“To thank me, you mean? Because of your sister?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
His expression didn’t change exactly, but his face seemed to tighten. “Great,” he said glumly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Not just to thank you,” Isabel went on, blushing. “I thought it would be fun. I could tell you about reptiles. You could tell me about, I don’t know. Manipulation. It could be a good exchange.”
“All right.”
Isabel was looking at the warped porch floor, so she missed the expression of pleasure that suffused his face.
“Actually,” Simon said. “I have these fish the boys and I caught yesterday. I could cook them for you, if you want. If you’re not busy.”
“I didn’t know men over thirty cooked,” Isabel said.
He held up his hand. “No bitter generalizations, please! I have an ex-wife, as you know, but you don’t hear me attributing her faults to you.”
“That’s funny,” Isabel said. “I seem to recall something or other.”
Simon’s face reddened, and he laughed out loud. “Oh, yes. You mean how I assumed you were a hypercritical, parasitic harpy? Well, no wonder you thought I was a jerk!”
“Just the first few times we met.”
“But you’ve gotten over it now? I like a woman who’s willing to change her opinion.”
“I don’t have much choice,” Isabel said. “My initial instincts about people seem to be so completely off base.”
“In that case,” Simon said, smiling, “I hope you really hated my guts.”
“Oh,” Isabel said. “I did.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
One Sunday in late October, Isabel woke up feeling too sick to drive out to Devon. Usually she wouldn’t have minded missing brunch, but today Alice was bringing Marco, and Isabel felt she should be there. Besides, she had arranged to take Simon and his boys on a behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo in the afternoon. She knew bribery was not the most virtuous road to the hearts of your boyfriend’s children, but she hoped it would be an effective one.
An hour later, however, she felt better. Not the flu, then, but something she had eaten. It was only in the car (her new used Volkswagen Passat), and almost all the way to her parents’ house, that it occurred to her that perhaps the old diaphragm she had been using wasn’t up to the job after all. She pulled into the driveway and sat in the parked car, actually trembling. She had waited so long and wished so hard for the first symptom of pregnancy, and now that it seemed to have arrived a mixture of elation, disbelief, skepticism, and horror rolled through her. Did she want to be pregnant now? She was newly enrolled in landscape design courses at Temple, working part-time at the wildlife rehabilitation center up in Buck’s County, and not yet even officially divorced from Theo. Her relationship with Simon was still so new that she didn’t know what it could withstand. Would Simon be angry? Would he distance himself from her? Would he want her to terminate the pregnancy?
Letting herself into the house, she found everyone in the living room. They were looking at pictures of Tina and Soren’s wedding, which had taken place the week before, privately, in Judge Rubin’s chambers. “You looked so gorgeous in that dress,” Dr. Rubin was saying. “Oh, look at the lace!”
“Hello,” Isabel said. “Am I late?”
“Nobody cares here, sweetheart,” Dr. Rubin said, putting down the photo album to give Isabel a hug. “But now that you’re back in the working world, you’ll find you have to be punctual. People will be depending on you.”
“Birds and foxes, anyway,” Alice said, smiling. She wore a pale yellow dress, and her hair caught the autumn light slanting in through the windows, making it blaze the same color as the trees in the garden below. Marco sat close beside her, one hand on her knee, his feet planted firmly on the rug.
“Animals, people, what’s the difference?” Soren said. “Aren’t the man and the sparrow just two sides of nature’s coin?” It was the kind of thing he always said, but Isabel thought it sounded more perfunctory than usual. He seemed restless, looking around the spacious room as though he wished he were out in the open air.
“I don’t know about the sparrow, but the president and the eagle are certainly two sides of the quarter,” Judge Rubin said, chuckling. He had been in an unusually good mood lately. In response to his wife’s anxiety about this brunch, Isabel had heard him say cheerfully, “Think about it this way, Evelyn. If he and Alice do get married, he’ll have to do the garden for nothing.”
They moved into the dining room. Dr. Rubin offered the food to Marco, explaining, “This is smoked salmon from Nova Scotia. This is belly lox. Our cuisine is traditionally salty, you know.” She was having a hard time adjusting to the idea that Alice was dating someone like Marco—who could, Dr. Rubin worried, offer her so little security, but she was doing her best to get used to it. She could see that Alice was happy. And in any case, the whole thing might just blow over.
Isabel passed the fish platter to Tina, but her sister held up her hand. “I can’t tolerate anything that tastes strong at all,” she said. “And I’m in the second trimester! I know you used to want to be pregnant, Isabel, but really, you’re not missing out on anything.”
“No,” Isabel agreed. “I’m almost sure I’m not.” She helped herself to salmon and a large chunk of smoked whitefish as well. She had suddenly developed an enormous appetite.
That afternoon, after she had shown Bill and Ethan around the off-limits section of the bird house (Bill’s choice), the primate reserve (Ethan’s choice), and the reptile house (her own bit of propaganda), the four of them wandered down to Bird Lake. She and Simon sat on a bench while the boys took a rented paddle swan out on the water. Her earlier apprehensiveness had ebbed away. The boys’ enthusiasm for the animals had pleased her (Bill’s in particular), as had the gradual tide of warmth she felt from them—or from Ethan, at least. Maybe she was pregnant, and maybe she wasn’t, but either way life seemed to be opening up all around her. And if she wasn’t pregnant today, why shouldn’t she be in a year or two, if that was what she wanted? And if she was, how could Simon, who sat beside her on the bench, slitting blades of grass with his thumbnail and seeing how loud he could make them whistle, be anything but happy about it?
Still, she did not actually broach the subject with him but asked instead, “So, when did you first become interested in me?”
He frowned at her, amused. “You want to play this game? All right. The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you must be mine. Or at least, however much mine you are. I hear men can’t possess women anymore, more’s the pity.”
“I’m serious. I know you didn’t like me at that party. You thought I was a boring housewife.”
“I don’t know, Isabel,” Simon said. “You grew on me. I can’t pick out an exact moment. You were cheeky and obnoxious at Anthony’s place when your sister was sick. I have a weakness for obnoxious people. And you took such good care of your sister. That was touching.”
Isabel thought how, a couple of months earlier, she would have thought he was being sarcastic.
“But you didn’t like me then,” Isabel said. “Or at least, you didn’t act as though you did.” She remembered the note of disdain in his voice that afternoon and how it had roused her to a bright, hard, energetic dislike. Or maybe it hadn’t been disdain. “Did I totally misread you?”
“I take pride in being hard to read, so you can hardly blame yourself.”
“That’s right,” Isabel said. “You disguise yourself as a beast and then wait to see who can find the prince hiding inside.”
“As beasts are your specialty, you were perfect for that.”
“Animals aren’t beasts,” Isabel said.
“Only people are?” he asked, smiling.
“Only people,” Isabel agreed.
“You’re not,” Simon said. “And you’re not a witch or a damsel in distress. What does that leave?”
Isabel laughed. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I guess I’ll have to improvise something.”
“I can’t wait to see,” Simon said. He put his arm around her. Isabel laid her head on his sleeve and watched the rays of the sun stretch and flicker across the lake. The boys zigzagged their paddle swan back and forth over the water, and a sea lion roared behind the reptile house, where pythons and corn snakes and burrowing toads dozed silently in their cages. Beyond the gates, Philadelphia spread itself out around her, and beyond the city lay the green primal suburbs of her childhood, old stone houses shaded by ancient trees and new developments where the raw earth dreamed of grass. Beyond that, the whole world waited, including a future in which anything might be possible: work and children, a new married life.
But for now, marriage was still a distant country. Who knew what it might be like there? What the customs and climate might be, or whether she would like the view. For now it was enough to be here, in the distant outskirts, on a bright October afternoon.
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