“Your ex. The surgeon.”
I blew a long breath. “Well, at first he didn’t want to get married. He’d been married once before, and he didn’t want to do it again. Then he did start talking about it, and I didn’t want to marry him.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “The relationship wasn’t good at that point. I think he just wanted to marry me to keep me. He could tell I was unhappy.”
I hadn’t told Daniel much about Neil. He didn’t even know Neil was living in my basement. There was no point in getting into it. This relationship was temporary anyway. Daniel wasn’t my boyfriend, and Neil was less than a roommate and more of a squatter living in a different apartment in the same building, as far as I was concerned.
“Do you want to get married?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Kids?”
“I’d like to have kids. Do you? Want to get married and have kids?”
“Yes.”
He was looking at me through his sunglasses, so I couldn’t really see the expression on his face.
It occurred to me that we were talking about things that the two of us would do with someone else one day. If I ever did find a suitable man who my dad wouldn’t hate, I’d have to fast-track everything. Married quick, kids quick. My biological clock was ticking. I might even have difficulty getting pregnant if I started right now, today. At thirty-seven, I was already considered of an “advanced maternal age.” Even thinking those words made me feel ancient.
Daniel wouldn’t have a hard time at all finding someone to marry and have kids with. He had his whole life ahead of him. He could find some twenty-five-year-old who he could take his time with. Wait a few years to start having a family.
We sat there, quietly looking at each other, holding hands.
Daniel.
What a great daddy he’d be. And a good husband. So good. And he was so gifted.
I’d been watching him finish these woodworking pieces for the last three months, and I was completely in awe of him. There was magic in his hands. He could see a piece of wood and transform it into something that felt like what it was always meant to be. I’d watched him create stunning one-of-a-kind headboards, a gorgeous lightning strike–inspired tabletop that he hollowed out in the middle and then charred along the edges before he filled the center with resin so the crack was flat and clear. He had this twisted, gnarled stump that Doug gave him that I would have thought was nothing but firewood, and he used it as the base for a coffee table where he inlaid different wood to create a mosaic pattern. He was starting to get noticed on Instagram too, now that I’d taught him how to use hashtags. His last post had over two thousand likes.
There was a bittersweet feeling knowing that I’d never see Daniel become the rest of himself. He was just starting to turn into the man he’d become, and I wanted to be there for it. I wanted to help him and support him.
But I wouldn’t get to.
Everything about this made my heart hurt.
I had the weirdest urge to climb onto his tube and let him hold me. But it would be too heavy. The tube would sink. We’d end up underwater.
Liz shrieked from behind us and Doug let out a loud laugh. We looked just in time to see Brian splash them, and Daniel and I smiled at the trio.
“How long have they lived here?” I asked, nodding at his friends.
The fingers on his free hands trailed in the water, making little wakes. “My whole life. Liz grew up in South Dakota, but she came here every summer with our cousin Josh and all his sisters. The guys were born here. We grew up together. Literally. They were even with me the day my grandparents died.”
“How did they die?”
He peered out over the river. “Grandpa had a heart attack, and Grandma went later that day.”
“The same day?”
“Yeah. It didn’t really surprise anyone. I always knew it would happen that way. They were inseparable.” He looked at me. “Neither one could live without the other.”
I looked away from him, back at the slowly passing shoreline.
“You know, you really can die of a broken heart,” I said somewhat absently. “I see it all the time. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy. It’s a real thing.”
He paused for a long moment. “I know.”
We rounded an elbow in the river, and the sun slipped behind a cloud. It got instantly dark. A hard wind rustled the trees, and I shivered a bit. “It’s not supposed to rain today, right?”
Daniel looked at the sky and shook his head. “No.”