Where Love Goes by Joyce Maynard

here. Big deal, right? Staff of one and a half.”
    “You’ve done a great job,” he says. “My daughter loves it here. We just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods . I’m divorced.”
    She laughs.
    “You think that’s-funny?” he says. “I’d say you’ve got a weird sense of humor.”
    “Not a bit,” she says. “Believe me, I know firsthand. My name’s Claire.”
    She’s divorced too. He feels his heart lift. “Tim,” he says, offering his large hand. With no further deliberation he asks her if she’d like to have dinner with him. Tonight for instance.
    For a moment she just looks at him with a puzzled expression.
    “Believe me, I’m not some nut who goes around picking up women in children’s museums,” he says. “I’m not some butter churn fetishist or anything.”
    “I have kids—” she says.
    “Me too,” he says. “Kid, I mean. One. Seven. I mean one kid, seven years old. She’s in your Mineral Room at the moment most likely. She has this thing about pyrite.”
    “It’s not like mine need sitters anymore,” she says. “I just don’t go out that much.”
    “Me, I’m out playing pool and carousing with loose women every night,” he says.
    She finally smiles. She has a gap between her front teeth. He imagines what it would feel like to place his hand at the back of that long neck of hers.
    “I won’t be finished here till six or six-thirty,” she says. “I guess I could call my children and tell them to order a pizza for themselves tonight.”
    “I’ll get a sitter for mine,” he says. “Pick you up here?”
    P ete is on the phone with Jared when his mother calls to say she won’t be home for dinner. “Hold on a sec, will you, Mom?” he says. “I’ve got someone on the other line.” It’s Jared, recounting the plot of the new Christopher Pike novel, Bury Me Deep .
    “Guess what?” he tells Jared. “My mom’s not coming home for a while. Why don’t you bring over your dad’s Playboy Playmates video and that pack of Red Man?” The two of them have taken up chewing tobacco in secret lately.
    “So I was thinking you and your sister could send out for a pizza,” his mother tells him. “Unless you need me, of course.”
    “I’ll be fine,” he says. Sally isn’t home. Since Travis got his license, the two of them are off driving all the time.
    “You can rent a video if you want,” she says. “There’s money on my dresser.” This must mean she’s going out on a date. Otherwise she wouldn’t feel so guilty.
    “You haven’t seen Free Willy yet, have you?” she says. “That’s supposed to be terrific.” His mom is always trying to get him to watch these wholesome, family-type movies.
    “Good idea, Mom,” he says. He and Jared have watched the Playmate video three or four times already, but they’re usually so worried about one of their parents walking in on them they just fast-forward to Miss September. They haven’t ever had a chance to see the whole thing straight through.
    “Can I talk to Sally?” his mother asks.
    He tells her she’s out. She and Travis probably drove over to the post office to buy a stamp. They won’t be heard from for hours.
    “Well, at least I’ve still got my boy,” she says. “For a few more years anyway, right, honey? I’ll be home before bedtime,” she tells him.
    O ver Spanish omelettes at the Two Brothers Diner, Tim tells Claire he’s a biologist, teaching at the college and working on a book about the effect of fluctuating saline levels in estuaries on the mussel population. He has full custody of his daughter; she’s with him nearly all the time, except on the rare occasions when his parents take her, but they live in Ohio and they don’t have a lot of patience with kids anymore. Claire tells him her kids go to their father’s almost every weekend, but that isn’t always easy, either.
    “The pickup times are hard,” she says, “but going to get them Sundays at our old house is the worst.