John thought about that for a long time before he replied. He had never been gifted in anything except getting along. He was good at a lot of things, but he wasn’t the best at much. He had to remember way back to just before he went into the navy, when he had competed in downhill skiing. He’d gotten into a fistfight with some loudmouth jerk who was taunting him about having some secret “advantage.” Hell, John had about killed himself in training and had taken enormous risks. After a while he’d guessed the guy was just jealous. “Yeah. Yeah, I have.”

“I never,” she said seriously, “had otherwise.”

“I was never jealous of you…”

“Oh, John, I know that. But I’d like you to understand why I have never known what to do with a boyfriend… With a lover. I never had one. Never. Max wasn’t a boyfriend or a lover. We married in a state of confusion and inertia. He was leaving a project at Columbia to take on a new one at Stanford. He wanted me to go along… It wasn’t exactly true love, though I suppose Max loved me as much as he could.

“Then I met you and had no idea what hit me. It was my very first acquaintance with real lovemaking. I think that’s why we weren’t able to salvage anything. Too complicated. Not enough experience on my part.”

“What do you really want, Leigh?”

“Not a lot, actually. I want to be a good mother and have some friends. I just want to be okay like I am. Acceptable. There are a lot of reasons why I was disappointed that we weren’t able to work things out. Just one is that I haven’t had much fun since we went our separate ways. I know you think I’m a pain, clumsy, forgetful…but I had fun camping and hiking. We used to laugh a lot. I think I might like to learn to ski…”

John frowned as the mental picture of Leigh tripping around the slopes, getting lost and falling down came to mind. Well, there were bunny slopes… How did she imagine she was going to raise two boys?

“I’d at least like my kids to learn to ski and play ball… They already love anything physical and don’t read anything that isn’t previewed on the Saturday morning cartoons. They’re completely normal.”

John had discovered, in the years since Leigh had left him, that he actually liked kids. He wouldn’t mind taking her boys to a ball game or a ski lesson. Getting them early like this, they might do pretty well.

“You’re going to stay here, then?” he asked.