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By Root 1237 0

went downstairs. His running shoes were on the back porch. He put them on, tying the laces tightly, and walked around to the front. Jack was standing by the trellis, pulling blossoms off the roses. David squatted down and pulled him close, feeling his soft weight, his steady breathing. Jack had been born in September, early in the evening, just as dusk began to settle. David had driven Rosemary to the hospital, and he sat with her during the first six hours of labor, playing chess and bringing her ice chips. Unlike Norah, Rosemary had no interest in a natural birth; as soon as she could, she had an epidural, and when the labor slowed, she had Pitocin to speed things along. David held her hand as the contractions grew strong, but when they took her to the delivery room he stayed behind. It was too private, not his place. Still, he’d been the first one after Rosemary to hold Jack, and he’d come to love the boy like his own.

“You smell funny,” Jack said now, pushing at David’s chest.

“It’s my old stinky shirt,” David said.

“Going running?” Rosemary asked. She sat back on her heels, brushing dirt from her hands. She was lean these days, almost bony, and he worried about the pace she kept, how hard she pushed herself at school and at her job. She wiped a fine sweat from her forehead with her wrist, leaving a streak of dirt.

“I am. I can’t look at those insurance files another minute.”

“I thought you hired someone.”

“I did. She’ll be good, I think, but she can’t start until next week.”

Rosemary nodded, pensive. Her pale eyelashes caught the light. She was young, just twenty-two, but she was tough and focused, carrying herself with the assurance of a woman years older.

“Class tonight?” he asked, and she nodded.

“My last one ever. July twelfth.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

“You’ve been busy.”

He nodded, feeling vaguely guilty, troubled by the date. July twelfth; it was hard to understand how time passed so quickly. Rosemary had gone back to school after Jack was born, the same dusky January in which he had left his former practice because a man who’d been his patient for twenty years had been turned away at the door for lack of health insurance. He’d started his own practice, and he took anyone who showed up, insurance or no. He wasn’t in it for the money anymore. Paul was through college, and his own debts were long since paid off; he could do as he liked. These days, like old-time doctors, he was sometimes paid in produce, or yard work, or whatever anyone could offer. He imagined that he’d continue this way for another decade or so, seeing patients every day but gradually cutting back, until the parameter of his physical life was no larger than this house, this garden, the trips he would make to the grocer and the barber. Norah might still be winging around the globe like a dragonfly, but such a life was not for him. He was putting down roots; they were traveling deep.

“I have a chemistry final today,” Rosemary said, pulling off her gloves, “and then, hooray, I’m done.” Bees hummed in the honeysuckle. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” she said, tugging at her shorts and sitting next to him on the warm concrete steps.

“Sounds serious.”

She nodded. “It is. I was offered a job yesterday. A good one.”

“Here?”

She shook her head, smiling and waving to Jack as he tried to do a cartwheel and landed, sprawling, on the lawn. “That’s the thing. It’s in Harrisburg.”

“Near your mother,” he said, his heart sinking. He knew she’d been looking, and he’d been hoping she’d stay nearby. But moving had always been a very real possibility. Two years ago, after her father died quite suddenly, Rosemary had reconciled with her mother and her older sister, and they were anxious for her to come home and raise Jack nearby.

“That’s right. It’s the perfect job for me: four ten-hour days a week. They’ll pay for me to go on to school too. I could work on getting my physical therapy degree. But mostly I’d have more time with Jack.”

“And help,” he said. “Your mother would help. And your sister.”

“Yes. That would be really nice.