Chapter 2

Our life found a rhythm. Not a perfect one, but something like predictable. The boys adored Aimee; even Beth had stopped trying to figure out why they’d nicknamed her Cookie Lady. Aimee picked them up from preschool around 2:00 (except Fridays when she had a practicum), took them to the park or the library or just let them decompress on the couch until one of us got home.

Beth got back earlier on most days — her dental office was ten minutes away. My commute from the DOT office in Concord was closer to forty on a good day. So it wasn’t unusual that I went multiple days without more than a wave at Aimee through the windshield as she headed back toward campus.

And that was fine. Good. Sensible.

Three weeks after she started, a Tuesday rainstorm chewed up the Seacoast and worked its way inland. I cut out after a project review and told myself it was just the weather, just exhaustion, just a day that would be easier if I went home.

But the truth sat there too, unblinking: I wanted to see her.

When I stepped inside, the house smelled like wet leaves and peanut butter crackers. Aimee was on the couch, legs curled under her, Jake asleep with his head in her lap. Ethan was out cold in my recliner, thumb still in his mouth. Bluey murmured from the TV. Aimee didn’t hear me at first — she was rubbing slow circles on Jake’s back, half-watching the screen, half somewhere else.

There was something disarming about how she looked just then — hair pulled up haphazardly, a loose college sweatshirt, bare knees peeking from under a throw blanket. Not sexy, exactly. Just ... unguarded. And somehow that was worse.

For a moment I just stood there, not wanting to break whatever gentle spell I’d walked in on.

“Hey,” I said quietly.

She startled, but only a little. “Jim — you’re home early.”

“Rained out,” I said, shrugging off my jacket. “How were they today?”

“Sticky,” she said, smiling. “Good sticky, though.”

I nodded, my throat doing that odd, traitorous tightening it had started doing around her. I glanced at the boys again, then at the window, where the rain streaked down the glass.

“You don’t have to rush out,” I said. “Storm’s still going. You could stay until Beth gets home.”

She hesitated — just long enough for me to wonder if I’d misread something. Then she nodded and gently shifted Jake’s head onto a pillow.

“Okay,” she said.

In the kitchen, I opened the fridge without thinking. “Beer?”

I regretted it instantly. Too loaded, too cliche, too whatever this was.

To my surprise, she didn’t refuse. She just tilted her head and said, “Aren’t I supposed to be the responsible one?”

“Beth won’t be home for a bit,” I said, then immediately wished I hadn’t.

Aimee smiled — not flirty exactly, just ... knowing. “Then just one.”

I popped the tops and handed her one. “I won’t tell Beth, promise.”

She grinned back at me. “I suppose you won’t. You never told her how we met, after all.”

I chuckled. “She never would have hired you if she knew you were responsible for the Chips Ahoy.”

We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, each with a Sam Adams Octoberfest, condensation pooling on the wood between us. It felt strangely like a first date, despite everything that made that impossible.

“So, what exactly does a transportation engineer do?” she asked.

“Mostly take the blame for traffic,” I said. “The rest is convincing computers to predict behavior humans barely understand in themselves.”

She laughed — head back, eyes bright — and it caught me low in the gut in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be looked at like that — like I was still someone with heat in him.

I told her about traffic models and plows and the long stretch of I-89 that liked to freeze before the sensors caught it. She told me about growing up in Maine, switching majors, not being sure she wanted to be a person who always knew the answer.

“So how’d you and Beth meet?” she asked eventually.

I laughed once, softly. “At her dental office. I asked her out between fluoride treatments. Very romantic.”

“Was she dating anyone then?”

I remembered the woman in the waiting room, leaning into Beth’s shoulder, laughing softly. I remembered not knowing if I should hope.

“She had a girlfriend,” I said. “For a little while.”

Aimee absorbed that without comment, just a small nod.

I didn’t know why I kept talking, except that it had been a long time since someone looked at me like they actually wanted to hear the answers.

“We were good for a long time,” I said, tracing the label on my bottle. “Then kids, then schedules ... and I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like we’re roommates sharing a mortgage.”

I regretted it the second it left my mouth. I wasn’t supposed to say those things. Not to someone who made my pulse behave like it had just remembered a language it used to speak.

Before Aimee could respond, I heard small feet in the hallway.

“Daddy.”

Ethan appeared, hair static-wild, eyes still foggy with sleep. I pulled him into my lap, his face pressed into my shirt, and when I looked back at Aimee, she was already standing.

“I should go,” she said softly. “Before I forget this is your real life.”

Something in me lurched at that.

She reached for her bag, then paused. “Hey — if plans change with the boys, do you want me to text you instead of calling Beth during work? I hate interrupting her with patients.”

It was a reasonable question. Entirely reasonable.

I still felt my pulse skip.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling a card from my wallet and writing my cell on the back. “Call or text. Whatever’s easier.”

She took it with a small, unreadable smile.

“See you next time, Jim.”

And then she was gone, and the house felt too quiet, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to apologize or go chase the taillights of that red Honda down the street.

Beth was thrilled to hear that I’d given my number to Aimee. The thought that I (or Aimee) might have ulterior motives never crossed her mind.

As we cleaned up the dishes, Beth dried her hands on a towel and said, almost to herself, “She’s good with them. There’s this way she sees them when they talk. Most people don’t really listen to kids — not all the way.”

She didn’t look at me when she said it. I assumed she was just grateful for the help. I didn’t hear the rest of it — the part her voice didn’t say out loud.

“But I’m glad she has your number now too, Jim. This way I won’t have to worry about getting calls and leaving my patients in the chair. I really appreciate that,” she said, kissing me on the lips as we finished tidying up the kitchen.

And apparently, she really did appreciate it. We had sex later that night for the first time in a few months. It was familiar, almost scripted. The same position, the same rhythm, the lights off, our voices quiet so we wouldn’t wake the boys. Not bad — just small. Like a song we used to love and now mostly remember.