“So when are you gonna settle down with some nice girl and start a family, eh?” Mom asked. The topic I’d avoided so well was finally here.

“Oh, Mom, I don’t know. Family means all sorts of juggling, and I don’t think I’m coordinated enough.”

“Oh, nonsense; if you love someone enough, you’ll get coordinated.”

“Yeah, but I’m not looking to leave acting. Actor-actress marriages are nearly impossible to maintain long term, and what normal person wants to be married to an actor and deal with all the crap we have to deal with?”

“Hey, don’t underestimate us normal people,” Abby quipped. “All it takes is a sense of adventure, don’t you think?”

“It’s an adventure for a while, but after that it’s a burden. Imagine photographers snapping pictures of you and the twins when you pick them up from school, or when you’re trying to have a romantic dinner out with Doug. Raising kids in LA isn’t easy in the first place; doing it when your face is plastered on billboards and bus stops complicates it even more. And marriage itself—I don’t know, I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m too selfish.”

Mom frowned and thwacked me again with the dish towel. “Well, get unselfish. Even if you’re not married, it’s not healthy to think of yourself as the center of the universe.”

“I don’t; I just like my life the way it is. I don’t want to change it for anyone.”

The twins chose that moment to burst in and demand more cookies, and I was grateful for the distraction. I was selfish, but I really didn’t want to change anything. Diaper duty and school carpools weren’t for me. What Dianne and I had before things went downhill had been perfect: the understanding that we weren’t committed for life, that we were in it for the sex and companionship, and that our careers came first. When we’d started falling into the Real Relationship Trap, things had gone haywire.

But there was no denying that Abby and Doug and the twins had something very attractive. Maybe Mom was right; all it would take was the right woman to change my mind.

My brain was still working on this when the night came to an end, and when I boarded the plane on New Year’s Eve to go back to LA before returning to the desert to resume shooting on January second. The twins had given me finger paintings as a going-away present, and when I got back to my trailer, I taped them to the wall above my bed. When B.J. asked who they were from, she got a smug look on her face.

“What’s that look for?” I demanded.

“Home did you good,” she said simply. “I knew it would.”

GRACE