Free Serial Monogamy by Kate Taylor Page A

anything. I just don’t think this was meant to be.”
    “You used to say I was the other half of your soul.”
    “Okay. Maybe we’ve changed or something. I don’t know, people say things like that when they are falling in love. Or they think they are falling in love.”
    “Are you saying we were never in love?”
    “I think we were both trying to escape things.”
    “And now somebody else is your escape. How do you know it’s love this time?”
    He had no answer to that, or perhaps he had an answer he couldn’t give me.
    Finally he said, “I just want to leave. I’ve found an apartment. I can move in Wednesday, the first of the month.”
    I tried to dissuade him, tried to get him to promise to wait a bit. The girls were entering grade one in a week’s time; it’s a big transition, I argued, they’ll need stability at home. Better to get all the changes over at once, Al replied.
    “I survived changing schools and changing countries. They’ll manage,” he said with uncharacteristic toughness.
    —
    He went down to the basement and I went upstairs, feeling numb. I opened the closet again; yes, there were fewer clothes. He left for campus early the next morning and didn’t come home that night, phoning to say we should eat without him and not to wait up. I told the girls he was busy preparing for the start of term and when he finally showed up the following afternoon, we quietly agreed that we needed to tell them Daddy was going to live in his own apartment for a bit. I wanted to yell and scream and beg, but I didn’t want to frighten the children. I was trapped into good behaviour, forced to remain calm to protect them. Everybody says you have to maintain a united front, never battle it out in front of the kids, that’s what will really damage the children of divorce, although I was damned if I was going to tell the girls this was my idea. When we sat them down the following evening, I letAl do the talking. He seemed surprised when the girls began to cry, and he tried rather lamely to reassure them.
    “It will be fine, girls. I still love you—as much as ever. We’ll see each other all the time.”
    The girls were barely six. Al adored them and had treated them as mini adults almost as soon as they could speak. Now, the more they cried, feeding off each other’s alarm, the more he tried to reason with them, until their tears overwhelmed his attempts. Anahita flung herself at him while Goli clung to me, and as we sat there, each with one child in our arms, petting and kissing and comforting, he gave me this helpless expression as though somehow this was a situation from which I could rescue him.
    To stop the flood, Al quickly agreed he wasn’t going anywhere that night. He slept in the basement again and ate breakfast with us the following morning, disappeared for a few hours during the day and then returned in plenty of time for dinner. But then, after the girls were asleep, he got up to leave.
    “I have to unpack some stuff at the apartment. Maybe I can come and get them for a bit tomorrow and take them over there. Get them pizza. They’ll think it’s fun.” He paused a moment and we just stared at each other. “They’ll get used to it. Kids are resilient.” His confident self seemed to be returning now that he had made a decision.
    “What about me? How am I supposed to get used to it?”
    “You’ll be fine, Sharon,” he said. “You always are.”

The Dickens Bicentenary Serial: Chapter 6
London. February 21, 1858
    “Oh, look, Mr. Dickens, there they are.” Nelly touched his sleeve and gestured toward a patch of daffodils fifty yards away from them across Hampstead Heath. It was February and they were out looking for signs of spring.
    “Yes, right you are,” he agreed and began striding toward the flowers, set in a little dell that must have been providing shelter from the winter cold because elsewhere on their walk they had encountered only snowdrops. “I do wish,” he said as they