Free Not Young, Still Restless by Jeanne Cooper

and asked me to dinner.
    I was tempted, what can I say? I was excited by him and by being wanted by him, and frankly, the thought of being naughty was suddenly very appealing. I’m sure it took longer than it should have for me to say, “I’d love to, but I’m married.”
    Imagine my surprise when he replied, “Okay, so bring your husband.”
    As we say in scripts, cut to Harry, me, and Dan Duryea in a quiet, elegant restaurant, Dan shamelessly ignoring Harry and draping himself all over me, making comments like “Where were you when I was ready to get married?”
    I would have been a little embarrassed and put a stop to it if it had been making Harry angry or uncomfortable. But no—he thought it was great and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t understand a thing about that. Dan must have thought I was married to a complete wuss, and I was beginning to wonder myself. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that maybe it was exciting to Harry to see how desirable his wife was to another man. But if some woman sat right in front of me and threw herself at my husband like that, I promise you, she and I would go off together for a little talk, and only one of us would come back.
    In the end, nothing ever happened between me and Dan Duryea, and I guess I’m glad that I did the Right Thing. I don’t mind admitting, though, that I was sad when we finished filming and we went our separate ways, and I’ll always wonder . . .
    I took my usual six months off when it was almost time for Collin to take his first steps. Just as so much of Corbin’s personality was apparent from the beginning, it was obvious even then that my second son was highly charged, very funny, and utterly determined—no matter how many times he fell while he learned to walk, he doggedly got back up again. With apologies for getting ahead of myself, it still makes me laugh to remember him at the age of five, emptying out his closet every morning during the week to study his options and put together exactly the right outfit for that day at kindergarten.
    I wouldn’t trade my two boys for anything in this world. I was in love with both of them while they were still in my womb, and I would lay down my life for them with a smile on my face. And I must say, even though he had no idea how to interact with them, let alone feed them, change their diapers, or rock them to sleep, I never doubted for a moment that Harry loved his sons too.
    But I’d begun to yearn for the one thing that seemed to be missing from my life: a daughter. I dreamed of a little girl to fuss over and dress up and have pretend tea parties with, another feminine presence in a house full of testosterone.
    That dream came true on August 17, 1960, with the birth of my sweet, gorgeous Caren Bernsen, after another easy pregnancy that allowed me to keep working almost until it was time to head for the delivery room. It was no secret that I was hoping for a daughter, and my hospital room was so filled to the brim with congratulatory flowers from friends and family that I finally asked the nurses to start delivering them to other patients.
    There’s no doubt about it, Harry loved her. But he still had no clue what to do with babies, and the fact that she was a girl made her even more mystifying to him, so he rarely interacted with her on the rare occasions when he was around. More often than not, though, he was away—on business trips, he said—for weeks at a time. As independent as Caren was from the moment she was born, she was also more sensitive than her two rowdy big brothers and more of an introvert, and I know it hurt her when she was a child that her father was absent so often and so seemingly disinterested in her.
    Let’s see . . . a little girl with two older siblings and a father who always seemed to be off somewhere working instead of home with his family. I admit it, it took me years to figure out why, in addition to adoring her, I always felt a