“Their mom must be exhausted,” I say, hearing their delighted demands forMore bubbles! More bubbles!
“It’s crazy how little kids look like tiny drunks,” he says, and stops to watch them. He’s not wrong. Their little bodies look so top-heavy, tiny legs veering one way and tottering the other, trying to keep up with the chase.
“Not everyone can be built like Thor,” I tell him.
“Thor, huh?” he says with a grin, then tilts his head. “Did we ever talk about kids?
“A couple times,” I say, my chronic guilt raising a single hand to make itself known. “I know you wanted them one day, but—”
“You were always so busy,” he finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“And what about now?”
His question is so direct, my brain feels like it’s run over a speed bump. Old Luca would have danced around the subject or given hypotheticals. This Luca is looking right at me, waiting for an answer. I’m not sure I have one. We never made a concrete timeline, because if it looked like it was headed in that direction, I would change the subject or put it off, and true to form, Luca didn’t push. I never thought I’d have time for a relationship, so I obviously never even considered children. Then Luca came along, and in hindsight I think subconsciously I knew that if I could barely make time for my husband, I couldn’t possibly be a mother.
But it’s a good question.What about now?
“I think… I think I’d like to talk about it,” I say finally. “Maybe notnow, but when things are more settled.” I hear how that sounds, another procrastination attempt, anotherwhen, but it’s not the same. “What I mean is, it’s not a no. I don’t think I would have said that before.”
He mulls this over. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.” Luca tugs on my hand for us to continue.
He doesn’t let go, twisting his fingers with mine as we walk. It’s such a simple thing, but the sensation is the equivalent of a boulder rolling over inside my chest.
“Since this is our first date, and we are clearly strangers who have never been married to each other before,” he says with a grin, “why don’t you tell me about yourself. Favorite color?”
“Blue.” His eyes, his favorite shirt, the color of the small sapphires in my ring.
“Food?”
“Anything you make, but I’m partial to your seared tuna and green rice.”
“That sounds impressive.”
“It is. Maybe we can make it together. You never used a recipe, and it would be interesting to see if the steps feel familiar at all.”Not as a scientist, I tell myself,but as Emery Martín.
Paved ground gives way to sand, and the air seems to shift, too, heavier, cleaner, the wind carrying with it a fine mist. The tide is going out, and a handful of families build sandcastles; others search for shells or seaweed on the freshly exposed shore. We walk in comfortable silence, no direction in mind, just two people, almost strangers, but also not.
“We got married over there,” I say, pointing down the beach. “You can’t see it from here because the coast curves, but it’s called Torrey Pines.”
He follows my gaze, squinting into the distance. “I saw the photos at the house. We looked so happy.”
I smile up at him. “We were.”
“Can we go there soon?”
“Of course.”
“You know, I’m guessing you’ve told me all this before, but when did you know you wanted to be a doctor?”
We have had this conversation, but I’ve told him everything in half-truths, stopping before I got too close to something I wasn’t supposed to say. It’s different now, I remind myself. I’m different. At least I want to be.
“I’d always had an aptitude for STEM, but it wasn’t until my parents died that I knew I wanted it to be my life.”
“Oh shit.” He squeezes my hand. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen. I wasn’t with them,” I say, eyes on the breaking surf. “I’d been begging to go to this girls’ camp in Big Bear, so they sent me and decided to go on a weekend trip, just the two of them. I’d been out on the lake all day with my friends, and when we got back to camp my aunt was there waiting to talk to me. She said my parents had been in an accident, and that they hadn’t made it. Just like that. One moment I had parents, and the next moment I didn’t.
