“Nic.” I rub my scalp near the elastic holding my ponytail, close my eyes. “We weren’t happy. We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t good for the kids.”

“People aren’t always happy, Jack. But lots of people stay married.”

This is exactly why I don’t have lunch with Nicolette more often. She makes me crazy. She’s a great person—serious, hardworking, spiritual—but she’s also stubborn and opinionated and tends to see things as black or white. “Are you happy?”

She glances up from her menu, her dark brown eyebrows pulling. She wears her dark hair short, cropped, pixielike. On anyone else it’d look severe, but she has such delicate features that she can pull it off. “As happy as I can be.”

“Is that a yes, I’m happy, or a no, I’m not?”

“I don’t really believe in happy.”

I flash back to Hawaii and the hike and the lovemaking and the rain. It was such a wonderful day. Everything felt so good. I loved that feeling. I want more of that feeling. “How can you not believe in happy?”

“What is happy, anyway? Is it cheerful? Is it exuberant? Is it a sense of well-being and good fortune?” Nic closes her menu and pushes it away. “The question shouldn’t be Am I happy? but rather, Does my life have meaning? And yes, my life has meaning. I’ve created two children, and loving them, caring for them, and helping prepare them for life gives my life purpose.”

“So you don’t think happy is a valid emotion for adults?”

“I think it’s valid. I have moments of great happiness. Watching Ben learn to ride his bike. Taking the kids to Cannon Beach and chasing them in the surf. Going to a Saturday matinee movie. Those are all happy things, and I feel happy doing them. But it’s not realistic to feel happy all the time.”

“It’s not?”

She lifts her hands, counts off on her fingers. “There are bills. Doctor’s appointments. School admission tests. Taxes. And that’s not even including the hard-core stuff like cancer, accidents, death.”

“And is that what we’re supposed to teach our kids?” I find it impossible to hide my dismay. I don’t want my kids to know this stuff. Not yet.

Nic blows out air, ruffling her wispy dark bangs. “But life isn’t always happy, so better we teach them how to find a deeper joy in life. How to be at peace.”

“You make it sound as though we need to teach our kids to settle, to not want so much—”

“Yes.”