and cheese. When Russ wakes up in the night, I'll get up with him."
"He sleeps through the night, now. He's slept through the night for months."
"I knew that." Not exactly. "I just meant...if he has nightmares or..." David looked away, scrubbed a hand through his hair, faced his wife again. "I'll do just about anything to have you all home again."
"'Just about anything,'" his smart and beautiful wife echoed.
"That's right." He tried blustering his way through the qualifier. "You name it."
"I won't go home to the man you've been lately, David." She dropped her gaze to pick at some lint on the blanket. "That man made me doubt myself. I thought maybe I wasn't enough because I don't have a degree or because I 'only' take care of our kids. But I loved that life we had before. I enjoyed being the woman who lived it, and I thought we were very happy. Maybe I can't have it back. Maybe I'll have to go to work or go to college because we're not going to be together anymore."
Her words sent those dull knives digging into him again. What he'd done, the pulling away, it hadn't been about any failing of hers. "Tess..."
"But I know I deserve a man like the one you were before you turned forty, and I'm not going to settle for anything less."
David jumped to his feet and paced to the window, staring out over the sand to the ocean that looked like a black hole in the night. The same as what would be inside him if he lost what he and Tess had together. He didn't know how to stop that from happening, and he felt as if he was drowning in all that darkness already. The cold seemed to be overtaking him, dragging him deep, deep, deep.
He rested his forehead against the cool glass. "I love all of you so much, Tess. Too much."
Behind him, he sensed her sitting up on the sofa. "We love you too. Why is this a problem?"
His hand flailed wildly. "Rebecca is a teenager, for God's sake!"
"Yes, well," his wife said, her voice dry, "after the past couple of weeks I think I'm a little bit more aware of that than you."
"And Russ..." He couldn't finish the thought because it had a stranglehold on his throat.
"What is it about Russ?" Tess asked. "I've been racking and racking my brain trying to understand why you've treated him differently than the other babies."
She stood now and came closer to him. "Do you...do you have some doubts that you're his father?"
Startled, David turned. "What?"
Her hands were in the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. There was a paint stain on it, the pale sky color of their youngest child's room. He remembered her up on a ladder with a roller, her pregnant belly round under the cotton fleece. He'd lifted it from her taut skin, his kiss for her and their growing baby boy.
Tess smoothed her hair. "I just thought maybe that's why you're so cool to him."
"Of course I know he's mine! And not just because I know it, but because - " David shoved his hands in his own pockets and transferred his gaze to his shoes " - he has my ear."
"What? You mumbled that last bit."
"He has my ear."
"Your ear?"
David felt the back of his neck go hot and he lifted one shoulder. "The rim of my right ear is not the same as the rim of my left. It's thicker. Larger."
Tess stomped right up to him then and took his jaw in her cool hands. She turned his head this way and that. "You're right. I've known you for fourteen years and I never noticed that before."
"I didn't want you to notice. I used to get teased about it when I was a kid. It was worse then, but it's still a...a flaw."
"You have a lot worse flaws than that," Tess informed him, then she hurried out of the room.
He looked after her, unsure of her purpose until she came back, wearing a bemused expression. "You're right. Russ does have your ear."
"I talked to the pediatrician about it," David muttered. "I asked about plastic surgery."
Her arms slammed across her chest. "No one is changing a hair on my little baby's body. You're crazy."
"That's pretty close to what Dr. Gomez said."
There were roses in her cheeks now, and she looked as if her health had returned with her indignation. Her blue eyes blazed at him, and he found her