I’m not saying it was love at first sight. What I’m saying is that a part of me wanted to do something to stop him from walking away. I wanted to be around that stretched-out smile a little longer.

“Wait,” I said. I looked around, searching for something to hold him there, zeroing in on a textile that belonged to another client, holding it up. “This is for Belle.”

It was not my finest moment. And, as my former fiancé would tell you, it was also completely out of character for me to reach out to someone as opposed to pulling away.

“I’ll make sure she gets it,” he said.

He took it from me, avoiding my eyes.

“For the record, I have one too. A no-dating policy. I’m a single father, and it goes with the territory…” He paused. “But my daughter’s a theater junkie. And I’ll lose serious points if I don’t see a play while I’m in New York.”

He motioned toward an angry Avett, screaming on the sidewalk.

“A play’s not exactly Avett’s thing, as surprising as that sounds…”

“Very,” I said.

“So… what do you think? Do you want to come?”

He didn’t move closer, but he did look up. He looked up and met my eyes.

“Let’s not consider it a date,” he said. “It will be a onetime thing. We’ll agree on that going in. Just dinner and a play. Nice to meet you.”

“Because of our policies?” I said.

His smile returned, open and generous. “Yes,” he said. “Because of them.”

* * *

“What’s that smell?” Bailey asks.

I’m pulled from my memory to find Bailey standing in the kitchen doorway. She looks irritated standing there in a chunky sweater—a messenger bag slung over her shoulder, her purple-streaked hair caught beneath its strap.

I smile at her, my phone cradled under my chin. I have been trying to reach Owen, unsuccessfully, the phone going to voice mail. Again. And again.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” I say.

She doesn’t respond, her mouth pinched. I put my phone away, ignoring her perma-scowl. She’s a beauty, despite it. She’s a beauty in a way that I’ve noticed strikes people when she walks into a room. She doesn’t look much like Owen—her purple hair naturally a chestnut brown, her eyes dark and fierce. They’re intense—those eyes. They pull you in. Owen says that they’re just like her grandfather’s (her mother’s father), which is why they named her after him. A girl named Bailey. Just Bailey.

“Where’s my dad?” she says. “He’s supposed to drive me to play practice.”

My body tenses as I feel Owen’s note in my pocket, like a weight.

Protect her.

“I’m sure he’s on his way,” I say. “Let’s eat some dinner.”

“Is that what smells?” she says.

She wrinkles her nose, just in case it isn’t clear that the smell to which she is referring isn’t one she likes.

“It’s the linguine that you had at Poggio,” I say.

She gives me a blank look, as though Poggio isn’t her favorite local restaurant, as though we weren’t there for dinner just a few weeks before to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. Bailey ordered that night’s special—a homemade multigrain linguini in a brown butter sauce. And Owen gave her a little taste of his glass of Malbec to go with it. I thought she loved the pasta. But maybe what she loved was drinking wine with her father.

I put a heaping portion on a plate and place it on the kitchen island.

“Try a little,” I say. “You’re going to like it.”

Bailey stares at me, trying to decide if she is in the mood for a showdown—if she’s in the mood for her father’s disappointment, should I snitch to him about her fast, dinnerless exit. Deciding against it, she bites back her annoyance and hops onto her barstool.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll have a little.”

Bailey almost tries with me. That’s the worst part. She isn’t a bad kid or a menace. She’s a good kid in a situation she hates. I just happen to be that situation.

There are the obvious reasons why a teenage girl would be averse to her father’s new wife, especially Bailey, who had a good thing going when it was just the two of them together, best friends, Owen her biggest fan. Though, those reasons don’t cover the totality of Bailey’s dislike for me. It isn’t just that I got her age wrong when we first met. It comes down to an afternoon shortly after I moved to Sausalito. I was supposed to pick her up at school, but I got stuck on a call with a client—and I arrived five minutes late. Not ten minutes. Five. 5:05 P.M. That was what the clock said when I pulled up to her friend’s house. But it may as well have been an hour. Bailey is an exacting girl. Owen will tell you that this is a quality we have in common. Both his wife and his daughter can decipher everything about someone else in five minutes. That’s all it takes. And in the five minutes Bailey was making her decision about me I was on a telephone call I shouldn’t have taken.

Bailey twirls some pasta onto her fork, studying it. “This looks different than Poggio.”

“Well, it’s not. I convinced the sous chef to give me the recipe. He even sent me to the Ferry Building to pick up the garlic bread he serves with it.”

“You drove into San Francisco to get a loaf of bread?” she says.

It’s possible that I try too hard with her. There is that.

She leans in and puts the whole bite in her month. I bite my lip, anticipating her approval—a small yum escaping her lips, in spite of herself.

Which is when she gags on it. She actually gags, reaching for a glass of water.

“What did you put in that?” she says. “It tastes like… charcoal.”

“But I tasted it,” I say. “It’s perfect.”

I take another bite myself. She’s not wrong. In my confusion over my twelve-year-old visitor and Owen’s note, the butter sauce had transformed from its slightly malted, foamy richness into actually just being burnt. And bitter. Not unlike eating a campfire.

“I gotta go anyway,” she says. “Especially if I want to get a ride from Suz.”

Bailey stands up. And I picture Owen standing behind me, leaning down to whisper in my ear, Wait it out. That’s what he says when Bailey is dismissive of me. Wait it out. Meaning—she’ll come around one day. Also meaning—she’s leaving for college in two and a half short years. But Owen doesn’t understand that this doesn’t comfort me. To me, this just means I’m running out of time to make her want to move toward me.

And I do want her to move toward me. I want us to have a relationship, and not just because of Owen. It’s more than that—what draws me toward Bailey even as she pushes me away. Part of it is that I recognize in her that thing that happens when you lose your mother. My mother left by choice, Bailey’s by tragedy, but it leaves a similar imprint on you either way. It leaves you in the same strange place, trying to figure out how to navigate the world without the most important person watching.

“I’ll walk over to Suz’s,” she says. “She’ll drive me.”

Suz, her friend Suz, who is also in the play. Suz who lives on the docks too. Suz who is safe, isn’t she?

Protect her.

“Let me take you,” I say.

“No.” She pulls her purple hair behind her ears, checks her tone. “That’s okay. Suz is going anyway…”

“If your father isn’t back yet,” I say, “I’ll come and pick you up. One of us will be waiting for you out front.”

She drills me with a look. “Why wouldn’t he be back?” she says.

“He will. I’m sure he will. I just meant… if I come get you, then you can drive home.”

Bailey just got her learner’s permit. It’ll be a year of her driving with an adult until she can drive alone. And Owen doesn’t like her driving at night, even when she’s with him, which I try to utilize as an opportunity.

“Sure,” Bailey says. “Thanks.”

She walks toward the door. She wants out of the conversation and into the Sausalito air. She would say anything to get there, but I take it as a date.

“So I’ll see you in a few hours?”

“See ya,” she says.

And I feel happy, for a just a second. Then the front door is slamming behind her. And I’m alone again with Owen’s note, the inimitable silence of the kitchen, and enough burnt pasta to feed a family of ten.

Don’t Ask a Question You Don’t Want the Answer To

At 8 P.M., Owen still hasn’t called.

I take a left into the parking lot at Bailey’s school and pull into a spot by the front exit.

I turn down the radio and try him again. My heartbeat picks up when his phone goes straight to voice mail. It’s been twelve hours since he left for work, two hours since the visit from the soccer star, eighteen messages to my husband that have gone unreturned.

“Hey,” I say after the beep. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to call me as soon as you get this. Owen? I love you. But I’m going to kill you if I don’t hear from you soon.”