Chapter 11

When the package from Amazon arrives at our front door, I am so excited.

I immediately carry the huge brown box into our living room, where Ben and Leah are sitting together on the couch. Ben’s got his laptop, as usual, but he’s looking at it with Leah this time. They’re on YouTube and he’s showing her videos of animals doing funny things. Leah is having a great time. I hear her giggling nonstop, with occasion interjections of, “Aw!” or “Oh no!” and once, “Do you think it’s dead?”

Ben straightens up on the couch when he sees me dump the package on the floor. “What’s that?”

Leah’s eyes widen. “A present?”

“Yes.” I brandish a pair of scissors in my hand. “It’s a really special present for Leah!”

Technically, that’s true.

“Is it a birthday present?” she asks.

“It’s not your birthday yet,” I tell her .

“Happy birthday to Mommy, happy Mommy to Mommy,” she chants as I grab a scissors to cut the tape on the box. Leah is practically climbing on top of me to get to the contents. She doesn’t seem entirely thrilled when she sees what’s inside.

It’s a potty. But not just a potty. This is a Frozen -themed princess potty, covered with drawings of icicles and a picture of Queen Elsa on the seat. And when you successfully pee in it, it plays several bars of, “Let It Go.” This is the Rolls Royce of potties.

“We already have a potty,” Ben says.

“Yeah, Mommy,” Leah agrees. “We’ve got the froggy.”

That’s the potty Ben bought her. It’s green and looks like a frog. When I saw that potty, I knew Leah would never go for it. It’s not even pink!

“This one is better,” I explain. “Leah, if you go pee-pee in it, it will play, ‘Let It Go.’”

Ben grins at me. “Shouldn’t it play that before she pees?”

“Shut-up.” I unwrap the remaining pieces of the potty and put the finished product in front of my daughter. “Leah, do you want to try using your brand new potty?”

Leah looks at the potty thoughtfully. “Okay.”

I feel a thrill of victory when Leah pulls down her pants and pull-ups to sit on her new potty. I sit down next to her cross-legged, because going to the bathroom is a group activity for a three-year-old—I love how she has no inkling of a desire for privacy. I once was in the bathroom myself and I asked Leah to give me privacy—she left for a moment, then came back and handed me the charger for my phone.

Ben watches Leah crouched on her princess potty, shaking his head, “I’m telling you, Jane. This could be done in one weekend. One weekend.”

“This new potty is going to work,” I insist.

It has to. Because I refuse to change a four-year-old’s diapers.

I hear my phone buzz from where I left it on the coffee table. Then it buzzes a second time. Ben is standing about a foot away from it, and I see him glance down. Maybe it’s my imagination, but he seems to do a double-take when he sees what’s on the screen.

“Jane.” He lifts his brown eyes to meet mine. “Who’s Ryan?”

I get this sudden sick feeling in my stomach. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but his eyes are still trained on mine. “Somebody named Ryan wrote to you, ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Then, ‘Think about it before you say no.’”

Gee, thanks, Ryan.

I never told Ben about Ryan. Not exactly. Not the whole story. I mentioned that there was a surgeon I used to date sometimes in residency, but left out the fact that I was (sort of) in love with him. Ben wasn’t too interested in talking about his ex-girlfriends, which gave me an out when it came to discussing my own past. A few times I tried to press him for details about the girl he dated right before me.

“Did you love her?” I asked him.

“I guess,” he said. “But not the way I love you. Not even close.”

I felt the same way. As much as my previous relationships seemed significant at the time, they seemed so frivolous and unimportant after I met Ben. Even what I had with Ryan seemed to pale in comparison. So Ben was right—there was no point in talking about the past.

Ben is watching my face, expecting an answer. I’m the worst liar. My skin always gives me away—I blush like a madwoman when I’m lying. But there’s no reason to lie—there’s nothing worth lying about.

Yet the way Ben is looking at me is making me feel like maybe there is.

Ben has never been the jealous type. At all. I would say he definitely trusts me. And I’ve never given him anything to get jealous about. I’ve never even considered cheating on him. Since we’ve been together, there have never been any remotely significant men in my life aside from him .

Ben has been similarly loyal to me. He’s not the kind of guy who generally makes friends with women, so there haven’t been any women in his life for me to be jealous of. The one exception was several years ago, before Leah came along, when we were first married and living in Manhattan. It was before he joined the start-up company and he was going to work on a daily basis. At the time, he was working on a big project with some woman named Jen. And it just seemed like he was talking to her a lot and texting with her a lot, but I wasn’t really bothered by it until I went to a party at his company where Jen was present.

At Ben’s old company, a lot of the people who worked there were older, maybe middle-aged, and the ones who weren’t were the stereotypical computer geeks who lived in their parents’ basement. Jen wasn’t like that though. She was in her late twenties, had her black hair cut in an attractive bob, and she was rocking a pair of Tina Fey glasses. And her black dress was far too short.

Moreover, I couldn’t help but notice that Ben was one of the more attractive men in the room. He was young and clean-cut and looked really sharp in his shirt and tie. Not that Ben isn’t always cute, but he looked downright handsome that night. And it was obvious that Jen was aware of it.

She wouldn’t leave us alone all night. She followed us to the hors d’oeurvres table, she followed us to the bar—I swear to God, I thought she was going to follow Ben to the bathroom at one point. And she was hanging on his every word. When Ben made a joke about their boss’s obviously crooked toupee, she slapped him in the biceps and cried, “Ben Ross, you’re so bad !”

That was pretty much it for me.

On the subway ride home, I read him the riot act about Jen. “It was disgusting the way she was flirting with you!”

He shrugged. “So?”

“So…” I shook my head at him. “It’s inappropriate. It could lead to something else.”

I remember the way he looked at me in utter amazement. “What do you think?” he said. “That I would actually cheat on you? With Jen ? Are you serious?”

The way he said it made me realize how much Ben took our marital vows for granted. He couldn’t conceive of ever cheating on me, and he believed the same of me.

Anyway, I should probably answer his question about Ryan. The longer I hesitate, the worse it sounds.

“He’s just some doctor at work,” I finally say. “I had to organize grand rounds for him recently and he was a huge diva about the whole thing.”

“Oh.” Ben looks down at my phone again, which has stayed blessedly silent. “Okay.”

He doesn’t press me further. He seems to accept my answer, although he doesn’t look thrilled. Ben trusts me though. Which is why my answer to Ryan’s question about lunch will be “no.” And yes, I’ve thought about it.