of him since they left London. Coco just told her that he was away writing a book, which Bethanie was used to, and knew they couldn’t call him then.
She asked her mother one day on the beach in Southampton why they had no daddy. Coco told her that some people just didn’t, and Bethanie was satisfied with her answer, for now. She would tell her the truth when she was older, in the gentlest way she could. Coco had heard from Leslie that Nigel was living in Dubai and entertained in Sussex, whenever he came back to England. She had no idea what he was doing and didn’t care.
She had dinner with Sam whenever he had time, which wasn’t often. Tamar was still depressed five months after David’s birth, and he seemed like he was losing patience with her. He was doing almost everything for the kids, and he and Coco had dinner wherever he could eat meals that weren’t kosher. He had just turned thirty, leading the life his parents had wanted for him, but not the one he had wanted when they went to school.
“Tamar has been talking about going to law school,” he told her, looking irritated. “I don’t know who she thinks is going to take care of the kids if she does, unless we hire a full-time nanny, which costs a fortune. We have a woman who comes in to help part-time and has kids of her own. My mother isn’t up to it anymore. And I can’t do any more than I already am. I haven’t had a day off from work or kids in four years.” He loved his children, and his wife, but Coco had the feeling he was drowning, and didn’t know what she could do to help him. He asked if she had heard from Ian, and she said she hadn’t, and he stopped asking, not wanting to upset her.
Bethanie went trick-or-treating around the hospital, and finally in November, Jeff and his team declared her cured. There was no sign of leukemia in any of her tests. Technically, she was in remission, but he thought there was a strong possibility that the disease would not return. They had a party to celebrate it with ice cream and balloons in the pediatric ward.
She was officially discharged from the hospital. All the nurses and doctors came to say goodbye to Bethanie. And on the last day when she went to thank Jeff again, Coco handed him an envelope with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar check in it. It was less than he wanted, but it was an enormous gift.
She had dinner with Sam that night. They were leaving for London the next day. She had been there for six months. It felt like an eternity to her.
“Do you think you’d ever move back here?” Sam asked her wistfully. He had loved having her nearby during Bethanie’s treatments, and being able to see her anytime he wanted, even every day for a short time. He told her that she had gotten him through a hard time. Tamar’s depression had finally started to lift. She said now that she didn’t want to have any more children, and this time Sam believed her. The last one had taken too big a toll on her. Sam admitted to Coco he was relieved. “Four is a lot of kids.”
“I don’t think I’d move back,” she said. “I’m going to keep the apartment here, though. I’ve been thinking about selling the house in London. It’s too big for us, and it has bad memories for me now.” She tried not to think of Nigel there, but the house was more than she wanted to deal with. “And I’ve been thinking of going back to school.”
“You too?” He was surprised. “That’s all Tamar can think of. I’m beginning to think she was too young to get married, and I sure was. Some of my friends from college aren’t even married yet. And I’ve been married for five years, and have four kids.”
“Do you regret it?” she asked, and he hesitated.
“Sometimes. It’s a lot with my father’s business to run.” He still considered it his father’s and not his own. “I’d rather have a smaller office and deal with bigger clients. I’m slowly getting into investment advising full-time, which I like a lot better than accounting. My mother is opposed to it, and so is Tamar, but it’s a much more exciting and lucrative field for me, although it involves