A/N: Many, many thanks to Jan for her friendship, support, and application of high standards during the writing of this story. Thanks to Alison for great feedback and for helping me stay true to my principles. And, finally, deepest thanks and appreciation to Barbara, who stuck with this project through trying times of her own. This one is dedicated to you, dear friend.

Chapter 16

Summer 2013

Once Will had decided to walk away from the situation with Georgie, he seemed much more at peace with himself and his life, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders. When Georgie called for her obligatory Sunday check-in the day after the Fitzwilliam family party, he gently and kindly told her that he was removing himself from the business of administering her trust fund, and that from now on she should talk directly and exclusively to the lawyers about it. She was an adult, almost 30 years old, and she could make her own decisions now. He told her he didn't expect her to check in with him if she didn't want to, and he hoped she and Blake would be very happy together. She accepted all this with some relief, it seemed. And Will, too, was very relieved that it was all over.

"I already mourned her for a long time. That sweet little kid has been gone for years. There's nothing to mourn anymore. All that's left of her is the disease," he said.

So he moved on, and let her go. After that he rarely saw Georgie or heard from her, and mostly just caught glimpses of her life in the newspaper or in bits and pieces of stories that Richard passed on. She and Blake got married. Before long, they both went back into rehab. They got out and started a charity to help people with addictions. She went back into rehab. Rinse and repeat. It was a train wreck, but at least Will was watching from a safe distance and not standing on the track watching the bright light bearing down on him. Yet it still had the power to make him sad when each bit of grim news trickled in.

Now he threw himself with great joy and determination into his time alone with Emma, and into their time together as a family. On weekends, they went to the beach at a club on Long Island, or to a friend's place in the Hamptons, or out to Westchester to see Charlie and Jane and the boys. They went to Netherfield one long weekend and he never complained about the bad cellphone service or about needing to get work done, not even once.

At the same time, Lizzy knew Will was working very hard at the office, too. He told her the reorganization had gone well, and said it was a good thing he had offloaded some of his unnecessary duties so he could concentrate on the higher-level matters that truly were the business of a CEO. He was relieved that Ahmed was back from parental leave and running his schedule and work-life like clockwork again. Nobody had complained—at least not openly—that Will was unavailable on Fridays.

One day in June Will forwarded an email to Lizzy while she was at home with Emma. It was from Charlie, who had gotten it from Caroline, who had somehow found it on a trashy New York tabloid website. Buried in a gossip column, the story read:

Word on the street is that William Darcy has stepped back from his top position at WPD to 'spend more time with his family.' As we all know, that's usually a cover for something serious—drugs? alcohol? mental health issues? sex addiction? There were rumors of drug use by this apparently upstanding citizen ten years ago, when his younger sister Georgiana reportedly overdosed on cocaine. What's the real story here?

Lizzy immediately called him back to find out how he was taking it, worried about who might have felt the need to share this information with a gossip rag in the first place. Probably Chip freaking Swales or someone like that. Unless it was Caroline, herself...Hmmm. Could she really be that jealous after all this time?

"Well," said Will, "at least we aren't a publicly traded company. Our stock definitely would have tanked after this."

"Oh God, Will, I'm sorry. Are the lawyers going after the paper?"

"No, no. It was all innuendo, so we can't sue them for libel. I think we just have to fight back with some good publicity. I'm going to talk to our PR person and see if we can put a piece out there about the new policies. Maybe in the WSJ or something."(1)

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," he said emphatically. "Nothing is ever going to change until more of us are brave enough to put up with this kind of crap and still keep on going."

"You mean more men?"

"Yeah."

He would never stop surprising her, it seemed.

It took a few weeks for him to decide he really wanted to do it, but eventually Will did try going to a Daddy and Me meet-up with Liam and Chloe one Friday. The dads and kids all met at the Union Square Wonderland, a playground that was supposed to be innovative and fantastic for kids of all ages.

"So how was it?" Lizzy asked that evening. Will and Emma hadn't been home when she'd first returned from the library, so she figured things couldn't have gone too badly. Now they were changing Emma's diaper and getting her into some clean clothes

"The playground is really cool. Had a great sandbox. I can see going back there a lot. There will be lots of new things for her to try as she gets older." He held out his hand for a wipe.

"And the dads? Was that OK?"

"Yeah, sure."

"What did you do? Did you sit in a drum circle and talk about masculinity or something?" she teased, and handed him a clean diaper.

He chuckled. "No. But I have to admit that I've never stood around with a group of guys talking about Huggies vs. Pampers before."

"So were they a bunch of slackers?" This was of course what he'd originally thought they would be like.

"No, of course not. Obviously I didn't talk to everyone, but one guy said he'd lost his job on Wall Street in the crash and then decided not to go back because his wife travels a lot for work and it was hard with the kids. Another guy mentioned that he and his wife had decided he would stay home with the kid because his wife made more money. You know, I respect that. It's a rational economic decision." Will snapped up Emma's romper and handed her over to Lizzy so he could go wash his hands.

Lizzy took Emma and glared at him. "You're kidding, right? Because this isn't all about economics. Obviously it's not, since you took a pay cut to stay home with Emma."

Will smirked back at her. "Ah, but I'm also optimizing my happiness levels, which is one form of utility maximization."

Lizzy pursed her lips and then burst out laughing. "Sure, OK, if it makes you feel better to think about it that way."

He held his dirty hands off to the side and leaned over to nuzzle Emma's fuzzy head. "Also, I love my little snoogie-woogie baby lamb chop," he said in that funny high voice that people use when they're talking to babies.

Lizzy laughed even more and said, "Oh, go wash your hands, you old softie."

Lizzy had a great summer, too. She felt like this arrangement hit the sweet spot for her, at least at this moment in her life. She had a lot of time alone with Emma, and weekends and evenings with Emma and Will. But she also got to spend two whole days a week immersing herself in and writing about the law, working on her law review article, blogging about her ideas, and also thinking through the place of her arguments in the course she'd be teaching come September and in the larger context of national security law. She felt her mind come back alive, and as someone for whom the life of the mind had always been critical, that was totally exhilarating.

Donna and the rest of the board at Bella's Place had submitted a great proposal to the Fitzwilliam-Darcy Trust, and Lizzy and Will had decided to move forward with a $20 million donation. It took a lot of time to work out all the details, but by the end of the summer the Trust and Bella's Place had started working together on several different aspects of the plan. Most importantly, they had bought a building near the original Bella's Place site and were gutting it in order to create transitional apartments for women and children who were ready to leave the shelter but didn't have another stable place to live yet. Next, they were working on setting up a network of existing small women's shelters around the city so that they could pool the resources they already had. They established permanent ties between that new network and the one the Trust had already set up for drug treatment and support for at-risk teens, so that the women would have access to treatment, too. They were looking into some existing job-training programs, as well, and seeing if they could make it all come together in an integrated path back to a stable, prosperous life for the women and children who came through Bella's Place. And finally, they started a new outreach effort to raise more money for the whole enterprise from individual donors, corporations, and matching grants from the city and the state. (2)

It was such a big project that it alone could have taken all of Lizzy's time if she had decided to take it on. But as much as she liked and cared deeply about the it, the law was her first professional love. So they hired new staff at the Trust to do the heavy lifting.

Emma was doing great. She loved Elena, who delighted in her just as much. Lizzy had taken a photo of the two of them facing each other playing pattycake. Their eyes were wide in surprise and excitement, their mouths matching O's, their hands just touching. Lizzy framed it and put it on the mantel next to the other family photos, along with a more formal photo of Emma sitting in Elena's lap.

Emma also seemed more attached to Will than ever because of their time together. She had always liked to sit with him, but now she reached for him more, and turned to him some of the time when she needed help or comfort. Maybe Lizzy felt a tiny twinge of jealousy when she saw that. But even more powerful was joy in the knowledge that this was exactly what Will needed right now, and what Emma needed, too. These hours together now, these touches, caresses and kisses, tears wiped away and, yes, even diapers changed, would create a bond that would help them navigate the shoals and dangerous rapids of childhood and adolescence with a minimum of serious damage. She was sure of it. And it seemed to her that he could finally see it now, too.

They decided to take a vacation in July. It couldn't be an adventure vacation or one in a faraway place like the ones they'd taken when it was just Lizzy and Will. For one thing, Emma still hated her car seat and moving vehicles in general, so a long plane ride sounded like a spectacularly bad idea.

Lizzy asked Will, "Want to see if Jane and Charlie are going to be at Netherfield for the Fourth? Maybe we could meet them up there if they are."

"Or, I could call my Great Aunt Myrtle and ask her if we can have the Darcy family cottage on the Cape."

"What? Why have I never heard of this before?"

Will shrugged. "I don't know. Because you always wanted to climb Mount Everest or something for vacations. Anyway, I'm not close with her, but somehow she ended up with my great-grandfather's beach house, and she always let my parents use it. She had to let them, according to the will, I think. Or, I guess we could just buy a place of our own on the Cape."

"Uhhhhhh," said Lizzy, still a little bowled over by this kind of talk.

In any case, by the end of July they had bought a new beach house on Cape Cod and were able to spend a week there. They were whisked in and out by the corporate jet so that Emma had hardly enough time to work up to a good wail by the time they landed.

One sunny afternoon that week while they were enjoying sitting on the back porch overlooking the water, Lizzy and Will watched incredulously while Emma took her first three unsteady steps on her own at age nine months, 21 days. Let the games begin!, thought Lizzy. And let the next stage of rigorous babyproofing begin, too.

And just like the more adventurous vacations from earlier in their marriage, this vacation produced photos that ended up on the wall in the foyer of the apartment. Only instead of Mt. Kilimanjaro or Versailles, these photos featured a sun-bonneted Emma with Will and Lizzy, sitting on the windy beach, laughing, entwined, enraptured.

Once Will had essentially let go of his family by birth, he seemed much more interested in expanding their circle of family-type friends. So he made an effort to reach out to some of the men he knew and liked at the club, people like Stephen and his wife Valerie, Hal and his wife Carla. He and Lizzy had occasionally had dinner with both these couples before Emma, but now they started having weekend brunches with them and their kids instead. From Lizzy's point of view, they weren't the most scintillating intellectual company, but they were really good people: fun, kind and generous to each other and their children, and on the same wavelength as Lizzy and Will about a lot of parenting issues. All of that was worth a whole lot.

They still saw Charlotte, Liam and Chloe often over bagels on Sundays. Charlotte was thriving in her new job, and Liam seemed to be pretty happy with their situation, too. He had never liked anything about retail except for the paycheck, but he did like hanging around with Chloe. He was teaching her how to bang on stuff with hammers and they had planted a great garden in their half of the backyard. In fact, he and Chloe were enjoying themselves so much that they decided she would only go to preschool for three half-days a week beginning in the fall, even though they could afford full-time care now.

Charlotte and Lizzy never quite completely resumed the easy rapport of their early years, because life wasn't like that. But Lizzy tried very hard to think before she spoke about money-related things, and Charlotte tried just as hard to accept Lizzy's situation in life and not get pissed off about the unfairness of it all. At the end of the summer, Charlotte, Liam and Chloe joined Lizzy and family at the beach house on the Cape for Labor Day weekend. They all flew up together, dug for clams, ate fish and chips, swam in the ocean, and didn't talk about the size of the house or the plane or money even once. It was a promising start to the latest chapter in Lizzy and Charlotte's life-long friendship.

In early August, Lizzy decided to take the plunge and apply for faculty positions at law schools. This wasn't the kind of thing where you could just call your contacts and get a job, which was what happened for practicing lawyers. There was a process. She registered with the job service at the Association of American Law Schools, wrote up the best résumé and cover letter she could, and threw them in the proverbial hopper, hoping for the best. If any of the schools were interested, they would contact her before the AALS faculty recruitment conference in the middle of October. And if they were, she'd go down to Washington for face-to-face interviews there.

By the middle of August, Lizzy had finished her article and posted it on SSRN to see if she'd get any feedback from the readers at the Legal Scholars Network. She was pleased with the constructive criticism it received and felt intensely gratified as the number of downloads shot up. A few weeks later she finished polishing the article and submitted it to the Harvard Law Review, where, with some additional revisions, it was accepted for publication. The months of hard work had paid off.

The second week in September, Lizzy's class at Yale met for the first time. She took the Acela up to New Haven first thing in the morning, and sat in the faculty lounge twiddling her thumbs and nervously revising her opening remarks over and over until it was finally 1 o'clock. She took a deep breath as she opened the door to a seminar room that she knew very well from her years as a student. The walls were still lined with bookshelves full of legal treatises; the familiar scent of musty old books, leather upholstery, and furniture polish sent her back in time. Fifteen eager faces looked up at her from around the dark, oval-shaped seminar table. In them, she saw reflections of her own self fifteen years ago: the bright eyes, the self-assured smiles, the hands ready to shoot up into the air before the question was even asked. She grinned right back at them. This was going to be good. She could so do this.

In early October, the day after Emma's first birthday party, Lizzy heard back from eleven law schools that were interested in interviewing her. She was so excited! Unfortunately, eight of them were far, far from the greater New York area. One of the remaining three was one she'd only dared hope for in her wildest dreams: Columbia Law School. Also on the list were NYU and Fordham. She had no idea what her chances were at these places, but she was determined to do her very best. She called Prof. Hoffman and Dean Goodwin for advice, and asked whether she should even do the interviews with far-away places if she didn't intend to accept jobs there. They advised her to do them as practice, before the interviews with the New York schools. She scoured the Internet for advice from different law schools on how to have a good interview. Based on all of this, she worked hard to lay out a plan for the legal scholarship she was likely to do in the coming years. She knew that was what they'd ask her about.

In mid-October, Lizzy, Emma, Will and Elena all boarded the WPD jet for a two-day, two-night trip to Washington. Will had said at first that he couldn't possibly take two days off in the middle of the week. Later, he had managed to find a way to make it work because he had realized he didn't want to miss it.

Lizzy found herself in the odd position of sitting on hotel beds being interviewed in 30-minute increments by quirky legal scholars who asked about her experience, her commitment to academia, and, most importantly, her anticipated scholarly trajectory. Since the interviews all proceeded in the same way, she figured out what she was supposed to do by the third or fourth one, and was able to kick it into high gear by the time she had the Columbia, Fordham and NYU interviews. In between meetings, she met her posse in the lobby, where Elena and Will took turns holding Emma up to watch the waterfall and chasing her around the dangerously sharp-edged furniture.

After that she was invited to on-campus interviews at seven schools, and decided only to undergo the process at the two in New York, Columbia and NYU. It was a risky strategy, and Will suggested maybe she do the Stanford interview just in case. But Lizzy felt she couldn't in good conscience visit schools she knew she couldn't accept a job offer from. Both interviews went well, each lasting an exhausting day and a half, and she had high hopes, especially for her alma mater.

Unfortunately, in the end, Lizzy didn't land the Columbia position. It was a disappointment. A hot new JD-slash-PhD from Harvard got the job. But she did get the job at NYU, which was also a top-five law school. And when she thought about how lucky she was to have a position in the city where she needed to be, and when she thought about the life she'd be able to continue having, she could hardly believe her good fortune.

When she told her women lawyers support group about it, they congratulated her warmly.

"Great!" said Janice. "Finally, we have an academic in our little group. That's what we've been needing all along."

"I envy the flexibility, but I think I'd miss the excitement of the courtroom," Vanessa commented. "You know, the big thrill, putting it all on the line." The other women nodded.

"Oh, you can get quite an adrenaline rush if you go into class totally unprepared," chuckled Lizzy. "Or so I hear. Not that I would ever do anything like that myself."

As they were all leaving the restaurant, Lizzy, with Emma on her hip, put her arm around Paula's shoulders. "See, I told you I'd find a way to make it work."

Paula patted Lizzy's shoulder right back. "I know. I'm really sorry about what I said before. I know you all, the younger generation, will find your own path, in ways I can't even imagine. I'm constantly amazed, so proud of you and what you've all accomplished."

Lizzy's heart warmed. "And we thank you for everything you've done to make it possible. None of us would be here now if you hadn't been in there before us, kicking ass and taking names."

Paula smiled contentedly back at her. "Yeah, we did that, didn't we? Hmmm."

At Thanksgiving, Lizzy, Will and Emma made another trip to Artemis to see Tom and Lillian. This visit was much better planned than the last, and so they were able to rent a car and stay at a hotel the whole time. Jane, Charlie and the boys stayed at the hotel, too, as did Lydia and Susanna. Tom's health was failing, and so everyone made the trip this year. It was a little tense at first when Lydia and Tom faced off for the first time since her OD. Before long, though, she and Will were sitting in a corner of the living room making each other laugh with their acerbic observations. Mary and Kevin even managed to stick it out until dessert before they escaped in their RV back to Rochester.

Because of his worsening heart trouble, Tom was struggling to get up the stairs to the bedroom, so he'd started sleeping on a cot in his study on the first floor. Somehow he was still getting to class, but nobody could imagine that happening for much longer. The garden was a mess because Lillian wasn't able to maintain it anymore, and the house didn't look too great, either. Everyone had the feeling this might be Lillian's last big Thanksgiving, because it was just getting to be too much for her. The day after Thanksgiving, Jane and Lizzy called Aunt Maddie to ask for her advice, and she hooked them up with a geriatric-care manager in Artemis. She was able to fill them in on the kinds of elder care that were available in the area.

For weeks after that, Jane and Lizzy argued with Tom and Lillian by phone about whether they needed more help if they were going to stay in the house. Finally Tom collapsed in class the first week of the spring semester and Lillian crashed the Volvo rushing to the hospital to see him. At last everyone had to face up to the fact that Tom needed to retire and get some medical attention. By March, Lillian and Tom had sold their house and moved into a cottage in a retirement community with graduated levels of care. It was populated mostly by former Artemis College professors and their spouses. There was a community garden and a well-stocked art studio for Lillian to enjoy, and Tom gleefully joined a literature and philosophy reading group that gave him a weekly opportunity to shout mocking epithets at his old colleagues between breaths of oxygen from the tank strapped to his walker. It was super-expensive and Lizzy and Will paid for it all, but Lillian and Tom thought it was covered by Medicare. As if.

That spring, Lizzy taught another class at Yale. She had done a good job the previous fall, and so Dean Goodwin asked her to teach a more general class on human rights law. The class whetted her appetite for more, and she threw herself into getting ready to teach at NYU in September.

In March of 2014, Louisa had a big party to celebrate the publication of her new book, The Shallow End. It was a comic novel about an Upper East Side socialite, Kiki Smythington-Cates, and her best friend Tootie Riverford, as they embarked together on a doomed business venture designing and installing themed luxury spas into all their friends' homes. Besides descending into the living hell of having to do things for themselves occasionally, Kiki and Tootie also learned a little too much about the preferences and proclivities of their friends and their friends' husbands and all their respective lovers. There were only so many Star Trek, Hello Kitty, and Shades of Grey crossover spa rooms that a woman and her business partner could design before boredom set in, after all. Louisa had given Lizzy an advance copy to read, and Lizzy thought it was pretty great. Kiki and Tootie reminded her of Patsy and Edina in "Absolutely Fabulous," only without the restraint and good taste.

The afternoon party was at Louisa and Gil's house, which Will had never seen before. Lizzy had warned him about the mural in the dining room, but apparently he hadn't really believed her. He stood staring at it with horrified fascination for about a minute before finally turning to her in consternation and stalking out of the room shielding Emma's eyes. To a packed living room, Gil performed a Beat-style poem he'd written as a tribute to Louisa. It had a bongo accompaniment and it was damn good. Then Gil led everyone, in his scratchy Winnie-the-Pooh voice, in a sparkling apple cider toast to Louisa.

After that, Louisa and her friend Tina did a dramatic reading of one of the crucial scenes in the book. Lizzy laughed until tears ran down her face. At first Will, who hadn't read the book, watched and listened with one eyebrow raised in alarm, but eventually he got the joke and cackled along with everyone else. All the kids playing in the corner looked up when Louisa shrieked, "I don't care what you think, Kitty-Spock is not getting a nozzle there," but went back to their own business when it quickly became clear there was nothing for them to see.

Caroline and her husband Hollis—it turned out his name wasn't Dudley, after all— came to the party, too. They had left their son, Jaden, at home with the nanny in spite of the fact that the invitation had clearly said there would be magic tricks and a live animal show for kids. They stood uncomfortably by themselves in the corner watching the wacky goings-on. Charlie and Jane drifted over to say hello, pulling Lizzy and Will with them.

After they'd exchanged greetings, Caroline said, "Wasn't that reading nice? I'm really happy for Louisa. But, confidentially," she whispered, "I don't think she really understands, uh, that social MILL-you, if you know what I mean."

"Hmm," Lizzy hummed noncommittally. She knew that Louisa had based the character of Kiki on Caroline, and in Lizzy's opinion she'd totally nailed it.

"Well, I think it was wonderful. So funny," Jane piped in, "maybe a little exaggerated, but some artistic license is OK, right?"

Charlie chortled, "Oh my God, I thought I was going to bust a gut when the rubber hose—."

Jane cut him off with a big smile, saying, "Little pitchers have big ears," as Aiden came over to pull on her arm. "Too much excitement, sweetie? Do you want to go have some quiet time in Jason's room, with the castle and the dragon on the wall?" He nodded yes, so off they went.

Charlie watched them go fondly. "She's so great with him. The Master's program is fantastic, and she says it's giving her a lot of new ways to help him through." Jane was now enrolled at SUNY Westchester in a part-time MA program in special education, focusing on children with autism. "Things are going really well at his new preschool, too. The transition was kind of rough, though."

"Yeah, that's what she told me," Lizzy said sympathetically. "How's Tyler doing with all the change, and all the attention going to Aiden?"

"He's good. He likes his new babysitter, after the disaster with the first one. You know, he was used to being with Jane all the time. And he and I always have special time together on Saturdays so that he gets some undivided love and attention at least once a week."

Will launched into a serious conversation with Charlie about the importance of the father-child bond, so Lizzy sidled over to Caroline, who was apparently so bored by the conversation that she had turned to her silent husband and looked as though she might even speak to him.

Before she had a chance, Lizzy said, "Say, Caroline, thanks for letting Charlie know about that item in the gossip column about Will taking time off to be with Emma. Can you imagine, insinuating he was on drugs? Incredible. How did you find it, anyway? I didn't know you read the tabs."

"Oh, no, I don't. Never." Caroline shook her head in vigorous denial, her chunky gold jewelry clanking as she did.

"Really."

"No," Caroline said innocently. Her eyebrows couldn't get any higher than they already were, but she was doing her best to bat her eyelashes using the few remaining facial muscles that weren't in thrall to Botox.

"I see. Anyway, it all worked out OK. WPD actually got some good publicity out of it in the end. Working Mom magazine named it as one of the top ten places for women and men with families to work in New York."

Caroline looked shocked, "Well that wasn't what I—" She stopped herself before she could go any further.

"Oh, Caroline, I didn't know you still cared," Lizzy smiled, "And after all this time, too. Thank you for thinking of us."

Hollis looked confused and Caroline said, "Oh look, honey, there's, uh, someone I know from Pilates," and hustled him off across the room.

Then the live animal show started and Emma toddled over to get a look. All unpleasantness was forgotten in the face of—gasp!—the world's softest living stuffed animal, a chinchilla.

In October, Emma had her second birthday party. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, kids and parents gathered in the former ballroom, now playroom, at the Darcy-Bennet home for a circus-themed celebration. Will's grandmother probably would have fainted if she'd seen what they had done to the space. Only eleven kids were there: Jane's boys, Charlotte's daughter Chloe, Vanessa's daughter Tory, Louisa's son Jason, Stacy's older child, two girls from the mother's group, and the other children from Louisa's playdate group. But it felt like a million children when they swarmed all over the play structure and jumped on the bouncy castle and rolled on the blue floor mats and pulled out every single musical instrument in the toyboxes while making faces at the mirrors on the walls. There were boo-boos, and tears, and a lot of snot, but everyone settled down when it was time to eat the cake decorated with elephants, lions, and a high-wire act. After they'd eaten, of course, the kids bounced off the walls again. There was a guy making balloon animals over to one side. Lizzy had told the party planner that no scary clowns were allowed under their big top.

Lizzy, Vanessa and Stacy were standing in what passed for a quiet corner of the room, chatting as they watched their kids play, catching up on their lives and talking about what the other members of the women lawyers group had been up to. Audrey had just made partner, and Janice had gotten a new job as chief legal counsel at a big non-profit.

Stacy sighed, "I do sort of miss miss the life sometimes, although not the hours."

Vanessa nodded, "Yeah, it's not easy. I don't know if I could do it with three kids, like you have. One is tough enough."

"Do you think about going back to it, ever?" Lizzy asked Stacy, who looked, if not exactly wistful, then at least thoughtful.

"No, not per se," Stacy shook her head. "Not exactly. But I do wonder if I'd be able to get back in if I wanted to. Or had to. Do you remember Megan, from that time we all met at Martha's for brunch? The redhead, Harvard MBA?"

Lizzy sure did. She was the one who'd been so obsessed with her kids getting into the right schools, and extracurriculars and all that.

"Well, I was just talking with her this morning. Four or five months ago, her husband left her for one of the other associates on his consulting team. He told Megan he felt like they didn't have anything in common anymore because all she ever talked about was her volunteer work and 'minor household issues' like, you know, the kids."

Vanessa and Lizzy groaned in sympathy. "Jackass." "Jerk."

"Yeah. So now she's got both kids on her own, and she's been looking for a job, but she hasn't been able to find anything full-time because she's been out of the workforce for, I don't know, seven or eight years." Stacy suddenly almost fell over as her toddler rocketed into her leg and then, bam, was off like a shot back across the room.

"Isn't she getting alimony and child support?" asked Vanessa, grabbing Stacy's arm to help her regain her balance.

"Yes, she will, but, you know, she has to think about the longer term, the rest of her life. Oh, God, and trying to go back to work, and raising the kids, and also working out visitations and holidays and all that. What a nightmare."

The three women stood looking at their feet, thinking it all through. Stacy was right. It was the "opt-out" mom's absolute worst nightmare.

Lizzy looked up at Stacy, who was chewing on her lip. "That's tough. Really tough. Does it have you worried?"

"Yeah, a little," said Stacy glumly. "Makes you feel really vulnerable. Anything can happen, and this whole perfect life is all over, just like that."

"I know," agreed Lizzy. "I'm really sorry for Megan. That's awful. I can't even imagine trying to go back to work on my own with Emma, without Will around."

Vanessa turned and, in a much lighter tone, asked Lizzy, "Right, so, how's that going now that you're working full time again?"

"It's great!" Lizzy said, following her happier lead. "Trying to figure it all out. It's a new world, totally different from corporate or non-profit. There's still a lot of pressure, just not the same kind. I haven't had to grade anything yet, but so far so good. The students are, you know, a demanding bunch. I'm working on a new law review article. State approached me again about a position in Washington based on that last article I published, but I'm not ready to quit a job I just got. We'll see. Anyway, I feel like I'm back on track. Or, on a good new track, maybe."

Vanessa nodded. "And what about, you know, the balance? That was pretty hard for you before, as I recall."

"Yeah, it was. It's better. I take Emma one day a week, Will takes her one day, and our nanny, Elena, has her three days. My time is more flexible, doesn't have to be nine to six or whatever. I do work at night sometimes. But, I don't have to travel if I don't want to, you know, to go to a conference or something. And I'm doing a better job of accepting and asking for help. Elena is super, and we also have backups when we need it. I won't let it get that bad again, no matter what. I feel like we really have it down now."

"That's great. I wish I could get Michael to be so involved." Vanessa nodded across the room at Will, who was lifting Emma up high in the air so she could grab the ribbon dangling from a balloon that had escaped up to the high ceiling.

Stacy nodded in agreement. "Uh-huh, I wish Dave were home more, too."

"Yeah, I never thought Will would do it, either." Lizzy watched Will kiss Emma and put her down on the floor.

"What changed?" Stacy asked curiously, staggering a little again as her toddler bounced off her legs once more and then ran off screaming.

"A lot of things, I think. For both of us, really. Some family...tragedy, I guess you'd call it. You know, re-evaluation of priorities. Some— just growing up. Seeing the bigger picture of life."

Stacy smiled her concurrence. "That's a big one, isn't it? I don't feel like I'll ever really grow up."

"No, neither do I. But here are these little creatures who think we know everything." Lizzy sighed.

Vanessa laughed, "Maybe we'll get a few more years of that, if we're lucky. Then it's back to everyone in the world thinking we're idiots again."

That evening Will and Lizzy were kneeling next to the tub giving Emma a bath when she told him about her conversation with Vanessa and Stacy.

"Wow, that's rough," Will commented about Megan's situation. "Makes you think twice, doesn't it?"

Lizzy reached for the yellow shampoo bottle. "Uh-huh. Makes me feel glad I'm where I am right now. I mean, I feel terrible for her, and you know, you and I are solid, but still..."

Will splashed some water into Emma's hair, trying to keep her head back so the water didn't go into her eyes. "Yeah, I know. Being able to be independent has always been important to you. I get that."

"Hmm. Anyway, talking to them got me thinking about those first few months, leaving HRI and all of that. God, that was hard. We've come a long way in two years, haven't we?" Lizzy asked as she rubbed shampoo into Emma's hair. Will was now holding a washcloth over the toddler's eyes to keep them dry and bubble-free.

"Yeah. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into."

Lizzy picked up a plastic cup and started to give the hair a rinse. Emma screamed "NO! NO water!" and smacked her hands into the water, splashing it all over everything.

Lizzy looked down at her soaked t-shirt and laughed. "No, not really. But I feel like we kind of have things under control, finally. We've got a routine down. Our disaster management skills are much better than before."

"And our tolerance for noise and chaos of all kinds is also much higher," commented Will drily as Emma screeched and squirted out of his grasp. "That's a useful thing."

"True, true." Lizzy stopped speaking to concentrate on wrangling Emma so they could get the last bit of shampoo out of her hair. Finally meeting with success, Lizzy handed Emma her squeaky rubber ducky and sat back on her heels. She swiped at a few bubbles on her own face with her sleeve, and pushed some hair that had escaped her ponytail away from her twitching nose.

She turned to Will, who was dabbing at his soaked blue buttondown shirt with the washcloth. It wasn't doing any good, of course, because the washcloth was wet, too. He looked up questioningly when he noticed she was watching at him.

She smiled at him, a big open smile full of joy and love. "And it's really good, isn't it?"

He grinned back and reached over to take her wet hand in his. "Yeah. It's really good."

Their perfect, shining moment of happiness didn't last, though. Just then Emma shrieked that she was cold and wanted to get out of the water. Lizzy had to pull her hand away so she could stand up to grab Emma's towel from the warmer next to the tub.

"Well, anyway, it seems like we do pretty much have this whole kid thing down now," Will said as he pulled Emma up out of the bath and handed her to Lizzy, who was waiting with the towel. "Ready to start thinking about baby number two?"

~The End~

Footnotes:

(1) WSJ is The Wall Street Journal.

(2) Bella's Place is, of course, made up, but there is a real organization like this in New York City, a big network that began as a shelter for battered and homeless women. It's called WIN, and it seems completely amazing.

That's it! This last chapter is sort of like an epilogue, I think, so there won't be another one. I would like to leave it up to your imagination whether they have a second child or not, and just where Lizzy's career goes. The reason is that all of us, like the characters in the story, have different ideas about what an ideal family is and what constitutes a good life. I have my own thoughts about what happens next, of course, but maybe you can share what you think would be a happily ever after for this family.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. I'd love to hear from you one last time-even if it's your first time commenting. Please leave any thoughts you might have about the story just below.