“Comes in one.” The cold beer tasted good going down. “You gonna call my big brother on me tonight?”

“You gonna give me reason to?”

Kevin laughed at her saucy comeback. When she smiled at him, he realized how pretty she was. Her thick blonde hair was braided down her back. She wore little or no makeup, but she didn’t need it, and though she was tall, she carried her height with an elegance to her movements that indicated dance training. The fact that she was far too young for him didn’t keep him from noticing that she was a beautiful woman.

“Where’re you coming from?” she asked.

“I was at my brother Frank’s for dinner with my sons.”

“How many boys do you have?”

“Two, Riley and Finn. I guess they count as men these days. They’re twenty-five and twenty-seven.”

“You don’t look old enough to have kids that age.”

“Had them young.”

“Where’s their mom?” she asked, taking a casual glance at the wedding ring he still wore.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to remove it. “That’s kind of a long story.”

As they talked, she’d been drying glasses out of the dishwasher and returning them to the shelves. “I’m here until one.”

The open invitation to share wasn’t lost on him. As someone who made a living listening to other people’s problems, he rarely shared his own with anyone. But there was something about her that had him spilling the whole ugly story.

By the time he finished telling her about his wife leaving him for a younger guy, she’d discarded the dishtowel and he had her full attention.

“I’m so sorry, Kevin. That’s awful.” Without asking if he wanted it, she opened another beer for him and put it down on the bar. “That one’s on me.”

“Thank you.”

“Had you guys been having problems?” she asked tentatively, as if she wasn’t entirely sure she should ask.

“Not that I knew of. I was blindsided.” He took a drink of the beer. “But with hindsight, I can see there were signs that I missed. Or chose to ignore. I don’t know. She wasn’t happy. I thought it was a phase that would pass. It had before.” Sliding a finger through the condensation on the bottle, he said, “After the boys left home, we found ourselves without much to talk about. It happens. I see it a lot in my practice.”

“It’s a big change after years of focusing on your kids.”

“It is, and we were guilty of making it all about the kids, to the exclusion of our relationship. We tried to get back on track. Went on a few vacations, spent time with friends. But it took effort that hadn’t been necessary way back when.”