She had met Phillip and his daughter at Tyler’s adaptive physical education class. He was young and smoked, and he preferred her company to the mothers who talked church gossip and claimed their children didn’t really need to be in the class. He told her his wife had died of a brain aneurysm when Katie was six months old. He leaned back in his chair, and said in his thick southern drawl, “We both cried a lot and sucked down a number of bottles,” and she knew he was flirting with her. He was good looking—dirty-blond hair and natural muscles—and so after weeks of listening to him compliment her on the green of her eyes, her perfectly freckled shoulders, she figured the novelty would at least be interesting, and she followed him back to his house. They sent Tyler and Katie outside to play, put Madeline down for a nap on Phillip’s bed, and fucked in the bathroom. After that, they saw each other often, but they had an understanding. She didn’t want a relationship, and he was moving to Atlanta to run his uncle’s restaurant. Long distance was impossible, he said, and she happily agreed. Still, often when he held her, she could sense his loneliness, could feel him try to squeeze her inside of himself, and this was what made her knock softly on his door only when she had less than an hour to spare.

“Hey, Mister Mom,” she said, and pushed the stroller beside him. Tyler ran to find Katie, and Phillip looked up and smiled.

“Don’t make me get up,” he teased.

“When did you get into town?” she asked, and sat down next to him. The last time she had talked to him was on the phone almost a month ago. He was in Atlanta, experimenting with bluefish and polenta, and she had spent the entire conversation trying to decide whether she should tell him about Devesh. She hadn’t, and now she wished she had.

“We got in last night,” he said. “We’re visiting my parents for the weekend.”

“How’s Atlanta?”

“The restaurant opens in two weeks,” he said. “I’d love for you to come down.”

She looked at the ground and nodded. “And Katie? She’s happy?” she asked.

“Yes; fine. She just started camp. They’ve now informed me she no longer has poor spatial orientation. Instead, she has delayed motor proficiency, whatever that means.”

Josie managed a smile but felt uncomfortable now with Phillip. She didn’t know what to do with her body, and she worked on trying to extract strands of grass at the root. There was a long silence, and she listened to the high-pitched squeal of the swings grinding back and forth.

“It’s good to see you,” he said and placed his hand on her knee. She hadn’t felt his hands on her in months, and she tensed.

“Yeah,” she said.