Odd Mom Out

“When you have three kids, what’s one more?” she answers with a laugh.

Eva isn’t as sad about me leaving now that she’ll be staying at the Hunters’. I, on the other hand, take the separation much harder.

In my hotel room, I sit with my laptop and work on my notes for the Trident meeting in the morning. It’s nearly two New York time, but that’s only eleven West Coast time, so I force myself on.

Yet as I type, inputting changes into the graphs and spreadsheets, I can barely concentrate.

I don’t want to be here.

I want to be home.

I want to be with my daughter.

It’s reached the point that it’s too much. I’m so tired of saying good-bye to her. So tired of not having enough time with her. The experts are wrong when they say it’s not about quantity time, it’s about quality, because I need the quantity, too. I need to be with her more. I literally, physically, miss her.

My body, arms, heart—all of me misses her.

Soon, I tell myself. As soon as we hire another ad guy. As soon as the business is back in a solid position. As soon as I can get rid of this nightmare Trident account. . . .

My second night in New York is worse than the first. I call Shey, thinking we can get together, but she’s taken her brood to France for an impromptu ski trip. I think about all the other friends I used to have here, but frankly, I’m not feeling that sociable.

The problem is, I’m not merely lonely, I’m homesick for Bellevue. I’m homesick for my daughter and my home and my life there.

I don’t want to be in a hotel. I want to be in my own house, tucking Eva in at night and making her lunch in the morning. I want her to bound into my office at the end of her day. I want to see her face and her eyes and her smile.

I want to be a mother again.

To distract myself, I open up my laptop, pull up the Google toolbar, and type in “Luke Flynn, BioMed, Bellevue,” and wait.

It takes less than a second to deliver me not just to the BioMed Web site, but to Luke Flynn’s biography. And there he is. Luke Flynn, co-founder and CEO, Harvard grad, sponsor and organizer of the huge annual bike rally Bikes-to-Tikes.

I exhale and sit back, every nervous, anxious emotion alive and well inside of me.

I’m still staring at his photo when my phone rings.

“Bad time?” Luke asks when I answer.

I’m so glad to hear his voice, I could hug myself. “Not at all. I was just thinking of you.”

“Good things?”

“Very good.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Working on my computer,” I answer, guiltily clicking off his company Web site. Not that he knows I’ve been staring at his photo, but still. “What about you?”

“Just trying to figure out my evening plans.”

”Do you have a business meeting?”

“No, I just got out of one.” He pauses. “Feel like dinner?”

If only. “Sure,” I flash back. “Where should I meet you?”

“How about downstairs in the lobby in twenty minutes.”

“Dude, I’m in New York.”

“Dudette, I am, too. I’m overnighting in New York before I head to Dublin tomorrow morning.”

“You’re in New York.”

“I’m just a ten-minute cab ride away.”

“Then get over here!”

He laughs again, that great, sexy rumble of his. “Baby, I’m on my way.”

When Luke steps into the hotel lobby, New York suddenly feels like home all over again. He’s bundled up, a heavy coat, a scarf, gloves, with a dusting of snowflakes on his shoulders and head.

“Hi, stranger,” I say, hugging him and smiling up into his face.

“You’re the stranger,” he grouses. “Every time I come home you’re jumping on a plane.”

“I’d rather not be traveling. I’d rather be home.”

“Then let’s do something about this Trident account of yours.”

Laughing, I just hug him again. It’s so wonderful to see him.

“Will you be warm enough?” Luke asks, indicating my leather coat.

I nod. “I used to live here, baby doll.”

“So you like to remind me.”

With Luke’s arm wrapped around me, we head to a Greek restaurant around the corner from my hotel. Luke and I both love Greek food, and we order an appetizer sampler, just so we can enjoy a taste of everything.

Over the flaming saganaki, Luke says bluntly, “I think we need to coordinate our business trips. This going two weeks at a time without seeing each other is for the birds.”

I nod. I couldn’t agree more.

“How much longer will Trident need you here in New York?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t think they need me here at all. Their VP of sales doesn’t know what he’s doing and keeps calling these all-hands-on-deck meetings. It’s a huge waste of time, never mind their money.”

“Is there a way to get out of it?”

“Not for a year.”

“Can you hand it over to someone?”

“I’m trying.”

He raises his beer glass. “To finding a replacement,” he says.

I clink my glass with his. “I’ll drink to that.”

After dinner we walk back to my hotel, the snow still falling, the streets quieter than usual, the street noise muffled by the snow. We’re so far from home, Bellevue a whole world away, but it’s right being here like this together.

“Come to my room,” I say as we reach my hotel lobby. “Come to my room and stay the night with me.”

“My flight—”

“Push it back.” We stop by the elevator, and I wrap my arms around him, tilt my head back to look up into his face. “I want you, need you, to stay.”

He kisses me. “Done.”

I laugh as the elevator doors open. “I closed the deal?”

“Closed it?” he mocks, stepping into the elevator with me. “Hardly. We’ve only just sat down for negotiations.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The happiness doesn’t end the next day. Luke announces that he’s pushed his flight to Dublin back a day, and I call in sick to work. We start the day with a huge breakfast at a great deli, and then Luke accompanies me while I do some Christmas shopping for Eva and my parents. Laden with bags and packages, we take a carriage ride through Central Park, and then after an afternoon nap and a long, lazy bath together, we have a romantic dinner at Tao and then later drinks in the dark, intimate lounge at the Mark Hotel.

We sleep together again, Luke sharing my hotel room and bed for the second night, and it’s the first time we’ve ever been together for twenty-four hours straight, and it feels so natural. It feels the way it should.

“You’re not sleeping,” Luke’s voice sounds in the dark. He rolls onto his back and brings me on top of him. “Work worrying you?”

It’s dark, but I know his face well enough now to know it in the dark. “I hate that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

I feel his hand in my hair. He loves my hair. “I’ll be back in Seattle in less than a week.”

“I just would love a week where we could see each other every day. I know it sounds greedy, but I feel greedy right now. I feel like time is always so short and we’re both always so busy.”

“We both have careers,” he says.

Is that why we don’t see more of each other? Because we both work? I’m not so sure, but I don’t want to argue.

The next morning, Luke leaves for Dublin, and after a day spent at the Trident office I catch the six p.m. flight back to Seattle.

I’m upgraded to first class thanks to all my recent miles, but even the relative comfort of first class doesn’t ease my mind.

I don’t want to be single anymore. I don’t want to have to do it all. I want a real relationship with Luke, one of those that look so achingly traditional: man, woman, and child all living in the same house.

Please God, let Luke feel the same way.

Back in Bellevue, I work even more hours than I did in November and early December. I also catch cold after cold. Thank God Luke’s traveling or I would have gotten him sick, too. Eva catches a cold once, but she’s better in days, whereas I drag myself through the weeks feeling dead on my feet.

Dad talks to me about taking a sabbatical from work. I can’t do it—it’d kill us financially—but I wish there were another way. I wish I weren’t spread so thin. I wish I could just enjoy Eva more.

Luke calls me from all over the world. He’s in Beijing one day, Tokyo the next. Then it’s Perth, Sydney, Auckland. He offers to fly me out to see him in New Zealand. “It’s gorgeous here, Marta. It’s summer, and absolutely beautiful.”

I’m tempted, but I’ve passed my cold on to Allie, and Robert is stressed out of his mind.