Sarah and Eli had looked at each other. Then Eli had smiled, and Sarah had shrugged, and somehow, she’d ended up walking six blocks to their apartment, where Eli had, indeed, made her a grilled cheese （“With sweet pickle slices on the side!” Ruby insisted）。 Sarah offered to take him out for coffee during Ruby’s next lessons, and those coffees became a regular fixture of his Tuesday afternoons. After the fourth one, Sarah asked if he wanted to get dinner. Regretfully, Eli had explained the situation, stumbling through what sounded even to his ears like an excuse, concluding with, “If I was going to date anyone, it would absolutely be you.”
Sarah had listened to this recitation with her face expressionless before sitting back, her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed over her chest. “So you’re not going to date until Ruby’s, what, in college? In ten years?”
Eli didn’t answer because he couldn’t imagine Ruby being in college, or Ruby growing up and leaving him. Then again, he’d never been able to picture Annette walking out on a baby, and she had, which showed the limits of his imagination. Ruby would leave, someday, and then where would he be? Almost fifty. Still alone.
“I like you,” Sarah said. “I like that you’re so concerned about Ruby’s happiness. And I definitely don’t want to do anything to hurt her. But I know there are single parents who date, and the kids manage to get through it. And it’s just dinner,” she said with a smile. “We’re not pledging our lives to each other or anything.” She looked at him, her heart-shaped face open and expectant. “We could try. If you want to.”
He decided that he did.
Right away, Eli had seen a future with Sarah. Even though she was twelve years younger than he was, Sarah was an old soul, grounded and practical and unusually mature, ready to start a family and buy a home. She was also, it emerged, financially equipped to do so in a way few of her contemporaries （or his） were, although Eli didn’t find that out until after he’d proposed and Sarah had consented, and then, a little shyly, asked if he would be okay with a prenup.
“Sure,” he’d said. Then, belatedly, “Why?” That was when he found out that Sarah’s mother wasn’t just an English professor. She’d been a bestselling novelist who’d had a book turned into a movie, and then a miniseries, back in the 1980s. “She made some money, and she did well with her investments. She put me and my brother through college and gave us each some money when we turned twenty-five.” Eli was glad he hadn’t known about that until after he’d proposed, because he had to admit, in his most private thoughts, that the money made the woman he loved even more appealing. The idea of having Sarah in his life, and in Ruby’s, and being able to buy a beautiful home in a good neighborhood, and also not having to worry about college tuition… it seemed like the universe was making up for his disastrous first marriage by handing him a near-perfect second chance.
Still, he’d promised himself that if Ruby disliked Sarah, that if the three of them couldn’t get along, he would end it. Ruby hadn’t asked to be the child of divorced parents, bouncing between New York City during the school year and a few weeks in New Orleans, or Antigua, or wherever Annette had landed in the summer. Eli was determined to keep the promise he’d made to himself that he’d never do anything to make his daughter’s life harder.
At first, Ruby had been delighted when Miss Sarah the music lady showed up at her house or picked her up after school or spent time with her in the park. When Sarah’s presence went from being a novelty to a constant, when Sarah went from being a friend to someone who took away some of Eli’s attention and reminded Ruby to clear her plate and clean her room, Ruby was far less enamored. Sarah, to her credit, hadn’t been offended when Ruby had acted out. She never got angry when Ruby would ask, “When are you going back home?” or when, at breakfast on the weekends, Ruby asked her father to take her to the diner, just the two of them, because Sarah’s scrambled eggs tasted funny. “She’s gotten used to having you all to herself,” Sarah said when Eli apologized for Ruby’s behavior. “If I were her, I wouldn’t want to share you either.”
Sarah seemed to know, intuitively, just when to go meet friends for a movie or return to her own apartment to give them a few hours or a few days. She gave Ruby space, and let Eli handle the discipline. She tried hard not to try too hard, giving Ruby enough room to come to her. And, eventually, Ruby had.