The first thing I did was call Vanessa.
I told her it was over. I told her I’d made the worst choice of my life on that boat, and I’d be spending the rest of it trying to make up for it.
She cried. Then she got angry. Then she reminded me that the penthouse was in her name.
“Keep it,” I said.
And I meant it.
It was the most expensive lesson I’ve ever paid for. But it wasn’t the most expensive thing I lost that week. Not even close.
The second thing I did was call Rebecca Foster back.
“What do I need to do?” I asked her. “Not what can I pay for. What do I need to do?”
She was quiet for a moment. I think it was the first question I’d asked that she didn’t expect.
“Start with a parenting class,” she said. “For fathers of newborns. There’s one at the community center in Stamford. Tuesday nights. And find a therapist. Not for Margaret. For you.”
The class met in a basement room with folding chairs and a coffee pot that smelled burnt.
There were eleven other fathers. A plumber. Two teachers. A guy who drove for UPS. A kid who couldn’t have been twenty.
The instructor, a retired labor and delivery nurse named Gloria, handed each of us a weighted practice doll and showed us how to support a newborn’s head.
I was terrible at it.
The UPS driver, a big man named Hector with four kids at home, leaned over and showed me. Gently. Without making me feel stupid.
“You’ll get it, man,” he said. “Everybody’s scared the first time.”
I didn’t tell him I’d missed my first time completely.
I found a therapist in Westport. Dr. Alan Riggs. Sixty years old. He didn’t care how much money I had.
At our first session, I spent forty minutes explaining why I’d done what I did. Business pressure. Loneliness. Margaret’s focus on the pregnancy. Vanessa’s attention.
When I finished, Dr. Riggs set down his pen.
“Nathaniel,” he said. “Those are reasons. They’re not explanations. Next week, let’s talk about the explanation.”
It took me four months to find it.
The explanation was simple. And ugly.
I’d learned somewhere along the way that being needed felt like being controlled. And being admired felt like being free.
Margaret needed me. Vanessa admired me.
And I chose admiration over my own children.
Saying that out loud in Dr. Riggs’s office was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Harder than any negotiation. Harder than any deal.
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