“But every now and then, we’d match up perfectly, on a Saturday! We’d both have it off. Remember that? Remember those Saturdays?”

Jeremy had a faraway look in his eyes. “I remember,” he said.

“Jeremy?” Lu sat cautiously on the edge of the bed.

“Yes?”

“I liked me better then.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, considering. “I liked you then too.”

“Better?” she asked. She was scared of his answer.

“No . . .” he said slowly. “Not better. But you were happy. I liked you happy.” He hesitated. “Do you know what I thought when I read your blog?”

Lu leaned back a little bit, so that her upper back was against Jeremy’s legs. “What?”

“I thought that you don’t love us anymore. The way you wrote about this other family—like you wanted us to be them, not us to be us. Like you like them better.”

Lu could see how it came across that way. She could see how that hurt Jeremy. “Of course I love you. I love you just the way you are, I don’t want you to be Jacqui and Charlie and Sammy. But I can’t love just you.”

Jeremy sat up and pushed his back against the headboard. “Lu—”

“No. You have to listen to me. Nobody has ever asked that of you, Jeremy, to love just your family, and not your work, and not all of the things you can do that have nothing to do with this household. You don’t know what that’s like. You can try to imagine it, but you can’t really know it, not the way I do.” She watched him, wondering what he was thinking, and she kept talking. “It’s not enough, Jeremy. I can’t do this . . . forever, just this. But I also can’t do the other thing if you’re thwarting me at every step. If you . . .”

“If I what?”

“If you’re not proud of me.” No, that wasn’t even it. “If you don’t take it seriously. To do it the right way takes hours every day.”

“Okay,” he said. “I get that.”

“You do?”

“I do. I’m trying to. So maybe you have someone, Maggie or someone like her, two mornings a week. You can do a little bit more every day while the kids are napping. We can afford a little bit of babysitting, if it’s what you really want.”

Tears of frustration sprang to Lu’s eyes. It was a concession, but it was all wrong. He didn’t really get it. “Chase hasn’t napped for two and a half years, Jeremy, and Sebastian is in the process of giving his nap up. If you ever had charge of the boys on your own you would know that.” Her voice came out sharper than she’d realized it would. “To do this thing the right way takes hours every day. The people who are successful with this are doing it as a full-time job. I can’t do it if I don’t take it seriously. If you don’t.”