They were running late, but Martin wasn’t the least bit worried. Being late for preschool was one burden that he didn’t have to carry.

“Come on pumpkin, grab Papa’s hand, and off we go!” He said with a big jovial smile as he slung her unicorn backpack over his right shoulder and reached for her tiny little hand.

As her delicate little fingers closed around his own worn and weary ones, he paused a moment to marvel once again at how perfect she was. Completely unmarked, untainted, with her smooth porcelain skin and her big oval shaped eyes. Her name was Joy, and that was exactly what she was. Pure and absolute Joy in human form.

The French braid that he had clumsily put in her hair this morning was starting to go astray already. His wrinkled, leathered fingers had been awkward and gangly as her silky hair had slid out of his grasp. It had been much harder than the book that he had bought on hairstyles for little girls had made it out to be. He smiled ruefully and gently stroked the back of her hair with his free hand. It didn’t matter. She was perfect, nonetheless.

“Papa, let’s go!” She looked up at him expectantly, and he laughed out loud.

“You got it, Joy-Girl, let’s get out of this cold.” They started together hand-in-hand across the parking lot towards her daycare.

“Gee willikers, I’m about ready to freeze like Olard the Snowman!” Martin said, with a glint in his eye. Joy erupted in high-pitched giggles beside him.

“It’s NOT ‘Olard’, it’s Olaf!”

“Oh! Gee I always get that wrong, don’t I…”

They picked their way across the parking lot together, Martin clutching a little tighter to her tiny hand as they traversed shiny patches of ice and snow. As they reached the sliding front doors, he could feel Joy’s steps slow a bit. They always did here. A brief moment of trepidation at the prospect of a long day. He could relate.  

“Want me to carry you in, sweet girl?” He asked kindly, stooping down to her level and tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She nodded with a small smile, and he stooped to pick her up.

Martin’s knees were getting old. Hell, all of him was getting old. While there had certainly been no celebration, no cake, no balloons, no party; all the same, he had turned 70 years old last Summer. That night, he had gone to the store and bought himself his favourite Maple Cinnamon coffee cake and had eaten three quarters of it all by himself sitting in front of the Twins game. They ended up losing the game, but he had enjoyed the evening anyway.

That Summer, his daughter Avery seemed like she had been doing a little better. Like she might have been turning the corner, and emerging from the dark spell that she had fallen into after Joy was born, and her husband had left her. But as golden sunsets had faded into dreary skies and the lush fall foliage gave way in favour of tired branches and bitter cold, Avery had slid back down the hill, back into a deep, all-encompassing depression. And it had mostly been him and Joy ever since.

Martin gave a shake of his long silvery hair down his back and adjusted Joy to his other hip. She was turning 4 in just a couple of months and was starting to get heavy. He made a mental note to get himself to the gym a little more often while she was at preschool to make sure that he could still pick her up for as long as she needed him to. To do anything that she could ever possibly need for her, for as long as she needed him to.

“Good morning,” he said with a warm smile to the young women at the front desk, as he and Joy crossed the front hallway to the center. They always seemed to be working so hard, tapping away at their computers at the same time as answering an ever-ringing phone. They reminded him of Avery from years past, and he found them to be impressive. While they weren’t able to answer him out loud, both women smiled back at him, and the brunette on the left lifted her hand in a half-wave to acknowledge him.

As they made their way towards the double doors to the hallway, he could feel Joy’s little arms tighten around his shoulders just a little more, and he gently squeezed her back. There was an obviously frazzled young mother making her way down the hall from the other direction pushing a stroller and hanging onto a very small baby, who was wailing in despair. Martin paused and opened the door for her, catching the young mother’s eye with a genuine smile.

“Go on ahead, you’re doing a great job,” he said sincerely. He thought he could detect the tiniest upturn at the corner of her lips, and that lightened the load on his heart, for the briefest of moments.

Once they were through the double doors, it was just a little further down the hallway to Joy’s preschool classroom; a warm and inviting room with lofty ceilings and big bright windows that let lots of sunlight in. As he did every day, he thought to himself what a good job Avery had done in choosing this place for her daughter. She was so good at that kind of thing. Always researching, always gathering all of the information and making the best decision possible. He had always thought that she would make a great lawyer. Maybe she still could be. Maybe it wasn’t too late for her. Maybe it wasn’t too late for any of them.

It was the kind of cold that felt like it was reserved only for Minneapolis winters. The kind of cold that got inside your chest and caused a deep aching pain in your lungs when you breathed. The bus was cresting the hill and he shifted his weight side to side in anticipation of getting out of the cold. Jake owned three luxury vehicles. All three of them had heated seats and steering wheels, all three of them had remote start and could have been warm and cozy waiting for him in the garage of his two-story suburban Minneapolis home, right next to the array of tricycles, sidewalk chalk, scooters, and other children’s paraphernalia from his two school age daughters, and his two-year-old twin boys. But none of those vehicles were available to him today. None of those vehicles could take him to where he was going.  

The bus lumbered to a stop with an audible exhale of exhaust. It sounded tired. He was tired too, he could empathize. The doors opened with a creak and a whoosh, and Stan the bus driver beamed down at him with his familiar toothy grin.  

“Need a ride, son?” he beamed down at him.  

He said that every time.  

“You bet,” Jake said with a small, tight smile, handing over the five-dollar bill.  

He said that every time too.  

Jake made his way down the centre aisle towards the back of the bus, careful to avoid eye contact with anyone in the seats as he passed. One of his favourite things about the bus was that most of the time, people were pretty into their own situation, and it was very rare that anyone wanted to make small talk. People wanted to sleep. Scroll on their phone. Some of the older ones still carried worn paperback books or newspapers with them. No one was interested in him or where he was going. No one particularly cared that he was on his way to his lover’s townhouse across town while his wife looked after their four children in his home. And that was just the way that he needed it to be.  

Jake was meticulous; but he was a lawyer, of course he was. He had worked out all of the details so that his trail was essentially impossible to follow. It was never the same reason. It was never the same time of day. He always drove his vehicle to the office, parked it there and then walked the four blocks to the bus stop in front of the funeral home where he took the bus to the stop two blocks over from the townhouse. He had reservations booked at restaurants, time blocked in his calendar at work, tee times booked at golf clubs. He created alibis with unwitting co-workers, emailing them or calling them moments before he arrived. It had been nearly 18 months now, without even a whisper of suspicion from anyone. There was something about that that felt definitively sad to him. Like this might be something that he was actually able to do for the long term. Like this twisted double life might somehow be able to endure.  

As the bus approached his stop, he started to get the familiar pit of dread in his stomach; thick and heavy like he needed to throw up. It was in these crucial 4-6 minutes leading up to the knock on her front door that he still had the opportunity to stop it all. To take the bus right back to the funeral home, walk down the frigid sidewalk to his office, drive home to his family and start the long, arduous climb to make all of this right. He still had the opportunity to be the person that he wished that he was.  

The frosty air was waiting for him again when he stepped off the bus, and he turned to watch it lumber away. She lived just three houses down from the bus stop in a young up and coming neighbourhood, full of bright and perky single professionals. People that weren’t yet exhausted and defeated by life.  

Her townhouse unit was sleek, sophisticated, and sexy, just like her. Crisp white siding, stood out starkly against midnight black shutters, a neat little garden that she hired someone to maintain, and brassy gold hardware on the front door. He had met her out for drinks with one of his clients at a smoky, dimly lit jazz club downtown when she had boldly approached him at the bar and told him that he needed to know her. That there was an important energy between them that he couldn’t ignore, and that they were two people that were supposed to meet.  

Of course, he had told her that he was married, even flashed her his left hand with his somewhat tarnished wedding band with a polite smile. At first blush, she had respected that. But at the end of the night, when the server brought their tab to Jake, she also brought him a tiny folded up piece of paper from the woman at the bar, so tiny that Jake’s client had never even been aware. He hadn’t read it until he went to bed that night. And there, laying in his marital bed, laying next to his wife of nearly 10 years, at 3 in the morning, he had opened the piece of paper and read the words “What if…” scrawled in loopy handwriting, followed by her phone number.  

It had taken him four days to call her, and even when he did, he had no idea what he was doing. Intellectually, he knew where the road led. And it hadn’t taken long to get there. From that halting phone conversation in his car in the underground parking lot at the office, the ensuing coffee at the Starbucks across from the office, which he had brought his laptop to and opened up the screen as if they were having some kind of meeting. From purchasing a pay as you go phone at the gas station which they had used to exchange lightly flirtatious text messages to the inevitable eventuality of him standing on her front porch, in a position much the same that he was at this very moment.  

 It wasn’t like he was in love with her, that wasn’t what this was about. It wasn’t about the sex either. In fact, this was very little to do with the gorgeous woman that lived behind the heavy black door that he was now standing in front of at all. It had to do with him. Him and his lost sense of who he was. His desperate attempt to feel something, anything at all, since his entire identity, his marriage, aspirations, and everything else about him had slipped away into the cloudless fog of raising babies for the last eight years. The honest to god truth was that something about being with her made him feel vibrant and alive, if only for a fleeting moment.  

He raised his fist to knock, but hesitated. It wasn’t too late. It still wasn’t too late. Just as he began to lower his hand, the door opened softly, and there she was peering inquisitively around it. Wearing a chunky beige knit cardigan sweater, draped off of one bare, tanned shoulder, with her arms crossed against her chest and the sexiest tilt of her head to one side. She was intoxicating. Magnetic.  

“Hey! I thought I heard someone out here!”  

And it was all over for another day.