She just walks for a few steps. A cardinal flies in front of us. “Ah. But he’s a statistician. He counts the probabilities. Maybe that’s all you can bet on. The probabilities. And, like I said, there’s the kid issue. You and Jim don’t need to worry about that.”

“Not in the we-can’t-have-them way. Instead they determine the time we have together.”

“In a few years, they’ll be gone.” She walked with her hands stuffed in her pockets, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled over her head, her eyes on the road.

I know she’s right. But I know children always affect their parents, at any age. And even then, even way before Sky was pregnant with this baby and Tara was pregnant, I thought about how pervasive children are in our lives and how hard it is for a stepparent to make that much room. How hard it is for a couple to agree on parenting even with their own biological children.

“The irony is, everyone thinks that children will bring a couple closer, but the research indicates that childless couples are happier. At least if you look at the divorce rate.”

Allie just addressed the questions in my mind. “I love your research.”

“My promiscuous reading?” She laughed and the hood fell back, her hair catching a breeze, her face subtly but fully made up. And then Disney pulled me down the path.

And then a few weeks ago, the week before Thanksgiving, she asked me, “Have you told him you love him yet?”

I squirmed in my seat. Allie was over for dinner on a weeknight. I didn’t feel like eating alone. She brought a salad with dried cherries, blue cheese, and walnuts. I got up for some more wine when she raised the subject.

“You haven’t answered your own question yet. Is Jim another chance for intimacy, an attempt at a permanent relationship, or another dodge from commitment?”

“‘I love you’ seems so permanent when we don’t know if anything’s permanent.” While I was up, I pulled the apple crisp from the oven.

“Nothing is,” she said, her eyes pinning me as I fussed in the kitchen and finally sat down again. “We’re all just walks along the way. Some very long walks. Decades. But even if there’s almost forever, there’s always that death thing gonna happen to one of you sometime.”

I stabbed a piece of chicken and then scooped up some rice to eat with it. “Tell me about it, that death thing. But those three words come with demands and burdens.”