CHAPTER ONE
Connor
I never thought I’d be that guy.
You know the type I mean. One of those guys who makes it through the first few trial and error, fixer-upper decades of adulthood, finally gets life figured out—and then has to start all over again.
I thought, by now, life would be smooth sailing—as glassy as the lake on a still summer morning. In a lot of ways, it is.
I’m in better shape in my early forties than I was in my twenties. I’m blessed with one of those faces that just keeps getting better with age. I’ve got a great career, money in the bank, three most-of-the-time awesome kids, a fantastic dog, basically the whole world by the balls . . . except for the crash and burn of my marriage. And the big D of a divorce.
Some men don’t mind starting over—getting a tattoo, buying a motorcycle, trading in the starter wife for a blonder, perkier girlfriend named Candy.
But I liked being married. Being half of a team. Having a partner.
I was good at it.
I was serious about the whole, “till death do us part” thing. But I guess everybody kind of is. It’s not like you stand at the altar and think I’m going to divorce the shit out of you one day.
And yet . . . here we are.
“She took me to Nordstrom’s.”
My youngest son, Spencer, tosses his Minecraft green drawstring bag on the table and stands in the kitchen with shoulders that are more hunched than any ten-year-old’s should ever be.
“To shop for a bathing suit for her trip to Miami,” he tells me, after getting back from a clearly un-fun Saturday afternoon visit with his mom.
“We were there for hours.”
Once the divorce was finalized, Stacey hung up her stay-at-home-mom shoes and moved up north for a new job in Manhattan and a new apartment in Hoboken. I bought a four-bedroom house with a finished basement, built-in pool, and fenced-in yard that’s literally a five-minute drive from the house we used to live in. And now the boys and Rosie, our eight-year-old German Shepherd who doesn’t act a day over two, live with me.
Because we always said we’d raise them in Lakeside—the same small, Jersey town I grew up in. Because the boys are happy here—their schools, their friends, their sports teams, our family—all here. Because so much had already changed for them, I didn’t want that to change too.
So now I’m also that guy. A single dad.
And Stacey? Well, she’s . . . something else.
“Then she got her nails done at the salon and made me sit next to her,” Spencer says. “I had to use my inhaler three times.”
I don’t hate my ex-wife. Really. Most of the time I don’t feel anything for her, except a discomforting confusion over how the woman she was when we got married could be so insanely different from the person she is today.
But at times like this—when my sweet, soft-hearted kid looks up at me with big brown kicked-puppy-dog eyes—hatred is really fucking tempting.
So is taking Stacey’s prized possessions—her Christian Louboutin shoes and that stupid Birkin bag and her butt-ugly Chanel dress—and setting them on fire in the backyard. We could roast marshmallows—throw in a couple beers, it’d be just like college.
It would also be . . . unhelpful. Counterproductive.
See, I’m a doctor—an emergency department attending at Lakeside Memorial. I believe in science, medicine. I believe mental and emotional health is every bit as important as physical. I’ve seen sick kids—kids who will never, ever have the chance to get better—and there’s nothing on earth more important to me than my sons’ well-being.
Which means pyromania will only be happening in my dreams.
And while I’ll definitely be calling my ex-wife later to tell her what she should already goddamn know—not to take Spencer somewhere that’s going to aggravate his asthma—right now I crouch down in front of him and do what good divorced parents do.
Suck it up. Make this okay for him. Make him understand how this works, in the gentlest way possible.
My oldest son has other ideas.
“I don’t know why you still see her on her weekends. Brayden and I barely go anymore. Mom’s a bitch, Spencer.”
“Aaron,” my voice snaps, firm and disapproving.
Because a seventeen-year-old’s brain isn’t so different from a dog’s—it’s not the words you say, but how you say them.
“You’re right; that sounded kind of messed up,” he concedes. Then he puts his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Mom’s an asshole, Spence.”
I give him an irritated look and say the magic words that are guaranteed to remove him from the discussion.
“Isn’t there an electronic device calling your name somewhere?”
He salutes me with his glass of milk. “Touché.”
After Aaron walks out the kitchen door, I turn back to Spencer.
“Mom loves you, buddy.”
“Then why is she acting like this?” he asks in that whispery, wounded tone that isn’t anything like whining.
“She’s going through something right now. A phase.”
His little brows draw together.
“You mean like how Brayden is in the bathroom all the time and uses up all the tissues? A phase like that?”
Brayden’s thirteen. It’s a weird age.
“Yeah. Sort of, kind of. A little bit like that.”
“But Brayden’s a kid, Dad. Adults aren’t supposed to go through phases.”
Childhood is the only time you get to think your parents are perfect. There’s a security and innocence that comes from believing your mom and dad control everything, can protect you from anything. It sucks that Spencer never got to have that.
I cup the side of his dark-haired head before bringing him in for a hug.
“I know . . . but sometimes they do.”
* * *
My old man was not a knocker-on-doors type of guy when we were growing up. He ascribed to the belief that since he paid for the house, premiums like privacy were his to giveth and his to taketh away.
Mostly taketh.
He also strongly suspected that if any of his sons wanted to do something behind a closed door, it most likely involved drinking or “smoking the weed” or begetting him an early grandchild.
And—okay—he was totally right about that.
But one of the perks of having your own kids is you get to actively not do all the annoying shit your parents did. Feels a little bit like vengeance.
So, when I get to Aaron’s closed bedroom door, I knock.
“Come in,” is his immediate answer.
He’s reclining on his bed, his light-brown hair that needs a trim pushed back by neon-red headphones, in a room smelling of sweaty socks and shrouded in tomb-like darkness thanks to perpetually sealed sunlight-blocking drapes.
“Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Do I have a choice?” he asks. Because my firstborn is both smart and a smart-ass—so that’s always fun.
I shake my head. “Not even a little.”
“That’s what I figured.”
He slips his headphones down around his neck as I sit on the end of his bed, bracing my elbows on my knees.
“I need you to lay off your mom in front of Spencer.”