“She could be,” Logan insisted. “Brian thinks she might move in with his dad. That’s the first step, right?”

Lina felt a swell of jealousy at his words. “No, it’s not the first step,” she snapped. “If someone wants to truly commit, they get married. Your father and I would be very disappointed if you lived with someone before you got married.”

“What did I do? Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not,” Lina said as she turned back around. “I’m just a little old-fashioned, I guess. I don’t want you to think it’s okay to live with someone you’re not married to, and Dad wouldn’t either.”

Laughter floated up from the pool hours later as Lina walked out on the deck. Phil, along with Logan, Megan and a couple of the neighborhood kids, were playing their own version of water polo. Logan’s body was wrapped around Phil from behind as he tried to get a ball away from him, and Phil was laughing as he struggled to get out of his grasp. She remembered when Logan was much younger and Phil only pretended to struggle because he wasn’t big enough to prevent him from effortlessly making it across the pool with him on his back. Her thoughts unexpectedly shifted to Kim, and she found herself wondering if she would have a boy or a girl. There was going to be a child with no relation to her that would call Phil Daddy. What would the child call her?

“Dad, stop!” Megan’s laughter brought Lina’s mind to the present, and she watched as Phil effortlessly tossed her in the air. She came up from beneath the water sputtering and then she launched herself at him, and, with the help of all the kids, managed to pull his legs from beneath him and give him a sound dunking.

Phil was breathing deeply when he dropped down onto the chair beside Lina’s twenty minutes later. “Did you see them trying to drown me? Five against one.” He pushed his wet hair back from his forehead, taking a deep breath. “That was a workout.” He reached for Lina’s wine glass. “I can’t stand this humidity. We’re definitely not retiring to Florida.”

She felt a stab of annoyance as she watched him take a swallow from her glass. He was happy. She was sitting here feeling miserable, and he was acting as if everything were normal. And then she had another thought. They wouldn’t be free from children in eight years when Logan graduated from college. Their plan to take off for three months each year to travel the world while they were still relatively young and fit was gone. Phil was going to be the father of an eight-year-old when Logan graduated from college, and regardless of what he said or thought now, she knew he would never abandon one of his children.