“Japanese peonies,” Ollie says, surprising me with his accurate identification.
“They were the only plant my mother succeeded in keeping alive. I got these flowers when I was twenty-one because I thought they represented Abby and me. The one good thing that survived my mother.”
Ollie’s eyes are filled with sympathy.
“We weren’t abused or anything.” My voice sounds defensive. My childhood wasn’tallbad.
“You were neglected,” he says gently.
I shrug. “It’s why I was determined never to do that with Hannah. I was going to stay in one place. Not date casually. The kid comes first.” He nods, looking serious. I add, saying it for the first time, “I think I thought if I got back together with Nick, itwould prove that I wasn’t like my mother. That I wasn’t going to keep bouncing from man to man.”
He frowns a little. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I nod. “You mean as a kid? It had its upsides. I learned to cook. By the time I started college, I knew how to make a mean spaghetti carbonara.”
“And now,” he adds, “you don’t rely on anybody but yourself.”
It is so staggeringly accurate that it forces me to laugh. “Well, men don’t have the best record of showing up. I trust Abby.”
“And then she moved away.”
The fact that he gets it feels unexpectedly huge. I feel tearful, which feels ridiculous in the middle of a playground. “Your turn. Tell me about your playgrounds growing up.”
“Well,” he says, “this giant rock reminds me of this beach I used to go to as a teenager. I was a lifeguard. And the beach had this huge rock we’d climb on.” He smiles. “I lost my virginity behind that rock.”
“So this rock brings back dirty memories?”
“Not the playground part, but yeah.” He grins, but then the smile fades. “She was the first girl my brother stole from me, actually.”
“So he makes it habit of this.”
“I went to therapy for a while,” Ollie says as we watch Hannah debating some finer point of her makeshift tag game with another child. “I told you that. And I realized my father was the one who pitted us against each other. I think he thought it would give us a competitive edge. Sean and I dealt with that differently, though. Sean ignored everything my father wanted: he left Australia to get away from my dad, then dropped out of college, didn’t go to law school. And I emotionally checked out. I stopped reacting. It hurt Sean’s feelings, I think. Like I stopped caring about him when I stopped trying to one-up him.”
“And Sean restarted the game by stealing your wife?”
Ollie lets out a breath. “God, I hope not. I hope Phoebe means more to him than that. But it definitely means that he won, if there was a game to win.”
Hannah appears beside us, wiping sweat from her brow. “Ice cream?” she says pointedly to Ollie.
We introduce Ollie to Mister Melty-Face, our nickname for the SpongeBob popsicle that you can buy from the ice cream pushcart vendors in the park. It has two large, dark eyes that tend to roll slowly out of its head, and Hannah and I have a tradition of eating it while making horrified screams.
“Noooooo!” Hannah demonstrates. “Not my face…!”
“Not my eyes!” I cry.
Ollie pretends to melt down onto a park bench. “Noooooooooooo… I’m melting! I’m melting! What a world, what a world…”
Hannah considers him. “You’re not a good actor.”
“That’s why you have to do the acting, not me.”
“I’m very good at acting.”
“I remember,” he agrees.
Hannah’s energy starts to flag after a couple of hours, and Ollie drives us home. When I glance at her in the backseat, she is playing Nintendo with her eyes drooping and her head leaning on the window. Eventually, even the cheerful beeping and golden coins can’t keep her awake.
“Thank you for today,” I say quietly as Hannah snores behind us. “I know it wasn’t…”
