simultaneously a rote ritual and a fleeting pleasure. “Declan, don’t you think you’re getting out of yours!” she calls out to him as he makes it to the second step on their front porch. Pivoting, he comes back and lets her reach up around his neck, planting a kiss on the side of his cheek.

She leaves a bright red lip imprint.

“Jason’s out back, tinkering in his man cave. Carol and the boys just got here. How are you feeling?” she asks me.

“Fine,” I say, a little confused. “And you?”

“I’m not the one who’s trying to have morning sickness,” she says, nudging me with her elbow. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

“I’m going to say hi to Jason,” Declan says as he demonstrates his Olympic-level sprinting technique.

“Once they removed my uterus, I never had to worry about getting pregnant again,” Mom continues.

“That’s generally a guaranteed outcome, Mom.”

“At least they left the cervix. Because sex would feel really different if I didn’t have–”

“Mom. Stop.” I hold my hand over my belly.

“You are pregnant! I knew it! Your face just turned green!”

“No. I’m not pregnant. I’m just nauseated.”

“Morning sickness!”

“You are just making me sick to my stomach. Stop talking about Dad and sex.”

“That’s how babies are made, you know.”

Carol saves me. “Mom, boundaries.” The way she says it is so fierce and clipped, like she’s borrowed from dog obedience trainers. Carol the Mom Whisperer.

It works. Mom straightens her spine and gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry.” A sniff in the air and panic blooms across her face. “My popovers!” she squeals, running down the same hallway Declan departed through.

“What was that?” I ask Carol, impressed. “I’ve never seen anyone stop her like that.”

“Dad and I are working on it. Operant conditioning.”

“Like Pavlov and the dog and the bell?”

“Like the Terminator and the crusher machine.”

I want to ask her how she did that–voodoo? Did she go to Salem and join a modern coven? But before I can, Carol gives me a great big hug, one that’s a little extra tight. “You okay? Sure you can handle this?” she whispers. I melt a little, relieved. Big sisters are the best when you’re hurting, even if it’s just a little scratch in the big picture of a really great life.

“I’m good. We’re young. We have plenty of time.”

“I wish my freakish fertility had rubbed off on you. All Todd had to do was blow a kiss my way and bam! Ovaries turned my eggs into a rock slide aimed for his sperm.”

“That fast?”

“Pretty sure I was pregnant before the first bedspring squeak.”

“Thanks for that image, Carol.”

“At least I’m not as bad as Mom. Nothing like finding out I’m named after where I was conceived.”

“South Carolina? North Carolina?” My mind races on to complete all the computational possibilities involved in the name Shannon. I know they’ve never been to Ireland, so...

“No. Against a brick wall in an alley after they went Christmas caroling.”

“Ew! How do you... know this?”

“Have you met our mother?”

“Please don’t tell me Shannon has some hidden meaning involving Mom and Dad’s warped sex life?”

“Not that I’m aware of. You know. First Pancake Syndrome.”

“First what?”

“First Pancake Syndrome. You know how the first one you make is always a mess because it’s the one you experiment on? You get the oil in the pan just right, the temperature perfect, but that first pancake is always the one you calibrate against?”

“Sure...”

“Oldest children are First Pancakes. We’re the ones who get all the attention, but we also get to experience the highest percentage of parenting mistakes.”

“What about middle kids?”

“You benefit from the fact that we are the test subjects. You get parents who know what they’re doing, but we broke them in for you.”

“And the baby?” We both turn and look at Amy, who is sitting at the kitchen table, doing her nails. Thick red nail polish slides easily off the brush onto her middle finger as my nephew Tyler watches, enraptured.

“They’re the spoiled little brats.”

“Mom and Dad let her get away with everything,” I concur.

“And she’s got the gorgeous auburn hair and Dad’s eyes. It’s like the genetic lottery gave her some super advantage,” Carol says, echoing my thoughts.

“Why can’t we just skip straight to having third children? I don’t want to make a bunch of mistakes with my first, and then be exhausted for my second.”

“You guys want three kids?”

I laugh. “I don’t know. Getting pregnant with one would be a good start. I think we’ll have them one at a time and stop when we’re done.”

“Unless you have twins.”

My ovaries seize. “One at a time.”

Jeffrey walks up to me, his face a smile of surprise. “I didn’t know you and Declan were coming!” As he hugs me, I bend down and sniff his hair, a habit from long ago when he was a baby and I huffed his little head. At eleven, he’s closing in on me height-wise, and his hair smells exactly like you’d imagine an obliviously under-showered tween boy’s head would smell.

I smile anyhow. And breathe through my mouth.

He turns away suddenly.

“Where are you going?” I call out.

“To Grandpa’s cave. I’ll bet Declan’s in there, too. We men have to stick together.”

A pained expression crosses Carol’s face, fleeting and deeply emotional. She catches herself and reins it in, but it triggers something in me, a pang I don’t quite understand.

“Carol?”

“Men. We men. He’s so close, Shannon. On his way to being a man. I can’t believe my babies are this big. I still feel like I’m parenting without instructions, but add in the whole male factor, and it’s like parenting in Chinese when I speak Farsi.”

I wrap one arm around her in a half hug. “Don’t make me dab my eyes again.”

“Again? You were crying?”

“On the drive here.”

“Why?”

“Because Declan is going to die.”

Her gasp of shock fills me with insta-guilt. “No, no, it’s not like that. He’s fine. Declan is fine,” I assure her.

Carol turns and gives me a half-glare, half-terrified expression, hand over her heart. “Then what the hell does that mean? Why would you say he’s going to die?”

“We had a talk on the drive here, and I told him it isn’t fair that we’re going to die one day. He’ll probably go before me. He’s older.”

“You two are so weird. Why would you talk about dying like that?”

“Because it scares me.”

“Everyone dies.”

“I know. He said that, too. But I don’t know, you know?”

“There are too many knows in there, Shannon. What are you saying?”

“I love him too much to think about living without him.”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I can’t say I know how you feel, but I understand. I want to feel that way about someone.” Her voice moves into whisper territory. “For someone to feel that way about me. I’m sorry. But I’m also envious.”

“Envious?”

“You have this incredible bond with him. And you want to think of that bond as lasting forever.” She looks at my belly.

“I do.”

“Hold on to that. You’ll need it.”

“For what?”

“For when it’s three a.m., the baby wakes you up for the ninth time, and you’re nursing in bed and the breast the baby’s not attached to starts leaking everywhere. Then the baby pees through his diaper and you try to wake Declan up, but he snores through the giant wet spot all that creates, and all you want is a glass of water and five minutes of not being a chew toy and milk machine.”

“You have a way of of taking beautiful emotions and turning them into public service announcements.”

“I should work for an advertising agency, shouldn’t I?”

“Or a condom company.”

My eight-year-old nephew, Tyler, runs past us in a panic. “Make it stop! Make it stop!” as a strange sound, like jingle bells, gets louder, coming from the back of the house near the kitchen.

“Hi Ty–”

“Help! Make it stop!” he screams, his words turning into a blood-curdling wail as I hear him thump up the stairs, a door slamming.

“What on earth?” I ask Carol, completely bewildered.

She closes her eyes and sighs deeply. “Puddles,” is all she says.

“Tyler’s developed anxiety about puddles?” Tyler has a neurological language disorder called apraxia, but he also has a high level of anxiety about everyday things. According to his therapists, the two can go hand in hand. Without having the language to explain his feelings, he pitches into a deeply fearful world, so little issues that roll off the average person’s back turn Tyler into a terrified kid.

“No, not puddles, thankfully. I keep forgetting. Mom changed the name. It’s Chuffy now.”

A tiny puppy, all white with pink bows behind her ears, runs past us.

Carol points. “Puddles–er... Chuffy.”

“CHUFFY!” Mom calls out as she comes from the kitchen, her voice high and sickly sweet. “Chuffy-wuffy!”

“Mom and Dad got a dog?” I ask Carol as Mom squeezes by. We really shouldn’t hang out in the hallway, blocking everyone, but then again, you could throw a party for thirty people in a five-thousand-square-foot house and everyone would congregate in the kitchen. We’re avoiding Mom, so the hallway is second best.

“Yes!” Mom answers for her. “And it’s all your fault.”

“My fault?” I squeak.

“You and Declan. All this baby talk makes me miss having someone to nurture.”

“Hey! What am I? Chopped liver?” Dad calls out from the kitchen. I turn and see him holding a plate of steaks and burgers, wearing a grilling apron. Behind him, out the patio door, Declan’s standing next to the grill, chugging a beer in a green bottle, free hand on his hip, casual.

“You don’t count,” Mom sniffs, curling around the banister to walk upstairs.

Tyler is screaming, “GO AWAY, DOGGIE!”

“Mom, please,” Carol begs. “Just grab Chuffy and we’ll work on helping Tyler to desensitize later.”

“Okay,” Mom replies, her simple answer heartbreaking. Mom’s normally the type to try to convince people that if she likes something, they’ll like it–no matter what. With Tyler, the whole family has come together to make sure he gets what he needs, even if it means overriding instinct.

Or, in Mom’s case, personality issues you would think can’t be changed.

Funny how children make you reconsider everything, even who you are and how you define yourself.

Especially who you are and how you define yourself.

“Grandma, I don’t want the doggie!” Tyler shouts from upstairs, making it clear Mom found him. Soothing tones come down the stairs, Mom’s exact words impossible to hear, but the emotion is obvious. She’s calming him down, allaying fears, and doing exactly what we adults are supposed to do:

Lead by example.

“How does she know?” I say aloud, Carol giving me a puzzled look.

“Know what?”

“How to do all this. Mom and Dad raised us. They’re wonderful grandparents to Jeffrey and Tyler. They help you all the time. They’re patient–”

“Don’t mythologize them, Shannon. They weren’t perfect parents raising us.”

“I know they weren’t. Trust me. But they just–act. They do. They always turn toward giving their kids and grandkids attention and love. It might not be what we need, but they’re always giving. And with Tyler, they’ve adjusted so much, kept themselves open to learning.”

“That’s true,” she admits. “I don’t think Tyler would be where he is without their help.”

“So how do they know? Is it some parental instinct that kicks in when you have a child? Like, is there some hormone that’s triggered along with oxytocin when it’s time for the baby to be born? Do we get an injection of a chemical you don’t have until you give birth?”

“That doesn’t make sense for the man, Shannon. Or for adoptive parents.”

“Then what? How do you know how to parent?”

“We’re all winging it.”

“I don’t believe it. It’s too much responsibility to rest on just ‘winging it.’” Carol looks over toward the stairs, her face so much like Mom’s. I know she’s making an important decision: let Mom take care of Tyler, or go and be his mommy. Sometimes we have to let people we love conquer their fears, even if it’s inelegant.

Maybe I should apply that to myself.

In the end, which really only involves a few seconds, Carol decides to let Tyler come to terms with this with Mom’s help. We walk through the kitchen and out into the backyard, where Jeffrey’s on a lounge chair, face stuffed in a sci-fi novel, and Declan is “helping” Dad grill. And by “helping,” I mean lightening Dad’s beer stash.

Mom comes out, holding Chuffy, who is neatly groomed. He’s a bichon frise, a little white cloud of an animal, and her nose strains to smell me, pink tongue out and moving eagerly.

“When did you get Chuffy? And a purebred, at that?” I ask, shooting Dad a look.

He shrugs. “The humane society had a whole litter come in. Found them in an abandoned home. The mama died.”

Sudden tears prick the backs of my eyeballs as I reach for the dog. “Poor baby.”

“She’s the runt. Small for a bichon.”

“She’s my baby!” Mom cries, kissing her head before handing her over.

“It’s bad enough to be replaced by Chuckles, but now I’m fifth in line for Mom’s love,” Amy cracks as she walks out from the kitchen. But she’s laughing.

Mostly.

“My fur babies will never replace my human babies, but I have more than enough love for all of you,” Mom says emphatically.

“Try being sixth in that line,” Dad says under his breath.

“What, Jason?” Mom looks at him as if she’s just discovered he’s here. “Did you say something?”

“No, dear.” Dad turns to Declan with a sad smile. “Take notes, buddy. This is what it’s like once you have kids.” He brushes past me and heads to the kitchen counter, eyes downcast.

Is that a third beer Dec’s opening? I start to walk toward him to rescue my husband from himself when I get a creepy feeling.

I look at my mom.

Because that creepy feeling means that the first person I should look at is my mom.

As usual, instincts are hardwired into us for a reason. Her eyes are glued to my midsection.

“Quit staring at my belly!” I shout at Mom. Dad gives me a guilty look and suddenly becomes very interested in re-arranging grill utensils.

“Sorry! It’s just... it looks a little bigger.” Mom winks at me.

“That’s not from a baby. That’s from lunch. It’s a burrito baby. I’m not pregnant.” Yet.

“We’re just so excited! We haven’t had a baby in the family since Tyler!” Tyler just turned eight. Mom loves babies, but my father adores them.

“We’d love another grandchild,” he says, giving me a quick hug. “Whenever you’re ready. No one has to produce children on anyone else’s timetable.”

Mom looks at him like Where did the alien come from? “Of course it’s their choice. But they’ve chosen! Now we wait. This is just like Droughtlander.”

“You’re comparing my... our... getting pregnant to a television show?” The two of them are blocking me from Declan, who looks like he’s trying to figure out how to escape through the fence using a bottle cap and grill tongs.

“Both involve groups of people making a great product,” Mom starts. “Both involve a long wait. Both involve production elements out of my control. Both involve–”

“Groups?” Dad chokes out. “Last time I checked–and to be fair, it’s been however many years since Amy was conceived–but I’m pretty sure making a baby doesn’t involve a group.”

“Only if you need reproductive technology to help,” I mutter.

“What?” he asks.

“You know. Reproductive technology. Sperm washing and in vitro fertilization, Dad. For some couples, you do need a group. A medical group.”

“Why would you need that?” His perplexed look changes to alarm. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry. Do you two need help?” His voice drops to a whisper.

Declan’s turn to be alarmed. “No, no,” he declares. “We just need time.” Our eyes meet and he telepathically tells me, And to get the hell out of here.

“And sex,” Mom adds helpfully. “Lots and lots of sex.”

“We managed to figure that part out on our own, Marie,” Declan says tightly.

My dad turns pink and ends all eye contact with Declan. “Okay, then. So, how about those Pats?” It’s the off season. The Pats aren’t playing yet, but Declan gets the point.

“See the Sox game?”

“Cora’s killing it.” Dad leads Declan to the man cave before my ears bleed, just as Tyler comes into the yard, eyes tracking Chuffy with vigilance.

“We need to get you a tube of this new stretch mark cream one of my students makes. It has a specially imported Chinese root vegetable that helps skin regrow,” Mom whispers to me.

“Mom, the last time I used something one of your students made, I ended up with a chemical burn on my lips.”

“That’s because she got a bad batch imported from Russia. And don’t worry, honey. I can barely see the scar.”

“Stretch marks? Have you seen mine? They look like giant dehydrated worms attached to my body.” Carol starts plucking at the fabric of her shirt, right over her belly button. She’s pulling little balls of lint off her sweater, but my mind turns them into nightcrawlers. I hold back a gag.

“I’ve seen your belly. The stretch marks aren’t that bad,” I counter.

“Remember that old ‘80s movie Dad likes? Tremors? My belly is basically nothing but those. Oversized worms.”

“You’re comparing the beauty of pregnancy and birth with that? Come on.”

“Shannon, making babies is closer to horror than art.”

“Oh, please.”

She snorts. “You know those old ‘Chucky the doll’ movies Dad loves, too? You know a parent made that series. Guaranteed. A raging, homicidal toddler-sized being? Believable. All it took to get Jeffrey to that point when he was three years old was giving him juice in a green cup instead of blue. Or God forbid if I took him through the bank drive-thru window and they were out of lime-flavored lollipops. Chucky was modeled entirely on a little boy in New Jersey who didn’t get the right toy in a Happy Meal, I’ll bet.”

“You’re comparing a horror movie character who killed people to a precious child?” I had no idea my own sister was so jaded. I know our child won't be like she's describing.

“Seems reasonable,” Dad says, unsolicited, popping back in to grab a bowl of chips and two sodas. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dec lazily kicking a soccer ball back and forth with Tyler in the backyard.

“I used to wonder if Amy was like that child in the Gregory Peck movie,” Mom adds.

“You mean Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird?” I ask, my fingers fluttering to my heart as I choke up with touched emotion. "Aww."

“No," Mom replies swiftly. "Damien. In The Omen.”

“Mom!” Amy gasps. “You’re so paying for that.”

“See?” Mom shrugs.

“How about we eat?” I say faintly. It’s not as if I have an appetite. We just need to fill Mom’s mouth so she can’t keep talking.

“TYLER! JEFFREY!” Carol screams. “Time to eat!”

“We’re right here, Mom,” Jeffrey says. She turns to her left, looks down, and laughs.

“You’re two feet from me.”

“Your memory is as bad as Grandma’s,” he says, shoving earbuds back in, his eyes tracking the words on the page.

“Sure you want kids?” she asks me dryly. “I’ve got a preteen I’ll rent to you half time. No charge.”

“I’d take him in a heartbeat.”

One corner of Jeffrey’s mouth twitches. He heard me.

A confident, warm hand wraps around my waist, fingers playing at my hip. “Hey,” Dec says, smiling at Carol. “I see it’s life as usual here. How’s work?”

“I work for your brother. You really think I’m going to answer that question honestly?”

“If you do, I’ll like you even more,” he says with a smile.

“It’s good. Amanda’s securing a huge new contract for assisted living communities. We’re about to hire a ton of senior citizens for shopper assignments.”

I groan on her behalf. “I’m so sorry.”

Declan frowns, giving me a bemused look. “Why sorry?”

“Old people are the worst to deal with when it comes to customer service evaluation,” I start to explain, but Carol cuts me off with an air of authority I’m used to experiencing as her little sister, but not when it comes to mystery shopping.

“They’re great for timeliness, details and observation, and analysis. But they’re awful when it comes to tech.”

“Tech?” Dec asks.

“You know. Using computers and apps to deliver the questionnaires, pictures, video.”

“Secret shoppers do all that? Video?”

“I was videotaping you when we met in the men’s room of that bagel store Anterdec owned,” I tell him, squeezing his hip nice and hard.

“No, you weren’t. You dropped the phone in the toilet.”

“No. Before that,” I tease.

“Before that, I was using a urinal.”

Intrigued shock changes his features. Normally, he wouldn’t be quite so loose in front of my sister, but the beer and the less-pressured conversation–with Mom over by the food, plating for the kids–lets Declan open up more.

“You took videos of men peeing?”

Carol catches my eye. In that nonverbal way sisters have, she agrees to jump in on the joke. “Oh, sure. It’s a thing. We help urinal designers with ergonomics.”

Dec sets his beer down and crosses his arms over his chest, settling in for one of our conversations. And by “our,” I mean weird. “Urinal ergonomics? Tell me more.”

Caught off guard, Carol quickly recovers, improvising on the spot. “It’s one of those design elements most companies don’t talk about.”

“This is top secret? Your customers have you sign an NDA about...”

“Arcs,” she says, as if that’s self-explanatory.

“Arcs?”

“Yes. It’s a complex physics issue. We even work with fluid engineers to maximize customer experience, cleanliness, and speed.” Carol may not have a college degree, but she earned her Ph.D. in Bullshit a long, long time ago.

“Fluid engineers?”

“Sure. Ocean and water specialists. You’d be amazed how you can apply calculus to, um,” her hands go up in front of her face, mimicking moving water. “Currents. Fluid dynamics.”

“You’re telling me that companies hire mystery shoppers to take videos of men peeing at urinals to analyze the urine arc, turn that data over to fluid engineers, and they apply it to urinal ergonomics?”

“Um, yep.”

“And the point of the ergonomics?”

“To lower splash rates, urinal-cake hygiene issues. You know. The standard.”

“The standard. There are standard urinal-cake hygiene issues?” Dec grills her.

She looks him right in the eye and lies. “The scent of the urinal cake affects trajectory.”

“Really? I’m fascinated. I assume there are scents to avoid? Scents that perform better?”

She shoots me a help me out here look.

And this is the moment I remember she wouldn’t let me go to Six Flags with her and her friends when they were in high school and had room in the borrowed minivan they took to Agawam for the day. It’s been nearly fifteen years, but now it’s payback time.

“Carol,” I say, her face relieved by the interruption. “Tell Dec all about the fascinating report you received from the Urinal Aromatherapy Team.” I nudge Dec. “This could change lives.”

We wait.

“Actually,” she says slowly, “the researchers thought that female perfume would help men to aim better.”

“It doesn’t?” Declan asks.

“No.”

“What does?”

“Having another man in the urinal next to you.”

“Really?” His voice drops.

“It seems to trigger competition.”

“Then if Declan and Andrew are peeing next to each other, I’ll bet their error rate is zero,” I crack.

Dec’s about to protest when Carol adds:

“Unless he’s a comparer.”

Declan shudders.

My turn to be confused. “A comparer?”

A long, disgusted sigh comes out of Declan, so relaxed and weirdly real, I find it surprising. “Comparers. The guys who look over while you’re peeing.”

“That’s a thing?”

Carol looks like the cat who ate the canary. I know she pulled that out of her ass, but she hit the jackpot.

“Right. They have the worst aim.”

“Makes sense,” Dec says, quickly morphing from a skeptic into someone who is literally falling into her lies like a lemming jumping off a cliff. Who is this guy?

“And coffee scents are ideal. Best flow rate, low splash, the whole bit. Speaking of coffee, how is your coffee chain going, you two?” She beams at Declan. “I want to hear all about it!”

“Nice pivot,” he compliments her. Okay. Whew. I didn’t marry a lemming.

“What pivot?” She bats her eyelashes furiously.

“Whatever my brother’s paying you, it isn’t enough.”

“Damn straight,” she says as Dad herds us to the food table. Tyler’s calmer now, Chuffy is in a little cage, sleeping on a dog bed, and Jeffrey looks like someone who’s been without food for seven days, two large steak bones littering his plate, digging into a third.

“Hollow leg stage, huh?” Declan says to him.

“I’m hungry all the time. Mom says it’s hormones and growth.”

“Like being pregnant,” Mom chirps.

“Uh, Grandma?” Jeffrey slowly lowers his fork. “You do know I can’t get pregnant, right? Maybe they didn’t have sex ed back when you went to school, but that’s not possible.” He gives my dad an alarmed look. “You guys do know men can’t get pregnant, right? Not even from anal sex.”

“JEFFREY!” Carol shouts, setting down her fork with a queasy look.

“What? It’s true. I’m just being factual, Mom. You told me that any time someone at school said something that is wrong about sex, I should arm them with the facts.”

“Anyone armed with anti-nausea medication?” Dad mutters.

“This isn’t school!” Carol shouts. Mom covers Carol’s hand in a gesture that says, I got this.

“Sweetie, I know men can’t get pregnant,” Mom says kindly to her grandson. “And women can’t, either, from anal sex.”

“MARIE!” Dad bellows.

“MOM!” Carol snatches her hand back like it’s contaminated.

“What?” Mom gives us all an ingenuous look. “It’s true. I’m just being factual.”

“Are you sure we want to have kids?” I whisper in Declan’s ear.

“Yes,” he whispers back, drinking more beer.

“Whew.”

“But I’m not sure I want to have a mother-in-law.”