“Of course.” Walter reaches out his hand. “How are you, James.” He doesn’t remember James, not really. But then, he hasn’t really thought about anyone from high school since high school.

James grins. “I knew, I just knew you were going to end up marrying Katie Babiak.”

“Oh,” says Walter. “Yes, well.”

“I was just saying to Joan yesterday – my wife, Joan, you remember her. She used to be Joan Fairweather?”

“Oh, sure,” Walter lied.

“I was just saying to Joan, when we saw that picture on the news, ‘Now doesn’t that look like Katie Babiak all grown up?’ And she said, ‘Jimmy, that reporter said her name was Katherine Parker.’ And that’s when, I don’t know, it just clicked.”

“Nice to see you again, James,” Walter says, tossing the line up onto the deck of the Miss Penelope and jumping up after it. He starts the boat and angles it out of the marina. When he turns back, he can see James Buhler still standing there, waving at him, a big dumb grin on his face as he snaps a photo with his smartphone. He and Joan are going to have a lot to talk about at dinner tonight, Walter thinks as he pulls away from the dock. He hopes they can really bask in it; he hopes the excitement of Walter’s life falling apart reinvigorates their marriage.

—

Walter knows the twins believe he wasn’t around much when they were growing up, but when they were very small, he was around all the time. Because it was hard for Walter to be without projects, he would spend the winter months in the backyard, constructing things for them from snow. One year he made an igloo castle, complete with a turret for each twin, with an ice slide down the back that Nicki once got her tongue stuck to. Another year, he made a snow maze that one of the neighbour’s kids actually got lost in. He didn’t have a lot to offer his daughters, except for what he could teach them about the outdoors, what he could make for them from nature. That turned out to be not enough – for them, or for Kate, he supposes.

Kate hadn’t wanted to have children, at least not at first. “Let’s just let it be you and me,” she said. “We should be enough for each other.”

“You are enough for me,” Walter said. But I might not be enough for you. The thought had plagued him ever since Kate’s proposal. He felt a mild but persistent terror every time she drove away to the grocery store or to visit her parents – all he could see was her driving away from him in her MGB that afternoon so many years ago – and every time he thought, She’s not coming back. But she would come back for a baby. He was sure she would.