"When did all this happen?"

"We've been talking about it for a while."

"And you never told me?"

"It's not as though we'd made any decisions about it. It was just something that came up every now and then. But that biological clock kept ticking, and lately, it's been getting pretty loud for both of us. I woke up the other morning to chimes."

"Have you told Mom and Dad?"

"Not yet. And don't you tell them either. I would rather we find out whether it's even possible for either of us to get pregnant first or whether we'll go the adoption route. I keep envisioning the doctor telling me that my uterus is covered in cobwebs."

I laughed. "I'm sure you'll be fine."

"That's because I, unlike you, exercise. Of course, my cough isn't making it easier, but I force myself to go to the gym."

"You're still coughing?"

"Too much. Supposedly, even after the cold is better, your lungs can take six weeks to heal."

"I didn't know that."

"Neither did I. But the point is, unlike you, I'm still dedicated to my health."

"I don't have time to work out."

"Of course you have time. You can go first thing in the morning. That's when all the moms do it."

"I'm not a mom."

"I hate to break it to you but lately? You kind of are."

"You always know exactly what to say to make me feel better."

"I call 'em like I see 'em. And you and I both know a little exercise wouldn't hurt you. You're looking a little soft these days."

"I'm in shape."

"Of course you are. If round is a shape, I mean."

"You're a real peach, you know that?"

On Friday morning, I stood in front of the mirror, thinking that maybe Marge had a point about starting to exercise again. But not, unfortunately, today.

I had things to do, and while I watched London and brought her to art class, I spent the rest of my time putting together a time line for Taglieri's campaign, with the thought that day care was most likely off the table.

Much of it I could do from home; getting the permits, scouting locations, and getting appropriate releases meant time in and out of the car and lots of driving. As long as I spread it out over a period of days, I didn't think London would be too bothered by it at all.

When I'd spoken to Vivian, I'd said as much to her. I could hear the relief in her voice and for the first time in years, we spent more than half an hour on the phone simply talking. I'd missed that, and I had the sense that she'd missed it, too, and even though she ended up arriving home a little later than she'd wanted, she laughed and smiled, even flirted with me, and in the bedroom, she was both sexy and passionate, something I'd been craving, something that left me certain that she still cared for me.

In the morning, her good mood persisted. Before she left for yoga, she made breakfast for London and me, and asked if we were planning to visit my parents.

"If you are, can you wait for me? I'd like to come."

When I assured her we would, she kissed me goodbye and I felt the light flicker of her tongue against my lips. In the ensuing glow and with my mind flashing back to the night before I had no doubts as to the reasons I'd married her in the first place.

While we waited for Vivian to return, London and I went to the park, where we followed a nature trail that led to the golf course. Years ago, an Eagle Scout fulfilling his service project had mounted small plaques near various trees listing both their common and scientific names. At each of them, I read the information to London and would point out the bark or the leaves, pretending I knew far more than I did. She would repeat the words Quercus virginiana or Eucalyptus viminalis and even though I knew I'd forget pretty much everything by the time I returned to the car, while on the trail I felt a little smarter than usual.

But London stayed smart. Back home, I made sandwiches and while we were eating on the back porch, she pointed to a massive tree in the backyard. "That's a Carya ovata!" she exclaimed.

"That one?" I asked, not bothering to hide my amazement.

She nodded. "Shagbark hickory."

"How do you know?"

"Because you showed me," she said, gazing up at me. "Remember?"

Not even slightly, I thought. To me, it had reverted to being a tree. "I think you're right."

"I am right."

"I trust you."

She took a drink of milk. "When's Mommy getting home?"

I checked my watch. "Pretty soon."

"And then we're going to Nana and Papa's?"

"That's the plan."

"I want to bake today. Cupcakes again."

"I'm sure Nana will love that."

"Will Auntie Marge and Auntie Liz be there?"

"I hope so."

"Okay. I'd better bring Mr. and Mrs. Sprinkles. I'm sure they'll want to say hi."

"I'm sure."

She chewed her sandwich. "Hey Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"I'm glad I get to stay with you."

"What do you mean?"

"Mommy told me that I'm not going to day care. She said you could work and take care of me at the same time."

"She did?"

She nodded. "She told me this morning."

"She's right, but you might have to be in the car with me while I get my stuff done."

"Can I bring my Barbies? Or Mr. and Mrs. Sprinkles?"

"Of course," I said.

"Okay. It'll still be fun then."

I smiled. "I'm glad."

"When you were little, did you go to day care?"

"No. Auntie Marge watched me."

"And Auntie Liz?"

"No. Auntie Liz wasn't around yet."

"Oh," she said. She took another couple of bites of her sandwich, her head turning from side to side as if taking in the world one sense at a time. I watched her, thinking about how beautiful she was, not caring whether I was biased at all.

"Daddy! There's a giant bird in the tree!" she cried. When she pointed, I spotted the bird. It was chocolate brown with white head feathers glowing in the sunlight. As I stared, it spread its wings before tucking them back in.

"That's a bald eagle," I told her in amazement. In all the years I'd lived in Charlotte, I'd only seen one twice. I was struck by a sense of wonder, a recurring theme during our weeks together. Staring at my daughter, I suddenly understood how much had changed between London and me. Because I'd become comfortable in my role as the primary caregiver, London had become more comfortable with me, and all at once, the thought of being separated from her for hours on end once school began made my heart ache in a way I hadn't expected. That I loved London had never been in question; what I now understood was that I liked her, too, not only as my daughter, but as the young girl I'd only recently come to know.

It might have been that thought, or maybe it had something to do with how the week had gone, but whatever the reason, I felt unusually tranquil, almost entirely at peace. I'd been down and now I was heading back up, and though I acknowledged that the feeling might be a fleeting one I was old enough to know that much it was as real as the sun. Watching London's rapt expression as she stared at the eagle, I wondered if she would remember this experience, or if she knew how I felt about our newfound closeness. But it didn't really matter. It was enough to feel it myself and by the time the eagle flew away, I held on to the image, knowing it would stay with me forever.

CHAPTER 12.

Bad Weather on the Horizon

In February 2004 I'd been out of college for almost two years, and had been seeing Emily almost as long I went to visit my parents on the weekend. Already, the habit of seeing them had been firmly established by then. Normally, Emily would join me, but for reasons lost to time, she couldn't make it that weekend and I was on my own.

When I arrived, my dad was working on my mom's car, not the Mustang. His head was under the hood and I saw that he was adding a quart of oil.

"Glad to see you're taking care of your better half's car," I said, half joking, to which my dad nodded.

"Have to. Gonna snow this week. I already have the winter survival kit in the backseat. I wouldn't want your mom to have to get it out of the trunk in case she gets stuck on the roads."

"It's not going to snow," I said. The temperature was already springlike; I was wearing a T-shirt and had actually debated wearing shorts to their house.

He squinted at me from under the hood. "Have you been watching the weather?"

"I heard something about it on the radio, but you know weather guys. They're wrong more often than they're right."

"My knees say it's going to snow, too."

"It's almost seventy degrees!"

"Suit yourself. I'm going to need some help wrapping the pipes after I finish up here. You'll be around to pitch in like the old days?"

My dad, I should say, had always been that type of guy. If a hurricane was expected to hit the Carolina coast, my dad would spend days clearing debris from the yard, moving things to the garage, and closing up the shutters, despite the fact Charlotte was nearly two hundred miles from the coast. "You weren't around when Hugo hit in 1989," he would tell Marge and me. "Charlotte might as well have been Dorothy's farmhouse. Whole city practically blew away."

"Yeah, I'll be here," I said to him. "But you're wasting your time. It's not going to snow."

I went inside and visited with my mom for a while; when my father came in and motioned toward me an hour later, I knew what he expected. I helped without complaint, but even when I watched him start to work on his own car, I didn't take his cautions to heart. And even if I had, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea what might be included in a winter-survival kit. That's what I told myself later, anyway, but the real reason I wasn't ready for what came next was that, at that age, I thought I was smarter than he was.

As late as Tuesday afternoon, the temperature was still inching toward sixty degrees; on Wednesday, despite the clouds rolling in, the temperature nearly hit fifty and I'd forgotten completely about my dad's warning. On Thursday, however, the storm smashed into Charlotte with a fury: It began to snow, lightly at first, and then more heavily. By the time I was driving to work, the snow was accumulating on the highways. Schools were closed for the day, and only half the people made it to the agency. The snow continued to fall, and when I left work in midafternoon, the roads were nearly impassable. Hundreds of motorists ended up skidding off the highway, myself included, amidst a snowfall of more than a foot in a city with only a few snowplows available. By nightfall, the city of Charlotte had come to a standstill.

It took nearly five hours for a tow truck to arrive and pull me out. Though I wasn't in danger I'd brought a jacket, had half a tank of gas and my heater was working I kept thinking about the differences between my dad and me.

While I blithely hoped for the best, my dad was the kind of guy who always expected and prepared for the worst.

August brought with it sweltering temperatures and high humidity broken by the occasional afternoon thunderstorm, but the weeks leading up to London's first day of school felt entirely different than the previous weeks, if only because I was actually earning an income.

Despite being scheduled every single minute of the day, I felt less stressed than I had since starting my business. I worked with the tech guy for everything tech related, scouted locations and got the releases I needed, talked with the head of the film and sound crews, picked up the permits, talked to an agent at the local casting agency, signed a contract for the billboards, and locked in a great deal for television advertising. All that in addition to finalizing the rehearsal and shooting schedule for the first two commercials and overseeing the casting session for the third commercial, all of which would take place the same week London began school.

Despite those things, I still got London to and from her activities, went bike riding, received a million hugs and kisses, and even got her piano and art classes rescheduled once school began. Tennis camp came to an end right around the time we attended an open house at the school, where London had a chance to meet her new teacher. There, she learned that Bodhi would also be in her class, and I was able to visit with Emily for a minute. Since her ex had been in town, her schedule had been unpredictable and I hadn't seen her much since our playdate. I introduced her to Vivian my wife's demeanor could best be described as distant, but with a warning and understood that I better keep such visits with Emily to a minimum or there were going to be problems.

Vivian spent two or three nights a week in Atlanta, and when at home, she continued to blow warm and cool. That was better than the hot and cold I'd been experiencing, but the excitement of the date night toward the end of July wasn't repeated, and the endlessly shifting temperature of my wife's moods left me both excited and nervous about seeing her whenever the SUV pulled up in the drive.

If there was any other change to my routine during that period, it had to do with exercise. The day after I'd really looked at myself in the mirror, I took Marge's advice and on the first Monday of the month, I set the alarm forty minutes earlier. I donned a pair of running shorts and commenced a slow trudge through the neighborhood, one in which I was passed by every jogging mother, two of whom were also pushing strollers. Years ago, I'd been able to jog five or six miles and feel refreshed when I finished: after a mile and a half on day one of my new regime, I practically collapsed on the front porch rocker. It took me more than an hour to feel like myself again. Nonetheless, I did it the following morning, and the morning after that, a streak that hasn't been broken. By the second week of August, I added push-ups and sit-ups to my routine, and my pants became steadily looser as the month wore on.

London had improved enough on her bike to allow me to ride beside her, and on the day after the open house at school, we traversed the neighborhood together, even racing for an entire block. I let her win, of course. After stowing our bikes back in the garage, I gave her a high-five, and we ended up drinking lemonade on the back porch, hoping to see another bald eagle while the sun began its descent.

But even though we didn't, I suspected I'd long remember that day, if only because it, too, was perfect in its own way.

"Don't you think she already has enough clothes for school?" I asked Vivian. It was the Saturday before school was supposed to start, and because Vivian had arrived home late from Atlanta the night before, we'd agreed to put off date night until tonight.

"I'm not getting clothes," Vivian said as she finished dressing in the bathroom. She'd already been to yoga and the gym, and had showered; it was one of those mornings of frantic activity for her. "I'm getting school supplies. Backpack, pencils, erasers, and some other things. Did you even check the school website?"