With Declan, I could handle fondness and respect, and yes, lust. If something more threatened to break its way through, I batted it down, averting my gaze from his when he looked at me too intently.

So why was I visiting him now? After we got over the initial awkwardness, it turned out we managed to achieve the trickiest of adult relationships: a platonic friendship with subtle but unrealized undertones of more. We still had work in common: the virus I studied at the CDC was one of the same ones his biopharmaceutical laboratory had been targeting. We attended many of the same conferences; we knew many of the same academicians and scientists. It wasn’t all professional, however, our new status: we got along. We talked. I missed the physical relationship with him and he wasn’t above exploiting that desire, flirting like a mad bastard every time I saw him, just to rub it in a little. The message was clear: Here’s what you could have had if only you hadn’t been so insistent on your space.

In addition to the allure of his brain and his body, Declan had another thing going for him: a genuine fondness for my kids. He’d gingerly but hopefully mentioned adoption a few times back in the days when he thought I’d move to be with him. Now he’d offered to hang with them while I spent a few days gallivanting around Spain with my girlfriends from medical school. The kids liked him too.

Or so I’d thought.

Rorie shrugged, her loose T-shirt sliding off one shoulder. “Why would Declan want to hang out with me?”

“He likes you!”

Even as the words left my mouth I recognized my miscalculation. Let’s break from this scene for a moment and assume you speak not a lick of English. Even so, if you were to listen to a recording of this conversation between me, a physician in her forties, and Rorie, a cheeky teen girl, you’d be able to identify the winner right away. One of us sounded coolly dismissive and one of us sounded like a high-pitched lunatic. It’s counterintuitive. The more you allow genuine emotion to permeate your voice, the less reliable you sound. Whereas a dispassionate voice, reflective of someone who presumably cares less, is more likely to win an argument.

Sensing blood in the water, Rorie pressed her advantage. “Mom, you’re oblivious to everything. Declan doesn’t care about me. Like everyone else, he only likes Beau.”

A small voice: “Declan loves us both.”

Rorie and I swiveled in unison. Beau drooped forward in his seat, his round face crinkled in pain.

Beau had been born unable to tolerate conflict. The slightest hint of discord; a raised voice; an angry face: they demolished him. He’d first try to smooth things over, interjecting himself into the conversation like an undersized diplomat, offering a steady stream of praise and encouragement to the combatants. If that failed and the people remained angry at one another, he’d withdraw into himself, curling up like a desiccated bug.