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“He’s not—” I began, but I could tell by the way her mouth—those soft, plush lips—twisted, that she was having me on.

She knew he wasn’t mine. We’d talked at length last time about us both having two girls.

I tore my eyes from her lips. “This is Jack, my buddy Eli’s nephew. My girls are a little big for airplane rides.”

A lot big actually.

Jack, probably a little disoriented from hanging sideways, tried to take a step, but fell on his butt, giggling. I reached down and helped him to his feet. He made his way over to the sandbox next to us.

“Teenagers, as I remember,” she said.

“God, almost adults. Hannah’s 18, Remy’s 16. And yours are Emma and Macy.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Good memory.”

“Kids are easy.”

“Unlike full-grown people?”

“Exactly.”

She was smiling. She thought I was kidding. Kidswereeasy. They were innocent. Funny. Didn’t let you down the way adults did.

“Your girls here with you?”

“No,” she said. “I like coming to the playground on my own. Slides are my favorite.”

“Funny.”

She smiled, and something inside of me unfurled. Fuck again.

Michelle tipped her chin toward the play equipment. “They’re over there.” Her smile dipped slightly. “We have another appointment.”

That was why she’d been here last time, for an appointment for her daughter.

“How’s Emma?”

Michelle took a moment to answer. Maybe she was surprised I’d remembered. “She’s going to be okay. She doesn’t have the illness my husband had.”

Her husband. Why the fuck did a spike of jealousy run through me at that word coming from her? For a dead man?

Then I registered what she said. “I didn’t know that’s what you were looking into,” I said, truthfully.

My brother Hank had only recently discovered that his best friend Joe had been sick before he died in that fire. Joe hadn’t told him.

“He knew he was going to die anyway,” Hank had said over beers last summer. “It’s why he went into that burning building so many times. He sacrificed himself to save all those people.”

“Would you have done the same thing?” I asked.

“Probably,” he’d said. “Would you?”

Years ago, before I was a dad, I would have said yes, no question. But leaving my girls behind like Joe had? Even if they only had a few months left together? I couldn’t help thinking about how that had made Michelle feel. Like she’d had no say in it.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling shitty about either decision.

I definitely didn’t know Michelle had been worried about Emma having the same condition as Joe. I had no idea she’d been going through that that day, just that she looked like she shouldn’t be alone, and I’d been more than happy to ignore every obligation I had to make sure she wasn’t. I don’t know what had come over me that day—I should have left with my brother. But I didn’t, and somehow it had been the best couple hours I could remember in years.

A fluke that I obviously couldn’t replicate because this time I was being all kinds of awkward.