She feels emboldened by his blush, his darting eyes. She places her hand over his newspaper, her left hand, the one with the cubic zirconia winking in the weak morning light.
He sighs. “Look, I’ve wanted to talk to you about this for a while. This whole Portland thing. It’s not really working out for me.”
Chloe feels a rush of adrenaline, fight or flight, flooding her extremities. The hand on the newspaper shakes. She brings it back to her lap.
“I mean, I know you love it here, and you’re crazy about your job, but I’m just not cut out for this. I need to be closer to the world of extreme sports, and I’ve found something really cutting-edge, really—”
“Wait a minute.” Chloe’s voice grows stronger. “We chose Portland because of its proximity to a huge variety of extreme sports. You’ve got the gorge, the coast, Mount Hood, I don’t know what more you want.”
“Hear me out.” Dan squares his shoulders. “The boys from Tarifa have something we’re looking into, and it’s in the States, so it works for your career and everything. Have you ever heard of kiteboarding?”
“Where is it?”
“It’s like windsurfing, but so much better. You’re riding this thing that looks like a wakeboard, like a snowboard, and you’re attached to a giant, inflated kite, a wing, that’s like thirty meters above your head, so the wind is much cleaner, less gusty up there. It’s a much better ride, and it’s totally new, cutting-edge. I’ve seen videos where guys are catching huge air, like fifty feet of air. If we could get into it now, become sponsored riders, a distributorship in Maui, start our own kite surf shop, the boys and I could teach lessons, maybe you could do something with horses again, and we’d be back to the ocean, back to our old life…”
“Oh, honey, Hawaii?” Chloe looks out the window. It is starting to rain, tiny silver pellets zinging against the glass, pooling in the last brown leaves of the rhododendron outside.
Dan deflates, just a little. “Yeah. It’s where it’s at. I’ve been looking into this for a while.”
“But my job, the birth mothers? It’s so expensive, so far away.”
“It would be the U.S., so no work permits. We’ve already got a business plan, the guys and me—hang on, let me get my laptop.”
Chloe sinks back into the ladderback of her chair. She picks up her tea, sips. Hawaii? Above her, she can hear Dan thumping down the stairs, and he comes back with his laptop. He squeezes her to his side, puts it down on the table, kisses the top of her head.
“It’s just warming up, babe, hang on.” He rubs her shoulders vigorously.
Chloe puts her mug down next to the computer. She knows he thinks he is winning her over, and her heart breaks for them both. For the first time in months he is energized, practically hopping around. This is her boy, her Dan, the surfer, the dreamer, the one she fell in love with on the wind-whipped beaches of Andalusia.
“What about my job?” Chloe says quietly.
Dan opens a Word document, Windsong Kiteboarding Business Plan. “I’m sure there’s agencies in Hawaii. People get knocked up everywhere.”
“But…” Chloe tries again. “What about my dad, and the girls?”
AFTER CHLOE’S MOTHER DIED, Dr. Pinter did all the right things—staying in the shuttered white house in Akron where Chloe’s friends used to devour her mother’s hot maple scones and pots of milky herbal tea in the sunny kitchen. He hired Martha, a homely woman with a penchant for crosswords whom he concluded would be a constant in Chloe’s life, would not be whisked away to marriage or exciting jobs like the college girls he interviewed. Martha moved into the room over the garage, quietly shuttled Chloe in her dented Olds-mobile sedan to riding lessons, flute ensemble, dentist appointments, summer day camp. Dr. Pinter kept his hours at the pediatric practice rigid, was always home at six o’clock for dinner so Martha could go to Scrabble club or choir practice. He sent Chloe to a therapist when the riptide of anorexia and substance abuse claimed several of her classmates. He took her skating every Saturday afternoon in the winter, and they played tennis at the swim club on Sunday mornings in the summer. He didn’t date, didn’t move from his evening armchair and the British television comedies that Chloe tried to suffer through just to sit next to him until she went to college. But he was going through the