The night before Max left for Argentina, she took two Benadryl before bed, and slept in. Yet she felt a sting of disappointment, of missing him, as she wandered the house in the wake of his departure. He’d left coffee in the pot, and a little note: “Love you. —M.” She poured a cup, added half-and-half and one spoon of sugar, then sat, and drank. It had the faint taste of cinnamon; Max always added a dash atop the coffee grounds.

After, Hailey went to Max’s workroom—his real workroom, walls lined with framed illustrations of book and magazine covers he’d done, album art, even posters for straight-to-DVD sci-fi flicks. She sat as his empty easel. There was an unfinished painting of Owen, from his high school graduation photo, lying in the corner. She placed it in front of her, and sat there wishing she could finish it the way Max would. Did it make him feel closer to their son?

She put aside the paints and went to Owen’s bedroom, filled with sports memorabilia and varsity trophies. She opened his closet, ruffled through cast-off clothes, outgrown suits wrapped in plastic. She found the crumpled gray New York Giants T-shirt he’d slept in last time he visited, which she’d hidden away from the housekeeper. She pressed it to her face, thinking of her little boy, built now like a linebacker, and cried.

Later, she made a second cup of coffee, and relaxed for an hour watching MSNBC in the den. She showered, put on a blouse, jeans, and light makeup, tied up her hair, slipped on a pair of leather flats, turned on the house alarm, and went in the garage and slid into her Mercedes.

She drove ten minutes through the lush neighborhoods to a brick office park. There she rode the elevator to the third floor, and entered Room 307: the offices of Dr. Francine Morrow and her psychology partners. She waited on the IKEA-style woven seat chairs for five minutes before Fran, with her prominent nose and short gray bob, peeked out a doorway down the hall and waved her in. Hailey entered the small room, made cozy by the purple couch with the assortment of colorful pillows, the felted wall hangings, and the shelf filled with travel souvenirs and knick-knacks: little porcelain birds, wooden and metal puzzles, a large Rubik’s Cube.

Fran closed the door. Hailey collapsed onto the couch, curling up with a pillow, while the doctor sat in her leather egg chair a few feet away. “So?” Fran asked. “Would you like to start?”

Hailey burst out laughing. “He went to Argentina,” she said.

“Max?” Fran said. “Why’s that funny?”

“I don’t know,” Hailey said. “It’s really not, actually. I guess . . . The whole situation just seems so absurd. I mean, I started taking sleeping pills before bed.”

“When did this happen? Are you having trouble with insomnia?”

“A couple weeks ago. And no,” Hailey said, “I just know that if I take them, I always sleep that extra hour when Max gets up and leaves for work.”

“So you’re still not talking much?” Fran said.

“I don’t know how to talk to him,” Hailey said. “Everything I say, I’m not sure if it’s how I’m saying it, or how he’s hearing it, but . . . He responds like it’s an attack. If I’m upset, he takes it personally. He won’t tell me a thing about the business. Even when I brought up Owen . . .”

“What about him?” Fran asked.

“He’s staying at school over the summer,” Hailey said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, we’ve talked about how being a mother was essentially your job,” Fran said. “‘Ex-PTA warrior’ is how you first introduced yourself, I believe.”

Hailey blushed. “Sounds ridiculous now.”

“It’s not,” Fran said. “It’s true. You fought for something: improving the academic quality of life for your son, and by extension, all his classmates.”

“I’m not that altruistic,” Hailey said, “really.”

“Is it safe to say that in the absence of someone to care for, you feel dissatisfied?”

“Completely,” she said.

“Consider, perhaps,” Fran said, with a smile, “that all the pent-up energy may be expressing itself in ways that your husband is interpreting as . . . anger. Or blame.”

“But—”

Her therapist held up a hand. “I’m not saying he’s right. We all have baggage. If your husband ever changes his mind about joining us, he’s welcome. But since he isn’t here, our job is to focus on you. To figure out why you feel the way you feel, and what you can do to change it.”

“Yeah,” Hailey said.

“Then,” Fran said, “think about it. In the absence of your son, and the day-to-day necessities of caring for him, you spend inordinate time worrying about your husband, his job, and so forth. But that ignores your fundamental shift away from the role of caregiver—something that will not change, barring another child or an infirm relative. By all accounts you don’t have to work. So what’s it all about, my dear? What does Hailey Reynolds want?”

“Are you saying I’m having a mid-life crisis?” Hailey asked.

“If you want the CliffsNotes version.”

“Forty is the new thirty,” Hailey said. “Bullshit.” Fran cracked a grin. Hailey suppressed a laugh, but it broke free as a loud snort. Aghast, she shared a look with her therapist, and then began to cackle, hugging the tasseled throw pillow to her chest, tears streaming. “God,” she said after a minute. “It’s been one of those days.”

“That’s what these are for,” Fran said, handing her a box of tissues.

Hailey dabbed at her face. “I wish he had more time. Max. I wish we could at least do some things like we used to, before Owen.”

“The only solution is to talk to him, be straightforward, but you’ve already heard that routine from me. It won’t change the fact that he has to work. You need projects. Friends.”

“I have friends,” Hailey said. “I mean, they’re all Owen’s friends’ parents . . .”

“Mhm.”

“Well, I decided to audit some classes at CW Post,” Hailey said. “I started last week.”

“Hailey!” Fran leaped up and gave her a congratulatory hug. “Why didn’t you open with that? That’s fantastic. Congratulations.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Fran said, sitting again. “It’s a great big step in the right direction.”

                                                 *           *          *          *          *  

The next day, Hailey left the house at a quarter past ten in order to arrive early for her art history lecture. She drove twenty minutes to campus, with acres of rolling green she had not explored. She wore jeans, a thin gray woven hooded sweater, and one of Owen’s baseball caps. She parked the Mercedes in one of the back lots closer to Humanities Hall, the red brick building with white moldings where she attended her courses. Sometimes she wished Max had bought her a Nissan.

She lingered in the car: examined herself in the mirror, checked and then silenced her phone, took a sip of her bottled water. Finally, she got out and walked the paved pathway toward class. Summer students lounged on the green, tossing Frisbees, walking in groups, arms slung over each other’s shoulders as they laughed. Cheerful, carefree. Hailey didn’t want to envy them. And every time she spotted some broad, tall young man with a shock of blond hair, she thought to call out. But it was not Owen, could not be, because her son was miles and miles away.

She entered the classroom building’s air-conditioned confines, and in the vaulted still-empty lecture hall, she took her customary seat in the back right corner, depositing her bag in the adjoining seat like a bulwark. For the next several minutes she watched students filter in, flop into chairs, talking with friends and playing on their phones. She wondered, what were their dreams? How many were happy, or depressed, or in love? How much did their parents know about their lives here? How much about Owen’s life did she really know?

“Is this seat taken?”

Hailey looked up to see a tall man with half-rim glasses and wavy brown hair, built like an athlete in his Polo shirt and pressed chinos. He carried a textbook and a couple notebooks, a pencil behind his ear. “There are tons of other chairs,” Hailey said, hand on her bag.

“Just thought I’d sit with the only other adult I could see.” He smiled. “I’m new, actually. I mean, I signed up late, so this is my first class.”

She examined him more closely, registering the smile lines around his mouth and eyes, his smattering of gray hairs. She adjusted her sweater, and then removed her handbag and motioned for him to sit, which he did. He wore cologne: clean citrus, mild, pleasant.

“Perry,” he introduced himself, proffering a hand.

“Hailey,” she said, accepting.

“What brings you to ‘World Art I’?” he asked.

“Well, um . . .” She took off her baseball cap, smoothed it flat in her lap.

“Didn’t mean to pry,” he said. “Just making small talk.”

“It’s fine,” she said, “it’s just, it seems like kind of a stupid reason.”

“Why don’t you let me judge?” he said.

“My husband’s in the art world,” she said. “He’s an artist himself, used to be. I really . . . I enjoy art, I guess. I just don’t really know much about it,” she said. “I want to be able to . . . join the conversation? I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines.”

“That makes sense,” he said.

“Does it?”

“Better reason than why I’m here,” he said. “Trying to keep the ol’ gray matter going.”

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m an actor,” he said. “Or, a bartender. Need a gig to actually be an actor, you know?”

She laughed. “I used to act, myself.”

“You do look the part.”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “This is my outfit for hiding from teenagers.”

“Real beauty shines through,” he said. She gawped at him. “Uh,” he said. “I didn’t mean for that to sound like a come on. I was trying to be clever. You’re attractive, objectively, is all.”

“I hope you’re not this awkward on camera,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said, laughing. “So, what happened?”

“Excuse me?”

“With the acting,” he said.

“Gave it up,” she said. “Decided to study law. Thought it was the next best thing. I think I watched too many episodes of Law & Order. Had a crush on Sam Waterston, if I’m being honest. Don’t ask why.” She chuckled. “I switched my major to criminal justice. But before I applied to law school I met Max, and I got pregnant, and, well . . . Here I am.”

“So you put things on hold,” he said. “No big deal.”

“What? No,” she said. “I never really figured out what I wanted. And then Owen was born, and I just wanted to be his mom. It was a calling, or it felt like one. Do you have kids?”

“No, I—”

Just then the professor appeared, striding down the aisle toward the podium, light gleaming off his bald pate. “All right, class,” he called. “Phones off. Let’s get moving along.”

Perry turned to her. “It was very nice to meet you, Hailey . . .”

“Reynolds,” she answered. “And nice to meet you, too, Perry . . .”

“It’s short for Pierre,” he said. “Pierre Hoffer.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: Max