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  At six forty-five, the Seedlings School staff began to arrive. First was Mrs. Baxter, a retired Cooperstown Elementary School secretary who had taken over Seedlings’ administrative work five years back. She drove a light-blue Oldsmobile and had light-blue hair and called all the kids Sonny or Girlie, which sent them into spasms of laughter. Close to seventy, she had ambitiously made the leap from electric typewriter to PC and now pecked out Excel spreadsheets and printed up dot-matrix birthday cards for Hugh and the teachers at the appropriate times of the year.

  “Mr. Obermeyer.” Mrs. Baxter nodded. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you. Coffee’s perfect.” Hugh raised his mug to her: #1 DAD! Julia had given it to him for Christmas.

  Mrs. Baxter shrugged off her blazer and hung it in the closet, then removed her brown-bag lunch—always egg salad on wheat with a bag of potato chips and a Sprite—and placed it in their compact refrigerator. “Is this yours?” asked Mrs. Baxter, holding out a half-empty yogurt cup.

  “No,” said Hugh.

  “One of the girls,” said Mrs. Baxter disapprovingly, meaning Cheryl, Melanie, or Priscilla, the teachers at Seedlings. “You should speak to them about not picking up after themselves.”

  “Absolutely,” said Hugh, who was hardly listening.

  “There is one thing I wanted to mention,” said Mrs. Baxter.

  “Great,” said Hugh. “Let’s schedule a sit-down. Maybe before lunch.”

  Mrs. Baxter frowned, started to speak, but Hugh was saved by the arrival of Melanie and Priscilla, who commuted together and looked so much alike—blond highlights, capacious laps—that the parents constantly confused them. The kids didn’t: Miss Melanie was the nice one; Miss Oak, the meanie.

  “Hugh!” said Melanie, wrapping him in a hug. “How’re you holding up?”

  “Pretty well,” said Hugh. Then, “Anne’s father moved in.”

  Priscilla grimaced, and Mrs. Baxter gave her a tut-tut.

  Last to arrive, always late, dashing in closer to seven than Hugh would’ve liked, was Cheryl Landon, whom Hugh had hired away from the Wallace School, in Manhattan, to teach Seedlings’ pre-K. She was the illustrious engine of the Seedlings train, while a rotating cast of sweet assistant teachers—local college students receiving course credit for interning at Seedlings two days a week—were the bright red caboose.

  “One minute,” said Cheryl, sailing past the teachers’ room with a plastic storage bin and three wrapping-paper rolls. “I just have to drop off my stuff.”

  Hugh tracked her with his eyes, alert for signs of disbelief, disappointment, even disgust, because if Graham Pennington had told anyone about his principal’s untoward appearance during hospital visiting hours, wouldn’t it have been his beloved prekindergarten teacher? Not only was Mrs. Landon warm and affectionate, capable and fun; she was also host to a weekly show-and-tell, with a progressive emphasis on the tell.

  Cheryl reappeared in the doorway with an apology for her tardiness and a kiss for Hugh’s cheek.

  “We missed you,” she said, squeezing his hand.

  Hugh and Cheryl fell in line behind Melanie and Priscilla as they all made their way to the main entrance. It was almost time for early drop-off, almost time to greet the children.

  “Anything happen while I was gone?” Hugh fished.

  “Nothing,” said Cheryl. “Your school is a well-oiled machine.”

  At seven o’clock, they stepped into the bright sunshine to greet a carpool line that was ten deep and already snaking around the block. Priscilla directed traffic, waving mud-splattered Subarus and Toyotas and Tauruses up to the curb, while Melanie and Cheryl helped the boys and girls out. The early-drop-off program featured an alternative start time for children with working parents, moms and dads who were mid-commute and didn’t have time to bend Hugh’s ear about his personal leave. Not so with regular drop-off. In an hour and a half, Hugh would be mobbed by stay-at-home moms lingering in the Seedlings hallways for the chance to shell Hugh with prying questions. What exactly happened to poor Joanie? Was Anne just devastated? And would his kids eat a tuna noodle casserole? Massive stroke; she is; and unlikely; but these were not the questions that had been keeping Hugh awake at night.

  Last week Hugh had been summoned home to care for his bereaved family just as Graham Pennington returned to school from his convalescence. Now there were only ninety minutes left until Hugh came face-to-face with Graham and his mother. Would the boy remember what he’d seen? Had Caroline told anyone what she and Hugh had done? In the two weeks since Hugh had pushed her Indian-print skirt up over her hips and slipped her cotton panties down, he’d thought of little else but Caroline straddling his lap, the sunlight glinting off her unshaven knees. But as much as Hugh wanted to revisit the moment, he was also frightened by it—he could lose his school, his family—and even as he smiled at the early drop-offs and waved goodbye to their parents, he was mentally scouring his past, wondering how it had come to this.

  * * *

  Hugh had not explicitly set out to teach preschool. After college, he’d studied for a master’s in education with an eye toward lecturing high school honors students at elite private schools in Boston, New York City. True, he had been drawn to education, but how, precisely, he had ended up running a preschool was a bit of a mystery even to him. He’d had plenty of time to plumb his psyche for an answer—during every school tour, at least one parent asked him why he’d wanted to “open a day-care center.” The best he’d come up with so far: “I thought I’d get in my two cents early.”

  A more honest answer might’ve been that it had taken Hugh a long time to grow up, and he could still access those childhood feelings of being utterly lost in the social jungle of a school playground. There were clear rules in Hugh’s preschool. No hitting, no spitting, no throwing the sand. Be nice to your friends, use your words, and always wear your listening ears. Seedlings’ rule book was a blueprint for blossoming—kids needed all the help they could get, and Hugh remembered how hard it could be to choose a direction and go.

  Hugh’s capacity for decision-making seemed to have shorted out around the age of ten, when his brother, George, had slipped through the ice in the creek behind their rented ski cabin, and Hugh’s parents had more or less followed their firstborn down. Reeling from the loss, they’d sent Hugh to boarding school, then summer camp, then college, until eventually he’d found comfort in the predictability of it all. Hugh was used to school: syllabi, reading lists, and course catalogs; orientation, registration, reading periods, and final exams. He was accustomed to the schedule of Labor Day to Memorial Day followed by summer internships and peppered with brief Sunday-night phone calls home. Hugh had even stayed on after his college graduation to work in the admissions office, conducting information sessions for potential applicants, until the dean politely informed him that he was no longer a recent graduate and it was time to move on. So to complete the circle Hugh had gone to graduate school for a master’s in education, but even he could see that something was missing, that he was missing something—adventure, chance, hunger, thirst. He was on a conveyor belt of September to September and he was too afraid to get off.

  * * *

  When Hugh met his wife, at a party in Cambridge during his final year of graduate school, he’d been impressed first by her self-confidence, then by her beauty. Newly single—having recently broken up with a cellist who waited tables—Hugh had accepted an invitation from an old boarding-school friend to a wine tasting at his apartment, and the night of the party Hugh showered and shaved and put on his best outfit, then headed across the Charles with a bottle of Cold Duck. He hadn’t been thinking: when Hugh saw that he was the sole hippie element in a sea of blue-blazered men, he quickly returned to the entryway to ditch his belted cardigan.

  “You’re not leaving,” he heard behind him—less a question than a command—and he turned, flustered, and found himself looking into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

  “No, I’m just—this sweater.”
Hugh tried to shrug it off his shoulders, but the belt had knotted.

  The woman extended her hand, introducing herself as Anne Cole, and Hugh reached to take it. She wore a striped oxford shirt tucked into a tweed skirt, and brown boots with platforms so high she rose to meet Hugh’s eyes. Silently, Hugh admired her manicured nails against his olive skin.

  “I like your sweater,” said Anne. “You should wear it. Unless you’re hot. Then you should take it off.”

  Hugh smiled. After weeks of hemming and hawing with the cellist, he appreciated Anne’s straightforwardness. “I’ll wear it,” he said.

  Hugh offered to get her a drink, and at the self-tended bar he filled two glasses with red wine, then joined Anne in the corner she had carved out for them.

  “Are you at HBS?” she asked, accepting her glass. “I haven’t seen you at the law school.”

  “BU,” said Hugh.

  “Law?”

  “No,” said Hugh. “Education.”

  Anne smiled and said, “I always loved school.”

  Anne was a second-year law student at Harvard (where Hugh had failed to gain admission both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, despite his meandering legacy—maternal uncle, paternal grandfather) and seemed destined for litigation. Having known him for less than five minutes, she argued that a master’s was a half degree; that he should immediately switch to a doctorate program; that he should rethink his “inchoate” thesis; that he should call her friend at Harvard, who would be happy to talk to Hugh about careers in education—and then she opened her purse and flipped through a tiny black book, rattling off the home phone number of the adjunct professor.

  Hugh felt alert, shocked to life. In a matter of minutes, Anne had more assiduously evaluated his professional goals than any guidance counselor who’d come before her. Five more minutes with this beautiful woman, and he’d have his whole life sorted out. He nodded attentively as she told him about her plans for internships and the fields of law she liked best.

  “What are you doing next summer?” she asked.

  “Isn’t it November?” said Hugh.

  “Right,” said Anne. “Sorry.” She blushed, tugging at her ear, and Hugh realized suddenly that this woman with the straight black hair and blue eyes of Superwoman was attracted to him. An editor of her law review, and she was trying to impress him.

  Usually, Hugh relished a slow pace with women. Unlike most of his friends, who went straight to bed with their dates, Hugh had enjoyed the antiquated ritual of selecting a time, picking a place, presenting a lady with flowers, and taking her out for dinner. But after the party, Hugh led Anne back to her apartment on Central Square, where she let him undress her and turn her this way and that. He had never been so aroused. Through Anne’s eyes, Hugh appeared confident and strong, more sure of himself than he could ever remember being. He knew things she did not, and she was willing to be taught.

  From that first night they were always together. Within a month, Hugh had moved out of his apartment and into hers, called her adjunct-professor friend, and applied to Harvard’s PhD program for the fall. Weekends, they explored the city, just the two of them, riding the T to the North End for lasagna or to the waterfront for clam chowder and beer. Anne picked the movies, while Hugh picked the restaurants, then at night they had hungry, possessive sex, each of them feeling lucky to have found the other.

  But by late January, Hugh was ready to see some friends. They were in bed reading—Anne with a mystery, Hugh with a magazine and a six-pack of beer—when Hugh found himself skimming, flipping the pages without seeing the words. It had suddenly occurred to him that he and Anne had not yet been out with another couple. Was that possible? In three months? Most of his friends had gone home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, while Hugh and Anne had spent the holidays together in Boston; then there were papers, exams. But now they were nearly asleep at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and if ever there was a time— Hugh looked up from his magazine to discover three empty beer bottles on his nightstand, the fourth in his hand.

  “Hey,” he said, flopping onto his stomach. He reached under the covers and ran a hand up Anne’s naked leg.

  Anne scooted down toward him without taking her eyes off the page.

  “You know what we should do?” asked Hugh.

  “Hmm?”

  “Throw a party.”

  Anne glanced up from her book.

  “A Valentine’s Day party,” Hugh went on, slipping his fingers under the leg band of her underwear.

  “Valentine’s Day?” asked Anne. She blinked, then quickly looked back down at the page, and Hugh realized he might have hurt her feelings. He was her first real boyfriend; maybe she’d been hoping for dinner à deux.

  “Yeah,” said Hugh. He climbed on top of his girlfriend and she had no choice but to abandon her book. “Like for lovers.” He kissed her, feeling hugely turned on, but Anne only pecked his lips.

  “You don’t want to?” he asked.

  “Have sex or throw a party?”

  “Right,” said Hugh, smiling, and before Anne could argue, he lifted her shirt over her head and kissed her again.

  Anne capitulated to the party but let Hugh handle the arrangements. Over the next two weeks, he sent out invitations and collected decorations, cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, straightened his desk and paid two outstanding bills. Hugh had always wanted to host a party but secretly he’d doubted that anyone would show. Now, with Anne in his corner, Hugh hardly cared if theirs was a flop. He’d drop Jim Croce on the turntable and they’d slow-dance alone.

  The morning of the party, Hugh presented Anne with a dozen long-stemmed red roses, and the smile on her face and the brightness of her clear eyes buoyed him. He believed he knew how to make her happy, and she him. But later, while Hugh ran around topping off their guests’ champagne glasses and passing plates of heart-shaped brownies, Anne only watched from the couch.

  “Aren’t you having fun?” he’d asked, circling by.

  “I am,” she said. She held out her empty glass and let Hugh refill it.

  “Did you meet Albert and Linda?” Albert’s girlfriend was a lawyer and Hugh had thought she and Anne would hit it off.

  “I think so,” said Anne. “The blonde?”

  Hugh took her by the hand and pulled her into the mix. He introduced her to his classmates, to his friend from the record store, to an old girlfriend who was now dating a hairstylist. He presented Anne to a social worker in need of legal advice, then watched with pride as she settled in, found the rhythm of her legalese, and appeared to enjoy herself. But ten minutes later she was in the kitchen, getting a jump start on the dishes.

  “Anne,” said Hugh irritably when he tracked her down.

  “What?” She plunged her hands into a sink full of suds.

  Maybe he should’ve asked her what was wrong. Maybe she should’ve told him. Instead, Anne remained with her back to him, her black silk skirt gently sweeping her knees. It was their first real fight and neither of them seemed to know what to do, so they did nothing. Anne finished the dishes while Hugh waltzed back out to his party, and in the morning Hugh put away the dishes while Anne vacuumed, and all was apparently forgotten without either of them having said a word.

  In March, Hugh was again rejected from Harvard, but by then he was nearly finished with his master’s program and had been offered a one-year fellowship in the mayor’s office. It was as good a place as any to spend a year. Anne’s job would take precedence when she graduated next spring, and Hugh hoped for San Francisco or London, someplace he had never been. Tokyo, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur. He’d teach English as a second language. They’d ride bicycles to work.

  Then Anne was pregnant, and their choices narrowed considerably. From the outset, there was no question in Anne’s mind that they would keep the baby. Such an ambitious and strong-willed woman (with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans) might not have seen this as the right time to procreate, but Anne was nothing if not convinci
ng. She was twenty-six; he, twenty-eight. They were financially stable, living together, and likely to marry. A baby had always been part of the larger picture, Anne argued, and Hugh—whose larger picture had recently included the possibility of living in a tree house in New Zealand—agreed fatherhood could be considered an adventure, too.

  Before Anne began to show, she was lobbying to move home to Cooperstown. Her father had a close friend who was a partner at a small law firm in nearby Oneonta; she could be running the firm in ten years, she said, and without all the clamoring and grinding and face time normally required of new associates. Plus, in Cooperstown they’d have her mother, Joanie, a former nurse, to sit for the baby, and Hugh would be free to take a job. Although Hugh couldn’t imagine what he would do in an upstate New York town of two thousand people, he did like the idea of living near the Hall of Fame.

  The single possession that George had bequeathed him was an autographed 1957 Ted Williams card, and the fog that enshrouded Hugh’s memory of his brother—indeed, of his entire early childhood—seemed to lift when Hugh thought about baseball. He pictured the two of them seated at the right and left hands of their mother for the Red Sox home opener, an afternoon game, mid-April, and a workday, certainly, or their father would have been with them and they would not have been forced to wear their jackets on that almost-warm day. George—eleven years old and with only eight months left in this world—held his prize baseball card in his sweaty hand. Their father had warned him that an autograph would devalue it, but George was ready with his ballpoint.