“You knew how he felt.”

She tilted her chin down. “Yes.” Rosie chewed one side of her lip and shook her head. “But I didn’t know. I didn’t know how I’d feel now. When we fell in love and started his practice, I thought all we had would be enough. It was all soo soo exciting. The vacations and then we learned scuba diving and then the thrill of making the practice profitable and building its reputation. Then we got the dogs. I thought that would be enough. But not having children seems selfish. So vacuous.”

“Children are an irreconcilable difference. You can compromise on everything else, but children are too big a life focus. Too huge of a commitment. Parenthood swallows up your life and that gulp can be exhilarating or obliterating. Or both. Even when you want to do it.”

“It would be different for him if it were ours. Our baby out of our love. His ex and he argued. They never agreed on anything. We agree on everything.” She stopped a moment and glanced sideways. “Except this. But we would do it together, like the practice. It would work out.”

Rosie’s arms, toned from her work at the gym, crossed on the table one on top of the other, her lips firm as she met my eyes.

I softened my voice and leaned toward her. “But maybe what he wants and needs is all your attention. Maybe he doesn’t want to share you.” I put it to her that way. Maybe his protest was a result of his clinginess, a desire to envelop.

But she was determined. “He shares me with the practice.”

The waiter brought a plate of mussels in an herbed wine sauce. I opened a mussel, swished it in the sauce, and tried one more time. “The practice is his practice. Your, plural you, practice. He sees that as your loving him.”

“My point exactly. So. Our kids would be the same.”

I know when urges and needs veil examination of alternatives. I saw the steely determination in her. I didn’t say, but wonder if I should have, “But you lock the door to the practice and go home. There’s no locking the door to a kid … not even after eighteen years. It truly is forever.”