said later, nestling in the crook of his arm in bed and ignoring his earlier reaction. Of course he was bound to react badly, she thought. They’d never discussed children before, or certainly not in anything other than the abstract, and it was bound to take a little time to get used to.
But get used to it he would. Bee was, is, a woman accustomed to getting what she wants. Daniel has always said she is strong enough for both of them, and it is true. When Bee sets her sight on something it is rare for her not to get it, and she had set her sights on Daniel from the very first moment she laid eyes on him.
Stella was the flower girl at their wedding. At eighteen months old, she clutched at her mother’s Vera Wang skirts and her father looked down adoringly as the minister pronounced them man and wife, acknowledging, with humor and a pointed look at Bee’s pregnant stomach, that perhaps they had misunderstood the natural order of things.
Daniel hadn’t expected to fall in love the way he had the moment Stella was placed in his arms in the delivery room. He looked down at her red, scrunched-up face, and he felt his heart almost literally explode.
And then along came Lizzie, and despite his fears that he could never love another child as much as he loved Stella, his heart expanded to fit them both.
Daniel still wakes up every morning excited about seeing his girls. He has been known to wake them up early, leaving Bee fast asleep, just so he can have some alone time with them before he goes to work, sitting at the kitchen table as they eat their cereal and asking them very seriously about their thoughts on school, friends, life.
It is his love for the girls that keeps him going, for together they are the light of his life, and if that life doesn’t feel quite right, if he doesn’t feel the way he thinks he ought to feel for Bee, it is comfortable, and easy, and what, after all, is the alternative?
When Lizzie was one, and Stella three, they moved out of the city into a pretty 1940s cottage in Weston, Connecticut. For a while Daniel commuted into the city, but his work was going well and after a year or so he started developing property in Norwalk, and soon they were able to move into a big new house they built themselves in Westport. They should have been happy. Bee certainly seemed to be happy; she had thrown herself into the children’s school, the PTA and various organizations, and forever seemed to be seeing this one for lunch and that one for a meeting, arranging play dates and dinners, and organizing trunk shows in the spectacular great room in their new house.
While Bee was keeping busy, Daniel found that he couldn’t stop running, and for a long time he thought that no one was noticing, thought that no one realized he wasn’t happy.
Daniel honestly thought that if he filled up his life with distractions, he wouldn’t have to face the truth. And the truth was that he adored his girls more than anything in the world, and he loved Bee.
But this marriage wasn’t right.
Bee had been his best friend, but there was little left. He felt, more often than not, that they were two ships passing in the night, occasionally making contact, not because of passion but because of duty, because he didn’t know how to say no, because there were only so many nights you could come home late and walk up the stairs with a heavy heart, praying she would be asleep.
He hadn’t wanted to get married, but he had been persuaded to, and he had hoped that even though it wasn’t what he wanted, perhaps if he ran fast enough, long enough, he would find that he had reached the end of the road and it had all turned out okay.
Couples counseling. It was Bee’s idea, and not the first time. They have, twice before, gone into therapy, both individually and jointly, and although Daniel has never been able to fully open up, and even though both times were short-lived, somehow they managed to recover something of their equilibrium and carry on with their marriage as if they were happy.
Bee started seeing a therapist soon after they met. She had baggage, she said, and it was so liberating, so useful to be able to have