Afterward, they drove back to their house on the cliff to watch the sunset. There were two rainbows that evening, followed by the pounding rain that was so frequent on the Garden Island. Then they’d gone to bed, like any good honeymooners, and made love in a long, slow session. He could smell the sunscreen on her skin, and her faint, citrusy perfume, salt and sweat, and lying there afterward, he blurted out the thing he’d thought since about their fourth date.

“I never thought I’d find someone who would really know me, and love me anyway.”

The words hung there in the dark, and Lauren was silent.

Then she propped herself up to look at him. “Why, sweetheart?” she asked, and her voice was so gentle.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. I never . . . loved anyone before you. I felt like there was something wrong with me. Something that couldn’t . . . connect.”

“We all feel that way, I think.”

“Did you, though?” he asked. “Or were you just waiting for the right guy?”

She kissed his shoulder, her hair cool against his skin. “I was waiting for you.”

He pulled her close, still amazed that this beautiful, smiley woman was his wife. “I guess I always figured I’d be the wrong guy. For anyone.”

“You grew up so loved, though,” she said, and it was one of her tiny flaws . . . she hated to let people sit with a negative emotion. “Your mom’s only begotten son, Ben and Sumi call you their favorite child . . .”

He thought a moment. “That’s true. But . . . well, I had two parents. One never stuck around even to meet me. Never wrote, called, visited, asked for a picture.” He shrugged. “It made me feel . . . a little . . .” His voice trailed off the way it so often did when he tried to describe feelings. “A little expendable. Unimportant. And growing up without having a dad, not even a shitty dad who only came by once a month . . . it made me different. Plus, Rhode Island isn’t exactly the most diverse state. The other kids would always ask what I was, if I was Latino or Asian or Arabic, and I couldn’t even answer. My mom just wouldn’t discuss it.”

“Those Swedes and their secrets.”

He smiled a little. “Yeah.”

She kissed his shoulder tenderly, her hair falling across his chest. “Oh, honey. I wish we’d been friends when you were little. I would’ve punched anyone who made you feel bad.”

“It wasn’t that, really. It was more . . . a hole in my life where a father should’ve been. A void.”

There was a long silence.

“Did you ever try to find him?” she asked.

“No.”

“Would you ever want to?”

He thought on that. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not at this point in my life, anyway.”