(I named Robert's ex-wife Caroline. I had to name her something. Does she have an official name anywhere?)
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It's strange now, when he looks back, that he and Nancy stayed together for as long as they did. In the beginning he'd been a single father, struggling to make sense of Caroline's desertion, to make sense of his new life and the infant child he found entrusted to him. Morgan had been only a few months old. Who knew raising a baby alone was so much more difficult when you were alone? The first six months had been terrible. Looking back, the memory is only a blur. Sleepless nights and endless days at the firm, punctuated by moments of clarity and a joy so fierce it took his breath away-- when Morgan smiled at him, learned the word Dada, took her first steps. Suddenly he was a daddy, in a way he hadn't been before Caroline left; suddenly he was all Morgan had. His performance at work suffered and his social life evaporated, because Morgan had no one to depend upon but him.
And then there was Nancy, a friend of a friend, and he let her draw him out of his exile and back into the world. She was sanity and adult contact in a world populated by stuffed animals and cartoon characters, and he latched on to her, desperate for any kind of companionship. Nancy was smart and pretty and funny, and if she didn't quite take to Morgan the way he'd hoped, well, perhaps that was to be expected. They'd only been dating for a short while. Maybe it was just too much, so early in the relationship, to expect her to play surrogate mother as well as newfound girlfriend. She was never cruel to Morgan, or even insensitive. Perhaps that was enough.
And if he wasn't exactly… well, passionate about her, maybe that was all right as well. He'd been passionately in love with Caroline, in the beginning, and look where that had gotten him. He liked Nancy, he respected her, and they were good together. Perhaps that was enough.
He shied away from romantic gestures—sending flowers, going out dancing, declarations of love. Caroline had demanded those things, and he'd been happy to oblige her, but he knew now that they were a fantasy, and his relationship with Nancy was grounded in reality. He focused on getting to know her: how she saw the world, what she was good at and how he could help her, what she loved, what loves they shared.
And after five years, it seemed only logical that they should get married. She was practically the only mother Morgan had ever known, if a distant one. They were comfortable together. He knew her, and she knew him, and they knew what they were getting into.
Had it taken meeting Giselle to make him realize how ridiculous that sounded? Thatcomfortable wasn't enough, not nearly, and that romance and passion were far more important than he wanted to admit. He understands now that Caroline's departure scarred him, that remembered pain made it difficult for him to care for anyone except Morgan. Difficult to believe that love could be different, could exist without ending. So he'd held himself a little apart from Nancy, a little removed, kept a little space around his heart.
He isn't sure why she was willing to settle for that, when he was too afraid to love her in the way she wanted. No wonder she'd been drawn to Edward, dramatic Edward who made romantic gestures without thought and was utterly sincere. After five years of reasoned, methodical, careful interaction, throwing caution to the wind and eloping must have been exhilarating.
But he thinks of Giselle, of the ring he put on her finger only a few weeks after the ball, and smiles a little. Perhaps he knows something of throwing caution to the wind and making grand romantic gestures after all.