WHEN I AWAKENED, after sleeping surprisingly well, I turned my phone back on and saw two missed calls from Richie that had come in after eleven o’clock, along with a text message from Tony Marcus:
So u in?
I knew he was a late sleeper. I texted back anyway, saying I was, and would call him later. I didn’t know if Lisa Morneau wanted to be saved. Or was worth saving. Or wanted to stay lost. But I had made up my mind to find out.
Richie called about fifteen minutes after my first cup of coffee, right before I really was going to return his calls.
“Where were you last night?” he said. “I tried you a couple of times late.”
“I went to bed early,” I said. “Speaking of late, must have been a late dinner for you and Kathryn.”
“I thought Kathryn and I needed to talk.”
“What about?”
“Lot of things,” he said.
“What’s she doing here?” I said. “A short visit, I hope.”
“She’s come back here to live,” Richie said. “She and Richard.”
Shit.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” I said.
“I really need to talk to you about all this,” he said.
“We’re talking now,” I said.
“I mean in person,” he said. “I think the best way for us to get out ahead of this is if we all sit down and talk it through.”
“How civilized,” I said.
“We’re on the same side, Sunny,” Richie said. “You and me, I mean.”
“Against the world,” I said. “When would you like to do this?”
“How about right now?” he said.
“I haven’t even showered yet,” I said, “or made myself beautiful.”
“You wake up beautiful,” he said.
“Save it, soldier,” I said.
“I explained a lot to her last night,” he said. “I explained that I am committed to you and to us as much as I am to Richard.”
“That must have gotten her motor running.”
“She said she totally understood,” he said. “The way she said she understood that whatever she and I had once ended a long time ago.”
“Well, no shit,” I said.
“So can we all come over?” he said. “I promise we won’t stay long.”
“Listen,” I said, “there’s something I needed to talk to you about, apart from our sudden family drama.” I took in some air. “I’ve got kind of a situation going with Tony Marcus.”
“Did he do something?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”
“Did what?” Richie said.
“He sort of hired me.”
“You took on Tony Marcus as a client?” Richie said.
“Well, in a manner of speaking.”
“You’re joking.”
“Am not.”
“Something else we need to talk about,” he said. “Just not this morning.”
“Agree,” I said. “Let’s deal with your situation first.”
“Mine and ours,” he said.
“Give me an hour,” I said.
“See you then,” I said.
“Sunny?” he said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said, and ended the call.
I had just enough time for what Spike liked to call “The Process”: hair, makeup, clothes. Getting just the right look without looking as if I were trying too hard. I showered quickly, blew out my hair as best I could, did my face, put on a cornflower-blue cashmere pullover that I knew was one of Richie’s favorites and a pair of black Rag & Bone jeans that looked as if I’d had to apply them to my legs and butt with a Magic Marker. The whole time I was getting ready I tried not to dwell too much or too long on whether I was trying to make myself look this good for him or for her.
More likely it was both.
When I opened the door an hour later I had the same reaction I’d had the first time I’d ever laid eyes on Kathryn:
Holy Christ, she still looks like she could be my sister.
But I was more taken by the boy. I had seen plenty of pictures of Richard Burke. There had been times, across the years, when I’d been present when Richie FaceTimed with the boy, until Kathryn had even made that difficult for them. So I knew what he looked like and who he looked like, and who he looked like was Richie, just slightly more fair, because of his blond mother.
Mostly he looked like what I imagined a child of Richie’s and mine would have looked like, if we’d ever had one. The gene pool would essentially have been the same. We had talked about having children when we’d first gotten married. We’d talked about it a lot. Decided to wait. Then we were divorced, and he had married Kathryn, and then she was the one who had gotten pregnant. She was the one who had become a mom.
As I took their coats and hung them in the front hall closet, I noticed Rosie was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. I had taken Kathryn’s coat, so she was first into the living room. When Rosie saw her she began to quietly growl. It made me want to slobber over my own dog.
But as soon as Rosie saw Richard, she was running straight for him, her stubby tail wagging furiously. The boy immediately fell to his knees and let her lick his face, as if the two of them had already started a playdate.
“No point in asking if Richard likes dogs,” I said.
“Seems as if yours likes Richard a lot better than she likes me,” Kathryn said.
Makes two of us, I thought.
“He wasn’t allowed to have dogs in London,” Kathryn said. “My boyfriend didn’t like them.”
“Scum,” I said.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Kathryn said. “Referring to a man William’s age as a boyfriend.”
“I’ve found there is no adequate way to describe the man in your life if he’s not your husband,” I said.
“How do you describe Richie?” Kathryn asked.
“The man in my life,” I said.
I had a coffee setup on the mahogany coffee table. Richie and Kathryn sat next to each other on the couch. I sat in one of Melanie Joan’s antique chairs across from them. Richard and Rosie behaved blissfully, and as if the rest of us weren’t there.
The only thing the boy had asked was “What’s his name?”
“Her name,” I said. “Rosie. She’s a girl.”
“Sometimes girls are okay,” he said, and then ran into the kitchen as Rosie chased him.
We all sipped coffee. So far, so good, I thought. Civilized, as promised.
“Daniel and I have ended our relationship,” Kathryn said. “I explained that to Richie last night. Once we did end the relationship, there was no reason for me to stay on in London any longer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I really wasn’t. My father said that no one faked sincerity better than his baby girl.
“I’m not,” Kathryn said.
It was impossible not to notice that she was still able to elevate the concept of icy blonde practically to an art form.
“Who ended the relationship, if you don’t mind me asking?” I said.
Richie chose to focus in that moment on the love fest between his son and my dog.
“I was the one who chose to leave,” Kathryn said. “But he was the one who’d already chosen a younger woman. One unencumbered by a six-year-old child.”
“I see,” I said, just to say something.
“I only moved to London in the first place because of my mother,” Kathryn said, answering a question no one had asked.
She sipped her coffee. I did the same. Richie continued to smile as he watched Rosie chase his son.
“In the long run, this will work out for the best,” she said. “It will be a good thing that Richard will have his father back in his life.”
“He should have been in his life all along,” I said.
Civilized left the room, just like that.
“But we don’t need to relitigate that today,” Richie said.
“No, Richie,” Kathryn said. “Sunny has a right. And is right. It was wrong of me to keep the two of you apart for as long as I did, a decision I will always regret.”
Maybe she meant it. But it sounded to me like a line she had rehearsed, one that perhaps she thought might elicit my sympathy. Fat chance. For about the one thousandth time, I wondered how Richie had ended up with her.
He did his best to change the subject, at least somewhat, saying, “Kathryn will be looking for a place to live and finding the right school for Richard to attend second semester.”
There was a lot more I wanted to say, mostly to her, things I had bottled up for a long time. But this wasn’t the right moment. Richard and Rosie were chasing each other around the kitchen, loudly. He was laughing. If Rosie were capable of laughter, she would have been doing the same.
“Don’t have much to offer on either real estate or schools,” I said.
“And I wouldn’t expect you to,” Kathryn said. “But the real reason I asked Richie to bring me here today is because if Richard is going to be in Richie’s life, he’s going to be in yours, too.”
I glanced at Richie. He hadn’t changed expression, but I knew him. We had always been able to have entire conversations without a single word being exchanged. We did so now. I saw it in his eyes. He wanted me to let this go.
But he knew me. And perhaps knew I could not, or would not, just let this go.
“I have to ask you something, Kathryn, just because I can’t not,” I said. “Are we all just supposed to act now as if the last few years didn’t happen? Seriously?”
She turned her face toward Richie as if she’d been slapped. Then looked back at me. Her face had reddened slightly. Or maybe I hadn’t noticed before, and she’d simply overdone it with the blush.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” Kathryn said. “Maybe things between us will never change.”
“Maybe the mistake was keeping Richie from his son.”
“I’m trying to make things right now,” Kathryn said.
“For whom?” I said.
“For everyone,” Richie said.
I had read something about a relaxation exercise where you took a few seconds to take in air, held it as long, exhaled just as slowly. I tried that now. It didn’t help as much as I’d hoped.
“Kathryn, listen,” I said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for here. I do. But you’re not my concern. Richie is. And so now is that little boy in the other room. All I really care about is that they’re together again.”
“Fair enough,” she said. She looked back at Richie. “I guess we’re done here?” she said.
He nodded.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “All of us.”
Kathryn went into the kitchen to collect Richard.
“He looks just like you,” I said.
“Nothing is going to change between us,” he said.
We were keeping our voices low.
“I want to believe that,” I said.
I did want to believe it. But it was as if the ground underneath all of us had officially shifted the moment they had all walked through the front door. Or perhaps when Kathryn and Richard had landed at Logan Airport. Kathryn was right about one thing: If the little boy who did look just like his father was in his father’s world now, he was in mine now, too. If Richie’s world had changed, forever, so had my own. There was a longer conversation to be had about all of this, but this wasn’t the right moment for that, either.
Richard was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He had found an old tennis ball where I kept Rosie’s toys, and had been throwing it to her. He threw it one last time. One last time Rosie brought it right back to him. I usually had to bribe her to get her to do that. Maybe she’d already figured out that he was Richie’s.
When he had his coat on, the little boy thanked me for letting him play with my dog. Then he looked up at me with Richie’s eyes and asked if he could come back sometime and play with Rosie again.
“You bet,” I said. “Rosie and I both want you to come back soon.”
“Tomorrow?” he said.
“Maybe not tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll work it out with your mom and dad. But soon, I promise.”
Kathryn took his hand and led him out the door. When the two of them were outside, and once again out of earshot, Richie said he would call me later. Then he kissed me quickly on the lips and told me he loved me. I told him I loved him, too. Then he walked to the car. I watched the three of them get in and heard the engine come to life, and then watched the car pull away toward Charles Street.
Rosie and I stood at the door and watched them go. Richard was behind his father in a forward-facing booster seat. He turned and waved. Probably at Rosie.
I stood there in the brittle, bright morning cold and told myself I was good at a lot of things, and had gotten better at other things as I’d grown up, and grown older, and lived a life. I knew more about myself than I ever had before. I did know how much I loved Richie Burke.
I just knew nothing at all about being a stepmom.