A/N: Tremendous thanks as always are due to Jan, Barbara, and Alison for their feedback on this chapter.

Chapter 14

April 2013

As it turned out, Will had a bit of an uphill battle with the board over the parental leave policies. He had hired a consultant to go over the company's existing policies and to make recommendations about possible changes. The consultant had not only suggested updates to parental leaves, but also advised the company to make flexible working hours and part-time partner-track positions available to both men and women, birth and adoptive parents. He recommended they institute paid sick leave and family care leave policies, and think about setting up some kind of relationship with a nearby childcare center. He had also suggested to Will that he could really put his money where his mouth was, and make a big step toward changing the culture of the company, if he, himself, announced that he would make use of the new policies.

First, though, Will had to get the policies past the board, which was made up primarily of older men who had been there since his father's time. The newer members brought on since Will had taken over the company were more diverse across all imaginable dimensions, but they were still in the minority. It was an interesting, and sometimes volatile, mix.

Will was dying to tell Lizzy about the afternoon board meeting when he came home that evening, and he beckoned her to follow him into the bedroom so he could talk and change his clothes at the same time. Apparently the story couldn't wait till dinner. Lizzy played peekaboo with Emma on the bed while he talked.

"Ha, you should have seen how they sat down at the conference table. All the white-haired old guys on one side, facing off against the women and younger men on the other side. It was wild." He shrugged off his jacket and hung it up in the giant walk-in closet, and then took off his cufflinks and put them in their assigned drawer. Off came the shoes, the tie, the trousers, and he put them all neatly away.

"What did you do?"

"I just laid out the proposal, made the business case for it, sat back and watched them fight it out."

"Did it play out in the obvious way?"

"You mean, all the old guys against and the younger people for? Not entirely. Do you remember Bob Packard?" Lizzy sort of did, from one of the endless investor cocktail parties she'd attended. He was a Raven, of course. A big blustery white guy with a giant W.C. Field nose, she thought.

Will continued, "Well, he actually made this impassioned argument about how it was the right, just thing to do, based on his son's experience of being forced out of his job at Smart because he insisted on taking paternity leave." Smart & Janowitz was a big Wall Street brokerage firm.

"Wow! That's unexpected. Boo," Lizzy said to Emma.

"And Joe Stone"—one of the young Turks—"made a long speech about how the policies would inconvenience and unfairly burden single people or people without children, and would cost the company too much money. The usual arguments." Will poked around among the neat floor-to-ceiling shelves in the closet for a button-down shirt and some jeans.

"So what did you say to that?"

"I didn't have to say anything. Marilyn Henry had this huge stack of data and a Powerpoint presentation, refuting it point by point. You should have seen it." Marilyn was in her sixties and was on a lot of boards, especially those of relatively progressive companies and organizations. She had made her money in IT, and she knew data. So her MO was to collect as much data as she could and just lay the facts right out there for all to see. She'd been helpful to Will in this same way when he had wanted to change WPD's focus to investing in renewable energy companies.

"What? Why did she have that? You didn't know she was going to do that?"

"No, I didn't know, but I guess I should have expected it. She's on the board of another company where they made these kinds of changes a few years ago, and she told me she just asked to borrow their consultant's slides." He pulled on his shirt and jeans, and sat down on the bed next to Lizzy.

"So you didn't need to use any of those statistics you had the researchers collect?"

"Oh, yeah, I did. But it was just icing on the cake after Marilyn's presentation. She did a great job of showing that the ROI(1) on the policies was huge because of increased employee loyalty and morale, lower turnover, retention of the most talented employees, higher productivity, all that."

"Oh, and also, it's the right choice, morally and ethically." Lizzy laughed at him.

"Right, yeah, there's that. Of course most of the board doesn't care about that. Money talks, that's what matters to them. It's their fiduciary responsibility." He pretended to straighten his tie, although he wasn't actually wearing a tie.

"Sure, sure. Fiduciary responsibility," Lizzy growled out, still laughing at him.

"So we voted, and agreed to accept the policy changes. It was close, but Bob got a couple of his Raven buddies to vote with him, I don't know how. And that's when I stood up and announced that I was going to use the flexible work-schedule option and take Fridays off to be with Emma, at 80% pay."

She looked up at him in surprise. "Wow! Wow. How did they take that?"

"Pandemonium. Total pandemonium. Skip Schiffer actually said something about my father turning over in his grave. The end of the world as we know it." He rolled his eyes.

"Right. 'Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria,'" Lizzy quoted Bill Murray in Ghostbusters and nodded in agreement.

"I don't know. Maybe we'll lose some investors because of this, but I really think the bottom line will show that we're right, in the end."

"Plus, you're looking forward to spending more time with your daughter, right?" Lizzy tweaked him. He really was just so captivated by the economics that he couldn't see anything else sometimes.

He chuckled self-deprecatingly. "Yeah, of course." He leaned over and tickled Emma's tummy.

Lizzy took his other hand. "I'm really proud of you. That wasn't an easy thing to take a stand on, especially with those particular people."

He shrugged. "You do what you have to do for your family, whether it's, you know, your own little family or the bigger one, the company."

She squeezed his hand and looked up at him with eyes full of admiration. "Not everybody does that, though. And the fact that you do is one of the many reasons I love you."

Lizzy and Emma were visiting Will at his office when Ahmed brought little baby Ava to meet everyone for the first time. She'd been home with him and Phil for a few weeks, but she'd had some medical problems that had kept her from going out and meeting people for a while. Now she was doing well and was ready to face the world. Ahmed had her in a baby carrier just like Emma's.

"We're trying to maximize the whole bonding thing," Ahmed said, pointing to the carrier on his chest. "Not that there's anything wrong with strollers, of course."

"No, no, not that there's anything wrong with that," Lizzy joked along with him. She handed Emma to Will and came to stand by Ahmed's side so she could peer around and look at the baby. "Wow, she is just adorable. I'm assuming you named her Ava after Ava Gardner, right? Because she totally has Ava Gardner eyes."

Ahmed agreed with great enthusiasm. "I know, right? That's just what I said to Phil, but he didn't see it. He liked the name anyway, though. He has an aunt Ava. So here we are."

He and Lizzy talked babies for a couple of minutes while Will stood listening, distractedly trying to keep Emma from detaching his oh-so-fascinating tie pin and eating it or stabbing him with it. Finally Lizzy glanced over at him and noticed that he wasn't joining in.

"So, Ahmed, have you heard Will's big news?" she asked.

"Well, I did hear a rumor, but I didn't want to, you know, presume anything." Ahmed also turned to look at Will with some curiosity.

He cleared his throat. "Yes, it's true. I'm going to stay home on Fridays to be with Emma, starting at the end of the month. I'm sorry, I know that's going to make scheduling difficult."

Ahmed waved it off. "No, no, don't worry about that. There are lots of people who aren't ever available on particular days of the week, for whatever reason, and we always work things out. It's no problem, really."

Will looked puzzled. "Really? You never told me that."

"Oh, sure. I usually don't bother you with the details. Some people take three-day weekends all summer, or save one afternoon a week for golf, or set aside Friday afternoon to get home before sundown for the Sabbath, or that kind of thing. We work around it. Some of the assistants don't even give a reason."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh. You know, it could be a confidential medical situation or something like that, so they just don't say. For example, I could just tell them, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Darcy isn't available on Fridays.' Period. They won't ask why. "

"OK. Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you."

"Of course." Ahmed looked at him speculatively for a moment. "I hope it's not out of line for me to say this, and maybe you have it all worked out exactly what you're going to do with Emma on your day together, but, um, it's a little weird out there for dads with babies."

Lizzy nodded in agreement. "Yes, that's true. It's a woman's world. I've gone for days where Will was the only man I talked to, except for maybe a taxi driver."

"Right. There are lots of activities for moms and babies, but not so many for dads and babies. So, just to let you know, um, there's this group, called Daddy and Me, that has playdates on Wednesdays. They meet up somewhere fun in the city every week. They also have some neighborhood groups that might meet on Friday, too."

Will looked a little uncomfortable as he shifted Emma to his other arm.

Ahmed saw his discomfort and seemed to think he knew the reason. He rushed to say, "Oh, you know, it's not all gay dads. I think it's usually at least, oh, 75% straight guys. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there. I'm sorry, I hope it wasn't inappropriate."

"Of course not. Thank you. I think it sounds like a really good resource," Lizzy smiled and hastened to reassure him. "We'll check it out."

Will looked a little pained, and once they were alone again, Lizzy asked him why.

"You're not afraid everyone's going to think you're gay, are you? Don't be ridiculous."

"What? No. Who cares about that in this day and age? I just wonder who these guys are. Are they, uh, you know, a bunch of unemployed slackers? I don't have anything in common with people like that."

"Well, I don't know. I guess you'll have to go and see for yourself. But I would guess that the stay-at-home dads do it for a lot of different reasons, same as stay-at-home moms. Anyway, why are you thinking about doing it, even if it's only one day a week?"

"OK, all right, I get your point," he grumbled. "God, I'm turning into some kind of damn hippie or something." His lips twitched a little at one corner, so she knew he wasn't serious.

Lizzy looked over his bespoke suit and his Rolex and his manicured fingernails and all the other markers of wealth and power he wore so effortlessly, and cut loose with a big laugh. "Yeah, I don't think you have much to worry about there, sweetie, unless you're secretly wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt under the rest of that."

In mid-April, while in line to buy tickets outside the Bronx Zoo, Lizzy received a very unexpected call from Naomi Goodwin, the Dean at Yale Law School.

"Lizzy," Dean Goodwin said. "I have a problem, and I wondered if maybe the solution might be good for both you and me."

Lizzy was flattered that Dean Goodwin had thought of her, of course, but she had no idea what she might be talking about.

"A faculty member just came to see me to let me know that she's having a baby in early October, so she won't be able to teach her classes fall semester. Now I have to scramble to find teaching replacements, because students have already registered for classes. Leah Hoffman told me you might be looking for some kind of an academic appointment. Would you be interested in teaching a class, just one, on national security law and human rights? I thought you'd be a great match for it."

Lizzy stepped out of line and into a quiet corner of the entrance courtyard so she could hear better.

"Wow. That's—I'm incredibly honored that you would ask me. Wow. I guess...I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions, but I'm not sure what they are just yet."

"Yes, I'm sorry to hit you with this out of the blue. It's only an adjunct position, and it doesn't pay very much—" Dean Goodwin went on to tell her all the details. Lizzy told her she'd get back to her about it as soon as possible.

After they'd hung up, Lizzy texted Will and asked him to call her when he could. That was their code for "nothing's wrong, but I want to talk to you soon." About an hour later, after he got out of a meeting, he called while she and Emma were checking out the giraffes in the African Plains exhibit. Emma kicked and cooed and reached for the giraffes, which were awfully cute.

"So," Lizzy concluded, "it's a seminar, it meets once a week on Wednesdays, and it won't have more than 15 students. What do you think? Purely from a practical standpoint, could we manage that? It's an hour and a half each way from Penn Station to New Haven on the Acela."(2)

"Do you think you can handle it? You sound really excited about the idea."

And she was, she realized. She was breathless with excitement, actually. Lizzy looked up at the trees, where the pleasant spring sun was peeking through the new leaves. "Yeah, I am. But when I think about it practically, I'm not so sure. It won't start until September. It's hard for me to know how I'll feel by then."

"OK. Let's keep talking about it. When do you have to let Dean Goodwin know?"

"By the beginning of next week, at the latest. She needs to get this settled ASAP."

"Sounds good. Look, I have to run to another meeting. Oh, don't forget, we have the WPD spring gala tomorrow night."

Lizzy thought, ugh. She was not a big fan of the party that WPD put on every spring to thank its investors and attract new ones. But of course she didn't say that. And at least she didn't have to plan it. That was all left up to Will's social organizer.

"Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten," she said. "Gabby is going to watch Emma for us. We're good to go."

And indeed the next evening Lizzy found herself sitting very still, with her eyes closed, in a special chair in her bathroom as a professional stylist named Petra finished applying her makeup. Lizzy was squeezed, with the aid of some incredibly powerful super-elastic, cantilevered undergarments, into a spangly aqua designer evening gown chosen with the help of a personal shopper at Saks. It was broiling hot under the cape protecting the dress, and she despised the smell and stiffness of hairspray and the way the sprayed-on foundation made her skin feel. It had to be done, though, so she did it and tried to be gracious and to keep her grumpiness and complaints to herself.

Ah, the gala. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways, she thought, trying not to twitch her nose or sneeze. Lizzy always puzzled over how to say that word, gala. GAY-la? GAH-la? GAL-a? Since before she and Will had gotten married, she had always dutifully gone to the gala and smiled and socialized, but she felt deeply uncomfortable with the schmoozing in a way that she didn't at a regular business function. It was hard hitting people up for money, thanking them for what they'd already delivered while asking for still more. Will was really good at it, since he'd had so much practice at it over the years as he'd recruited investors for WPD and donors for the Fitzwilliam-Darcy Trust. So Lizzy dutifully stood by, smiling ornamentally, and let him do his thing. And this year she wouldn't even be able to mention her job as a starting point in the conversation, giving her something to talk about with the men, because she didn't have a job. Crap.

Finally Petra gave her one last brush of powder and tucked one final piece of hair up before whipping off the cape and pronouncing her ready for business. Will called from the bedroom to see if she was ready, so Lizzy thanked Petra, stood up, jammed on her high heels, and headed into the bedroom while Petra packed up her masses of heavy equipment.

When she walked in, Will looked up from adjusting his cufflinks, and suddenly she thought his eyes were going to pop right out of his head. She'd never seen him look like that before.

"What?" she said, feeling around self-consciously to check whether she'd had a nip slip or forgotten to zip up something crucial.

"Wow. Wow. You look great."

He seemed physically incapable of taking his eyes off her chest, so she glanced down to see what the big deal was. And big appeared to be the operative word. The dress was reasonably low-cut, and, courtesy of breastfeeding and the cantilevered undergarment, it seemed she had unwittingly acquired a rather impressive, Rubenesque décolletage. The necklace he'd given her for Christmas, the one with a diamond pendant pointing like a neon sign straight down at her two cheeky gals, didn't exactly draw the eyes away, either.

She held aloft an imaginary trophy and said grandly, "I'd like to thank the Academy for this award, and also my daughter, Emma, for providing me with this fabulous rack, which apparently my husband finds irresistible."

Will laughed and came over to kiss her. She stiff-armed him, though, and said, "Sorry, I'd love to, really I would, but it took two hours to paint this face on, and I can't screw it up now. Petra would never forgive me."

So Will bent down and kissed her somewhat lower instead, which was why she was giggling and squealing when the intercom in the living room rang a moment later to let them know that the car was waiting for them downstairs. They kissed Emma goodbye, turning around to wave to her and Gabby in the foyer as they boarded the elevator to the lobby.

The gala was in the Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Gardens, all done up in fairy lights that spilled from the greenhouse and out under a tent in the gardens. It was fantastic, of course. Will's social planner really knew what she was doing, thought Lizzy. When the guests started to come in, Lizzy plastered on her very best society matron smile and welcomed them as Will easily conversed with board members and friends of his parents, people he'd known most of his life. She was relieved, though, to see some younger people come in, too, including several couples she knew and liked from Will's club. See, this won't be so bad, she thought to herself as she was able to say more sincere hellos to Stephen and Valerie, Carla and Hal, and other friendly faces as they arrived.

And she did have a nice time chatting with those couples after she and Will closed down the receiving line and drifted inside the beautiful Victorian greenhouse full of glass, metal, and tropical greenery. They hadn't seen several of the couples since Emma's birth. Lizzy enjoyed catching up with them, and Will clearly did as well.

After that, though, it was back to business with the pillars of society. Lizzy smiled and nodded and agreed while Will talked to the men about golf and sailing and the stock market and the Yankees and cigars and other manly things.

While this was going on, one of the wives, Mrs. Pendleton, who apparently did not have her own first name, very kindly turned to Lizzy, and said,

"Hello, dear. It's lovely to see you again. How are you?"

Lizzy smiled back and said, "How are you?" because Will had taught her it was never polite to actually answer that question. "I heard from Will that you had been ill." She thought it was something pretty serious, though she couldn't remember exactly what. Mrs. Pendleton looked and dressed kind of like Queen Elizabeth, and she was one of the truly nice ones in the Raven crowd.

"Oh, it was nothing, just some surgery. Did I just hear from Will that you're at home full time now?" She smoothly changed the subject.

Lizzy nodded, not sure where this was going, but gamely playing along.

"That's wonderful. I suppose you'll have time to spend with the Trust now? I was a friend of Will's mother Anne, you know, and I spent a lot of time with her at the Trust, when she was just getting it off the ground. She was so wonderful and kind. It's a shame you never met her. I loved the work she was doing, funding art classes for less fortunate children. They were so sweet, and so grateful, you know."

Lizzy smiled and nodded at the elegant, if frail, older woman. "Yes, Will has told me so much about her, and what a lovely person she was." OK, that was stretching things a bit, but what the hell? Mrs. Pendleton was old-fashioned, and her heart was in the right place.

"And I see you and Will have continued that work. What else has the Trust been doing these days? I'm afraid I haven't been feeling well enough to follow it lately."

"Oh, of course, I'm sorry," Lizzy said sympathetically. Someone bumped into her from behind, and, the sound of a glass smashing on the tile floor distracted her enough that she didn't think to censor her next words properly. "Well, we've mainly been working to establish an integrated treatment network for at-risk teenagers, you know, drugs, and suicide and alcoholism, that kind of thing. AIDS, of course."

Mrs. Pendleton's penciled eyebrows rocketed up to her '50s bouffant hairline. "Oh, my," she breathed.

Lizzy missed it because she had craned her head around just then to see what was going on with the broken glass. She continued her earlier thought as she turned back to face Mrs. Pendleton.

"And, we're currently considering a proposal to make a major donation to a shelter for battered and homeless women in Harlem." Mrs. Pendleton now looked positively stricken. She was so startled that she started coughing and clutched at her husband's arm for support.

Damn, Lizzy thought, why had she said all that? After all this time she knew better. She should just have said, "'We're doing work in support of underprivileged women and children" or "we're helping the homeless" or something innocuous and noblesse oblige-ish like that.

Lizzy hurriedly looked around and signaled for a waiter to come over and asked him to get Mrs. Pendleton a glass of water.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Pendleton. Are you all right?" Lizzy asked.

In a moment the waiter came back with the glass of water on his tray of hors d'oeuvres, and Lizzy handed it to Mrs. Pendleton. Lizzy felt terrible about having shocked the poor woman. She smiled and gestured back at the waiter, who had been hanging back to see if Mrs. Pendleton wanted to return the glass to him.

"Canapé, anyone?" Lizzy asked eagerly.

She heard herself say the words, and suddenly she was seized by a ridiculous and absolutely unstoppable urge to laugh her head off.

Oh. My. God., she thought to herself. I can't believe I just said that.

She put her hand up to her mouth and tried to strangle her laugh into a cough somehow. "Could you excuse me for a minute, please?" she said between gasps to Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton. "I'm sorry. Excuse me."

She tripped off as quickly as she could further into the greenhouse, where she plopped down onto a wrought iron bench elegantly situated amongst wild green tropical trees and plants and laughed until she cried. Thank God her mascara was waterproof, and she sure hoped the rest of the stuff on her face was properly shellacked on, too. Just as she was calming down, she noticed that she was surrounded by giant Venus flytraps and some other carnivorous plants, which struck her somehow as being strangely appropriate, and that set her off again.

Will had of course seen her leave the main room, and he followed her in a moment later. He sat down next to her and rubbed her back. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" He handed her his handkerchief.

She took it, still shaking with laughter, and carefully dabbed at her eyes. "Oh, my God. I was standing there talking to Mrs. Pendleton, and then suddenly I realized that I've quit my fucking job and I'm serving fucking canapés to your investors," she gasped, twisting her face up into a comical moue. It was exactly what she had sworn she would never, ever do, and she'd even left him once, long ago when they were first starting out together, because that was the kind of wife he had wanted.

He barked out a little laugh, too, before he managed to rein it back in. Obviously he remembered it as well. "Oh God, is right." He sat and rubbed her back while she regained her composure.

"I think I just need to sit here for a minute and catch my breath. I'll be all right. Let's talk about it after this is all over. Tomorrow, maybe. I think, uh...I think maybe this is kind of a sign. You know, a sign that I should take the job at Yale. I think I need to get back into it. Have something of my own again, my own identity." She took a deep breath and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Yeah." He nodded. "I understand. I think it's a good idea, too."

When they got home a little after midnight, Emma had just waked up and was crying on Gabby's shoulder while the babysitter was warming up a bottle. Lizzy took Emma from her while Gabby gave them the Emma report. Then they said goodnight and she headed downstairs with her pay and cab fare in hand.

Lizzy took Emma into the bedroom and laid the baby down on the bed while trying to squirm out of the top of the spangly dress. Damn. It was impossible. She called for Will to come help her.

As he unzipped her, he said drily, "I have to admit that I was looking forward to getting you out of this dress, but not under these exact circumstances."

"Thanks," she said as she managed to wiggle out of the top. "Wait, don't go anywhere just yet. I need help with this thing, this deathtrap, too." She pointed to her gravity-defying undergarment. "Sorry, I have no idea how it unlatches or whatever it does. Or where." He inspected it for a few moments before discovering a series of hidden hooks in the back.

"Wow, that's some sophisticated engineering there," he commented as it all popped apart in his hands. He whisked it away.

"That's what it takes to get me all in the right place and looking beautiful these days," she said, lying down on the bed, pulling up the covers, and finally, finally getting her full breast up to Emma's moving mouth, which had been phantom-nursing during the disassembling process.

"No, it doesn't." He had that look in his eye.

"Hold that thought, OK?" she smiled up at him. "Let me get her down, and I'll meet you in the guest room in, what, twenty minutes?" She knew that a lot of parents in the world, in places where the whole family slept together, just did it in the bed with the kids, but she couldn't bring herself to do that.

He shook his head no, took off his suit, and spooned up behind her in his shorts, propped up on his elbow so he could look over her shoulder to watch Emma nurse.

Eventually they did manage to stumble together to the dimly lit guest room for an enthusiastic, though by now very sleepy, lovemaking session.

Afterwards, rolling over onto her side, she made the mistake of looking down to see the devastation that pregnancy and childbirth had left behind on her once-lithe body.

"Oh God, you really don't mind all these squishy bits?" She poked her stomach with her index finger and watched the flesh fall back. The stretch marks had faded to silver now, but everything was irreversibly altered. She mourned the loss of her youthful physique, which she realized now she had never properly appreciated while she'd still had it.

"What?" he said, unable to tear his eyes off the territory further to the North.

"Down here."

"Oh," he said dismissively. "You know that's not where my interests lie."

She snickered, "Aha, so the bodacious tatas overshadow everything else, huh?"

"Literally, to my great delight," he said, reaching for her.

"God, what is it with men and boobs?"

"If you have to ask, you'll never understand."

"Hey! Ouch! Emma bit me there with her new tooth just now."

"Stop?" he asked, worried.

"No—try over there." She pointed. "But remember, Emma has dibs now, and she doesn't know how to share yet."

"Mmmmph."

"What?"

"I won't impinge on her territory. Too much. It's not fair, though."

"What's not fair?"

"She gets to go to second base with you every two hours, and I don't," he teased.

"Hmm. You know what isn't fair? That parenthood has turned me into—" she tried to think of the right comparison— "Shelley Winters, or Madea or something, while you're still Cary Grant. God, look at you!"

"Seriously? Do you really think that about yourself?" he asked, suddenly sober.

In a small voice, she said, "Well...yeah." She looked up at the ceiling.

He sat up a little to get a better look at her new expanses. She heard him clear his throat, as if he knew it was really important to get this right.

"That's...no. I don't know how to say how...beautiful you are to me. No, really, I mean it."

"But now I look so—motherly. Motherly isn't sexy."

"Excuse me, but do I look like I think you're not sexy? Did I look that way earlier tonight?"

She had to admit that, in all his glory, he most decidedly did not, had not.

"Even though it's all changed? Nothing's where it was before."

"If it hadn't changed, we wouldn't have Emma. And that's just—it's unthinkable."

"Thanks." She paused as she looked him over appraisingly in return. "I almost wish you had some scars, too, though, to even things out."

"Oh, I do, but only on the inside." He smirked, and then paused before going on more seriously. "I'm starting to fall apart, you know. I think I need knee surgery. Maybe back surgery, too. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to play squash without it."

She put her hand on his shoulder in concern. "Really? Why didn't you say anything before?"

"Don't want you to think you married an old man." He pointed to the gray hairs at his temple.

"Right. You just get more distinguished while I turn into a wizened old crone. Like I said, it's not fair."

"Oh, but you're my wizened old crone." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Shut up," she laughed. "You're not helping."

"More like a stone-age fertility goddess," he said, kissing her neck.

"Let's not put that part to the test just yet, OK?"

He agreed. They fell asleep in each other's arms and miraculously, miraculously, slept until 5:30, when Emma's wails heralded the breaking of another dawn, the beginning of another bright new day full of promise, expectation, and even more change.

Footnotes:

(1) ROI means "return on investment." Everybody loves a high ROI.

(2) The Acela is the "high speed" train running up and down the Northeast corridor, i.e. from Boston south to Providence, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. With all those stops, of course it doesn't actually go very fast, especially not compared to the TGV in France or the Shinkansen in Japan. It's still a lot faster than the snail-like local train, of course.

Any thoughts on canapés, aging bodies, or greenhouses? Leave 'em just below, please.