Read Once Upon a Time, There Was You for Free Online Page B

and walked slowly down the hall. He stopped to read some of the notices on a bulletin board: he didn’t want to be the first one in. He was intrigued by an ad featuring a photo of a well-preserved Karmann Ghia, and even wrote down the email address; maybe he’d go and have a look at it, even though it was a god-awful yellow. He saw ads for volunteering at a walk-in ministry, a room for rent with kitchen privileges, classes in Japanese. There was a flyer for a stay at a monastery, but he figured his own life lately was close enough to that.
    He wondered what he’d talk about in this group. What were the things divorced people talked about? How they and their exes came together? How they came apart? How the children suffered, despite their best intentions and no matter what their ages?
    The first time Sadie stayed with him for her week in August, when she was eight, she got out of bed in the middle of the night and stood before him until he woke up. “What happened?” he said, and she said, “Nothing.”
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    He sat up. When he reached for the light, she said, “Don’t turnit on. I’m going right back to bed. I just wanted to come in and see you.”
    “Well, I’m glad you did. But should I turn on the light, and we can go downstairs to the kitchen and have a chat? Share an orange?”
    “No, that’s okay.”
    “Happy to do it. Or …” He wasn’t sure about this, but he asked anyway. “Do you … Would you like to come in bed with me for a while?”
    “No,” she said. “I’m too old. I just wanted to see you. We can talk in the morning. Good night.”
    She went back to bed. He checked on her about fifteen minutes later: sound asleep. He stayed awake until four-thirty, then got up to make coffee and sit on the front porch, waiting for the sunrise.
    Then there was the time Sadie was two and wearing her white patent leather shoes, which she had loved. She’d stepped into mud and then looked up at him, dismayed. The ease with which he could fix this problem suddenly juxtaposed itself against the fact that it would not always be so. The world would break Sadie’s heart and try her soul, whether she deserved it or not, because she was of the species Homo sapiens , a bipedal primate living most definitely outside the Garden, and nothing he did could protect her from that. And the realization had gotten to him. Later that night, after Sadie was in bed, he’d told Irene about it. She’d sighed and said softly, “I know. Sometimes I just look at the size of her sweaters, and it kills me what she’s headed for. It isn’t fair. And I know life isn’t fair. But it isn’t fair. ”
    He wouldn’t tell either of those stories. He wouldn’t say anything, unless he had to, and then he’d keep it neutral. “Just here seeing if I can learn something,” he’d say. And it would be in a friendly, low-key way that suggested he was not desperate, only curious.
    The next time he looked at his watch, it was six minutes after, and he started walking quickly down the hall—if he recalled correctly, the room was just two doors away. A woman rushed past him to go into a classroom where there was a circle of about fifteen folding chairs occupied by mostly middle-aged people, more women than men. Here goes , he thought, and followed the woman in.
    She turned out to be Amy Becker, a blonde with a charmingly off-kilter smile. He was instantly attracted to her, wildly attracted, in fact, in a way that both surprised and invigorated him. She had brown eyes, and he loved that combination, a blonde with brown eyes: Angie Dickinson, who didn’t love that combination? She wore very little makeup, if any. She was younger than he, he thought, but not that much younger. She had a nice figure, and was dressed in a flowered skirt and a simple white blouse, pearl studs. She wore red, low-heeled shoes, which the woman she sat next to complimented her on, saying, “Oh, look at the flower !” He heard