LITMIR.BIZ

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he’s safely home again. But the whole process is bound to kick in again tomorrow morning…

      And, she supposes, every morning until high school graduation. She can’t imagine ever getting used to sending her child off each morning with a wave, a kiss, and a fervent prayer that he’ll be safe until he’s home again.

      Never mind her friend Fiona swearing that by next August, Brynn will be counting down the days until school begins—and maybe even looking for a job.

      Fee isn’t exactly a doting mother. Not that she doesn’t love her only daughter. But given the option of spending her time with Ashley or at work, Fee would undoubtedly choose the latter, and always has. Her marriage ended because she couldn’t give her husband the second child he wanted.

      No, not “couldn’t,” Brynn amends. Wouldn’t.

      It isn’t that she believes Fee should have had another baby she didn’t want.

      Just…

      Well, lately, Brynn can identify with Fee’s ex, Patrick.

      She wants another baby. Garth does not.

      But it’s not going to destroy our marriage.

      “Mommy,” Jeremy croons, and plants a wet kiss on her lips before she can stop him.

      “Oh, no, sweetie…Mommy’s been sick.” She does her best to wipe off his mouth with the sleeve of her T-shirt.

      Chances are, he’ll come down with strep throat anyway. It’s surprising he didn’t catch it when Caleb first became ill last week, as Brynn did. Thanks to antibiotics, they’re both on the mend; she’s been hoping to spare Jeremy.

      “I love you.” Jeremy reaches up around her neck to yank her high brown ponytail with playful, and painful, affection.

      “I love you too, baby.” She laughs even as she winces, knowing there will come a day when she’ll once again be able to wear her naturally wavy chestnut-colored hair loose around her shoulders. She’ll be able to wear earrings without worrying about tugs, or white shorts free of smudges from chubby, sticky little fingers.

      But will she even want to?

      She’s never been prone to fussing with hair, jewelry, and clothes. Her mother, Marie, used to say it was a good thing Brynn was naturally pretty, since she refused to primp. She always had her share of boyfriends, drawn to her wide-set brown eyes, long-waisted, willowy-looking athletic figure, and a generous length of wavy brown hair becomingly streaked lighter from the sun.

      When she got to college, her sorority sister Tildy dubbed her W2, shorthand for Wash and Wear, because that was invariably the case with Brynn’s hair, face, clothes.

      It still is—though on rare occasions, it might be nice not to look like a domestic refugee.

      Sometimes she wonders if Garth is thinking the same thing when he walks in the door to find her in tattered jeans and sweatshirts, covered in flour or glitter glue.

      But Brynn is having so much fun with her boys that she isn’t particularly anxious to reclaim her former unmaternal self, or the career she never got off the ground, or the hours of “me” time she sacrificed along this path.

      Healthy children, a loving husband, a cozy antique house in a charming New England town…

      She has everything she ever hoped for, everything her own mother had.

      Did Brynn Costello Saddler ever really want anything more out of life?

      She went to college, after all. But not necessarily with the single-minded goal of earning a degree and becoming something specific that she’d always yearned to be: a businesswoman, an artist, a doctor…

      No, unlike her more ambitious friends, she was mainly at Stonebridge College because she couldn’t bear to be at home anymore.

      After four years there, on the verge of being sprung into the world to either return home or start fresh somewhere else and make something of herself, she fell in love.

      Dr. Garth Saddler was older, someone with whom she could recreate the domestic stability she’d had growing up, before her mother died and that world dissolved.

      And here I am.

      Me, living my life…

      My mother’s life, too…

      And it’s fulfilling.

      And maybe I need to see it through for both of us.

      “Hi! Hi!” Jeremy calls out, clambering off Brynn’s lap and waving frantically as the postal carrier arrives at the steps.

      Brynn sees old Mr. Chase look up disapprovingly from the chrysanthemums he’s planting over by the driveway of his meticulous yard next door. He isn’t particularly fond of kids.

      “Hi, buddy. Where’s your partner in crime today?” Arnie asks, sorting through a cluster of envelopes and catalogues in his hand.

      “Caleb started kindergarten this morning, Arnie, can you believe it?” Brynn watches Jeremy bend over to study a big black ant parading along the sidewalk.

      “Bug!” Jeremy shrieks. “Bug!”

      “Jeremy, no.” Brynn reaches down to stop him before he can crush the ant with his bare foot. “The outdoors is the bug’s house, remember? We don’t hurt him when we’re visiting his house. That isn’t nice.”

      “But if the bug visits your house, it’s a different story, eh, Mrs. Saddler?” Arnie asks with a wink as he hands her a stack of mail. He smashes a fist into his palm to mimic some hapless insect’s demise.

      Brynn laughs. “Exactly.”

      “So kindergarten already, huh?” Arnie asks. “Time sure flies, doesn’t it? Next thing you know, your kids will be all grown up and gone, like my girls are.”

      “By then, I’ll probably be grateful for the peace and quiet.”

      “No,” Arnie says with a sad smile, “you’ll wish these years back.”

      And Brynn is wistful once again.

      I want another baby.

      Not necessarily a daughter, no matter what countless random strangers say.

      “Going to try again for a girl?” people like to ask when they spot Brynn with her two boys in the supermarket, the library, the park. The worst offenders are mothers of pretty little blue-eyed blondes wearing frilly dresses and ribbons and bows—women who assume that any mother of two brown-haired, brown-eyed boys with perpetual juice mustaches and skinned knees must be secretly envious.

      Not Brynn.

      She grew up a tomboy with older brothers. As a ten-year-old she almost drowned trying to out-swim them in rough surf off the Cape. By high school she was a champion swimmer and beach lifeguard. She was also the only varsity cheerleader who implicitly understood football and basketball and would have preferred playing to bouncing around on the sidelines.

      She’s perfectly comfortable living in an all-male household. In fact, having survived the overflowing Zeta Delta Kappa house back in her college days, she won’t complain if she never again shares a roof with another female.

      So a third son would be just fine with her. Gender doesn’t matter, she just wants—no, longs for—another child.

      She tried to convince Garth over the summer. Her husband’s initial response: If memory serves, you were the one who begged me to convince the doctor to tie your tubes after you delivered Jeremy.

      She pointed out that she came up with that idea—which, thank God, the doctor refused to accommodate—mere moments after enduring a fourteen-hour labor, but before she cradled her second son in her arms.

      “Bye! Bye!” Jeremy calls as Arnie heads back down the walk to continue his daily rounds.

      “See

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