So Close by Emma McLaughlin

apart for so long.”  She smiled and shrugged.  “So I told him we need a family place in D.C. starting this summer and here we finally are.  I think this is going to be good.”  She nodded to herself the way tired people do.  “I think it’s going to be the fresh start.”
    She opened the apartment door while I dragged out the bags and car seats.  Lindsay kind of froze in the entryway, then looked back down at the keys as if she was confused.  “Mrs. Davis?” I asked as the kids toddled in ahead of us—Collin making straight for the precarious glass coffee table with the shiny metal sculpture at its center.  It was flanked by leather couches facing an enormous flat screen perched on a dangerously low console.   Other than the framed pictures of Lindsay and the kids, with its parquet floor, galley kitchen, framed sports jerseys and precarious standing lamps, it was an unremarkable bachelor pad. 
    “I’m just . . .”  She didn’t finish as her eyes landed on the photo of Tom hugging her on election night.  “Okay, so this is . . .”  She walked to the door off the living room, opening it to a small bedroom while I headed off Collin.  The next door opened to the bathroom and the last to a linen closet.  “Can we at least get the AC on—I feel like I’m having a panic attack.”
    Despite how we met I’d never seen her this thrown before. 
    “Hey!”  We turned as Tom brought the last of our bags in from the hall, his face glowing with excitement.  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet you at the airport, babe.  How was the flight?”  Suddenly the full picture of what he was seeing seemed to register.  “What are you guys doing here?”  He dropped his blazer and scooped up Chip and nestled his face into his neck, making him squeal in delight. 
    “Didn’t they give you my messages?  Carla quit.”  Lindsay tapped her knuckles on the glass dining table.  “I thought we agreed on a two or three-bedroom.”
    “Linds.”  He pulled her into him with his free arm and planted a kiss on her forehead.  “I didn’t want to be rattling around in something big all by myself during the week.  It’s bad enough not having you here.”
    In the years since I’ve had a lot of time to think about that day and people have certainly asked me if I think he was cheating on her that first stretch they were apart.  Honestly, in my gut, for whatever that’s worth, I think he was a guy approaching fifty who was happy to come home from a long day at job that had an endless learning curve to a kid-free zone, and fall asleep in front of ESPN. 
    A fantasy of being twenty again, sure, but, as fantasies go, not so dangerous.
    “What if you weren’t by yourself?” she asked. 
    “Huh?”
    “What if we came up more?”
    He looked around, but it wasn’t clear for what.  “Let’s discuss it later.  So, what’s the plan?  We bringing them to dinner?”
    Chip was practicing his shout and Collin had found the remote control and was banging it on the coffee table. 
    Lindsay bent to replace the remote with a toy from her pocket.  “Amanda, here, has come to my rescue.  She’s going to stay with the kids tonight and—shoot, Amanda, I thought there’d be a room for you.  For them.”
    “Sorry, I didn’t know.  Let’s see . . .”  He looked around.  “That couch pulls out.”
    “Oh, great,” she said sarcastically.
    “That’s so fine for me, I swear,” I said.  “And I can make a bed for the kids out of pillows and blankets.” 
    “That’d be great, Amanda,” Tom said. 
    Lindsay turned to him.  “What happened to the toys I had sent up?  I gave Rhonda the link to the cribs I wanted.”
    Tom was kissing Collin’s ears and making him giggle.  “I don’t know, honey.  Talk to Rhonda.”  Rhonda Johnson ran Tom’s staff and life with a relentlessness bordering on zealotry.  In the Jacksonville office we frequently compared time-stamps on her emails, marveling that she