What they didn’t know was that I came for the solitude. I always sat forward to see the musicians take care of their instruments before they played. When they were about to start, I was seized by the longing to be alone. It was like getting to the best part in a good book: I wanted no one in my line of sight. The others had to be present, but at a certain point I made them drop away, until, in the middle of a room packed with people, I might as well have been sitting there completely on my own. Waiting for the music to part company with the instruments. Wing its way out of time, out of reach.

Eve

6

“Who is Maddy?”

It was the kind of question all parents ask themselves, not only when the baby arrives, but forevermore. Where did she come from? How did she get here? Norma shaded her eyes at the lake. Of course that’s not what she meant.

“My daughter,” I said in a rush, afraid I was losing her. “Maddy’s crazy about nail polish.”

“I’d love to have a daughter,” said Norma wistfully. “At our house it’s all PlayStation and G.I. Joe.”

“You might have gathered that Robin is not Maddy’s father.”

She glanced over. “He’s not?” Clearly she had gathered no such thing.

“Maddy didn’t have a father, growing up.”

“But she has a stepfather.”

“We’ve been together three years. It’s amazing how well they get along. Considering how late he came into her life.”

“In my experience,” Norma said, from what I could see was a deep need to reassure, “children accept whatever situation they find themselves in. It’s their normal.”

“She used to miss him,” I said.

“Who?”

“Her father. He left before she was born.”

When we met, I was doing my master’s in museum studies at GWU and Antonio was finishing his doctorate in neurobiology. He came from the north of Spain. He had the build and fairer coloring of the Basques, though he was born in the mountains farther east. He spoke four languages. Happy as he was to take advantage of our higher education system and to perfect his English, he never planned to settle here. I presume he now heads some world-famous research team back in Spain.

“Oh,” said Norma. “It’s pretty common, but sad.” She checked my eyes to make sure she was on the right track.

Was sad the right word? We had known each other for a year and a half when Antonio passed his oral exam with no conditions. That night we washed down tapas with large quantities of red wine and collapsed into bed, high on his pass and on each other, and although the foil packet lay in plain sight on the bedside table, neither one of us reached for it. That was the beginning of Maddy.