CHAPTER FORTY-ONE The Wife He Chose
Maya did not expect to see Simone.She had no reason to.Andre was leaving Los Angeles Sunday. Maya knew that
only because he had mentioned it at coffee, and she had already decided she would not contact him again.
Saturday afternoon, she drove to Kenneth Hahn Park to clear her head.It was one of those Los Angeles days that made people forgive the city for traffic - blue sky, warm breeze, sunlight bright enough to sharpen every edge.
Families filled the lawn. Children chased bubbles near the playground.
A birthday party had taken over three picnic tables under a row of trees.Maya walked the path around the lake with headphones in but no music playing.She saw Andre before he saw her.He stood near a bench about fifty yards away, one hand holding a stroller, the other raised as he spoke to a woman beside him.Simone.Maya knew immediately.Not because she had seen a photograph.Because of the way Andre looked at her.Simone was beautiful, but not in the dramatic way Maya had once feared another woman would have to be in order to replace her.
She wore leggings, sneakers, and a denim jacket.
Her hair was pulled into a high bun. She was laughing while trying to wipe something from a little girl's face.Andre leaned down to help.The girl - their daughter - had two puff ponytails and Andre's serious eyebrows.
She protested with both hands while Simone laughed harder.A baby slept in the stroller.Maya stopped walking.Her chest tightened so quickly she had to breathe through her mouth.There it was.Not the life Maya lost.Andre's life.There was a difference, and it took every ounce of growth she had earned to honor it.The little girl pulled away from her mother and ran three unsteady steps toward Andre.
He scooped her up before she reached him.
"Daddy!"The word traveled across the lawn.Maya closed her eyes.For years she had imagined children with Andre in abstract ways: his smile on a baby, her stubbornness in a toddler, school pictures on a refrigerator.
Now another woman had made those imagined scenes real.Jealousy rose.Maya did not judge herself for it.She let it come.Then she let it pass.Simone reached for Andre's hand.Their fingers linked automatically.Maya turned away.She could have walked over.Andre might have introduced them.
Simone might have been gracious. Maya could have performed adulthood beautifully.But not every mature choice required proving she could survive pain up close.She walked in the opposite direction.Near the parking lot, Maya sat on a low wall and cried behind her sunglasses.Not loudly.Not dramatically.Just enough to release what seeing them had made undeniable.Andre was not waiting in a suspended life for Maya to become ready.He had moved forward.So had she.The paths simply did not return to each other.