I hadn’t planned to. All the bachelors were dancing onto the stage when it was their turn, gregarious and extroverted. And then there was Glen. Shy and quiet, cheeks flaming, he took his hands out of his pockets long enough to wave tentatively to the audience. He was tall and broad-shouldered—a former Juniper Shores Prep basketball benchwarmer turned math teacher—ten years my elder.

Our paths had never crossed. But when I saw him up there, so uncomfortable, and realized that he wasn’t getting as many bids as the other men, I couldn’t let him flounder. So I raised my paddle and my voice. The previous bid had been twenty-five dollars—and it had taken three bids to get there—so I said, “Two hundred seventy-five dollars!” That was twenty dollars more than our super-hot UPS driver, who was clearly the most eligible of the eligible bachelors.

I’d been careful not to spend my inheritance from Jeremy, saving every penny for a rainy day. I lived meagerly and quietly on my very small teaching assistant salary. But this was an emergency. All I could think about was what I would do if I were standing up there, mortified and alone. And so, I bid.

The auctioneer, a.k.a. the principal, said, “Going once, going twice, sold to Alice Bailey for two hundred seventy-five dollars.”

Glen practically melted off the stage and over to me. “Thank you,” he whispered.

I hadn’t planned on actually going on the date. But then Glen said, “I promise I make a beach picnic so good it will be worth your investment.”

He had dimples when he smiled and so much hope in his voice I couldn’t possibly say no. I didn’t plan to fall in love with him; I didn’t plan to marry him. But, well, Glen was quiet and soft-spoken. He held me like I was a porcelain doll. We sort of quietly coexisted, spending evenings in, cooking and watching movies. We pooled our salaries to rent a small town house two blocks from the ocean. We never could have afforded it, but Glen had tutored the owner’s child to a B+ in AP Calculus, and he had rented it to us for a steal. I look back on those years as tinged with a sort of solemn happiness, like the golden glow of early-morning light on the water before the showiness of sunrise.

We met when I was twenty-nine, married when I was thirty-one. A few months later, over a messy cake that Glen had made for me himself, he said as I blew out the candles, “Is one of your birthday wishes this year for a baby?”