Coda Books 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (MM)

dismissing the past. “It wasn’t. This is better.”
    That made me feel good, so I let the matter drop. We took the train back to Munich and found a place to have dinner. We drank too much wine. We talked about nothing at all and laughed too much, and by the time we made it back to the condo, I felt like I was living somebody else’s life. She opened another bottle of wine and handed me a glass. She sat next to me on the couch.
    Too close.
    “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” I asked.
    She smiled. “When the kids are away….”
    I laughed. It came out way too loud. She put her hand on my leg and leaned close. She really was beautiful. Neither of us was young or perfect. She had little wrinkles around her eyes and bits of gray in her hair, but right then, I thought she was gorgeous.
    “I haven’t done this in several years,” she confessed.
    “It’s been longer than that for me.”
    “Since your wife?”
    I swallowed hard. Nodded. Ten years since her death, and nobody but her for forty years prior to that. I’d looked at those fifty-plus online dating sites a dozen times, but I’d never had the nerve to follow through, not because of Carol—she wouldn’t have begrudged me a bit of company after all this time—but because I was a coward.
    Because I felt too old for romance.
    Grace stood up. She held her hand down to me and pulled me off the couch, then led me down the hall to her bedroom. She turned to face me. “Can we leave the lights off?”
    I wanted to see her, but then I thought of my own aging physique. “Of course.”
    “Good.”
    She put her arms around my neck and stepped a bit closer. All of those Viagra commercials on TV were suddenly far less funny. “I hope everything still works,” I said.
    She laughed, sounding as nervous as me. “We’ll make do.”
    I may have been old, but it turned out I wasn’t too old. I was also relieved to find that memories of Carol didn’t intrude. Grace didn’t feel like Carol or taste like her. They were distinctly separate, which made it easier. Afterward, she lay next to me in the dark, her head barely brushing my shoulder. She didn’t seem inclined to cuddle.
    “Are they happy together?” she asked.
    “Who?”
    “Our sons.”
    The question surprised me. “Completely. Couldn’t you tell?”
    She shook her head. “No. Not really.”
    How could anybody not see their affection for each other? Cole and Jon still grinned at each other like schoolboys more often than not. Then again, things had been tense, and of course Cole had been depressed. He’d tried to hide it, but it was there, and Jon was more aware of it than anybody. “They’re good together, but this adoption thing is hard on them. On Cole especially.”
    “Why does he want a child so badly?”
    I shrugged, thinking about it. “He’s a nurturer. He takes care of everybody he knows, as much as they let him. I think he’ll be a wonderful parent.”
    “Unlike me. He was right, you know. I don’t know the first thing about raising a child. I never did.”
    “None of us do, until it’s too late.”
    She sighed. “Can I be honest with you?”
    “You’re asking that now, while we’re naked? After what we just did? I hope this isn’t about my performance.”
    She laughed, as I’d hoped she would. “No. I mean, about Nicky.”
    “Who?”
    “Cole’s father.”
    “Oh.” It surprised me that she’d want to discuss him. “I didn’t know that was his name.”
    She laughed. “Well, it isn’t. Not really. He was Cole Nicholas Fenton Davenport the Second, you know, but he went by Nicholas. He hated being called Nick.”
    “But Nicky was okay?”
    “No. He hated that even more.”
    And so of course she had chosen to use that name for him. I wondered if he’d grown used to it, the way Jon had learned to accept being called Jonny, or if he’d resented her for it. “Cole doesn’t talk about him much.”
    “Really? I’m surprised.”
    “Why?”
    She shrugged and turned to face me in the dark. “I’m sorry.”
    “For what?”
    “I feel like I shouldn’t have mentioned him. It feels odd to talk about him right now.”
    “Grace, we’re not kids. We both know what this is, right? We were both married—”
    “Yes, but you had a real marriage. You loved your wife, right?”
    “I still do.”
    “I never had that with Nicky.”
    “Never?”
    She shook her head. She was lying next to me in the dark, so I couldn’t see it, but I heard the rustle of her