Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,45

busy for an hour in the park, though, when a spring day is beckoning.”

Sunny smiled, but she could feel that flutter in her heart again, the annoying ba-dum, ba-dum that began every time she saw Ralph.

“I hope you’ll both come to the opening. With your husbands, of course.”

“Why spoil it with my husband?” Ellen said with a coy smile.

All the women flirted with Ralph. He was tall and muscled, and his angular face and wavy black hair set off his cerulean eyes. The day’s growth of stubble he usually sported on his chin added to his rakish good looks. With his wife’s income as an investment banker, Ralph could stay home in their loft apartment and pursue his artistic talent. Caring for Brianna when nursery school wasn’t in session was part of their marital bargain. An attractive man in a gaggle of playground moms—it was inevitable that he’d become the object of their fantasies.

“Well, your husband can keep you company while my wife is dragging me around to meet and greet.”

“There you go, bringing up your wife again.”

“Yes, I suppose that is an annoying habit of mine.”

“Well, I’ll overlook it this time, but really, what’s the point of having a man in our midst if he’s just going to talk about his wife?” Ellen said with a fake pout.

“I’ll work on that.” Ralph said with mock seriousness.

Sunny envied the casual joking of her friends. She didn’t consider herself to be shy, yet something in her didn’t allow for playfulness. A piece missing from her, she thought when she bothered to think about herself. She looked at her watch, a digital chronometer she’d bought for timing her runs but wore all the time, preferring it over the gold Rado watch Eric had given her when Rachel was born. The gold watch was beautiful, with its round face surrounded by tiny diamonds, and she wore it on the few occasions when they got dressed up. She’d never owned anything so beautiful. She never really felt comfortable wearing it, though; it didn’t fit her sense of herself. But she’d had that feeling about a lot of things over the course of her life.

She stood up and called over to Rachel. “It’s time to go meet Daddy. Say goodbye to your friends.” She turned to Ralph and Ellen and said goodbye. As she walked away, she wondered if their conversation would change with just the two of them. She wondered whether, if she had been left alone with Ralph, she’d gather up the gumption to flirt with him. It wasn’t as if she didn’t love Eric; certainly she did. But with his long hours at the hospital, leaving her alone with her thoughts, she sometimes let her mind wander.

Silly of me, she thought, as she took Rachel’s hand and headed to the hospital to meet her husband for lunch.

The next evening, Sunny fussed over the floral arrangement. She’d picked out each flower that afternoon at the florist two blocks from her apartment. There were bunches of flowers already made up into bouquets, wrapped in cellophane, and ready to be placed in a glass vase. Sunny liked arranging the flowers herself, though, deciding which ones worked well with each other, how a gardenia looked different when placed next to fern or rubbing up against a daffodil. The flowers were beautiful this time of year. No matter how she arranged them, it would brighten the dark foyer. It had to be exact, though, an elegant display sitting atop their antique foyer table. It seemed as if she’d searched every antique shop in the East Village before venturing north to Gramercy Park, looking for the right table for their entryway. And then, almost magically, she’d stumbled across a slim dark mahogany table,built in the early 1900s by a Chinese artisan at a neighbor’s tag sale. How lucky she was! It was just what she fancied, just the style that Eric’s mother would admire. The flowers had to be positioned just right to complement the luscious wood grain of the table. That’s what she wanted Eric’s parents to see first when they entered her apartment—perfection.

It wasn’t the first time Eric’s parents had visited from the home they’d retired to in Florida. They had visited once before, shortly after she and Eric moved to New York City and Eric had started his residency. They had hardly any furniture then. The painted white walls were peeling at the edges and the wood floors were bare. They weren’t expected to have