Even though Leo seemed recovered from his vomiting and crying fit of the afternoon, Mouse kept a close eye on him while they prepared dinner, and throughout the evening. She knew how perceptive he was, so she sent Henry a text, saying she wanted to talk to him after Leo was asleep, even though they were both in the same room when she sent it.

"Okay," he responded, just before they sat down to dinner.

"You guys want to go for some ice cream?" Henry asked after Leo had bathed. "Go for a little after dinner walk?"

Leo loved after dinner walks, usually taken in the cool of the evening, in his pajamas, which gave everything an air of exotic differentness. People were out walking their dogs, or just sitting outside chatting, and Leo was in his element.

He surprised his father, however, by yawning, holding a small fist in front of his mouth, and stretching his arms for Mouse to pick him up. "I'm really tired tonight, Daddy, can we do a rain check?"

Mouse obligingly picked him up, patting his bottom as he laid his head on her shoulder and smiled at his father.

"Sure, kiddo," Henry replied, rubbing his son's back.

Mouse carried him to his room, as Henry followed, and they tucked him in together. Leo and Mouse had just that week redone his ceiling with paper that depicted the planets, solar system, and stars. His father kissed him on the forehead, but he leaned up and kissed Mouse on the mouth, something he did more and more often. He rolled on his side and was sleeping before they got back to the door.

"You want some wine?" Henry asked.

Mouse nodded, and he poured each of them a glass, leaving the bottle on the coffee table as they sat down on the sofa.

"Did something happen today?" he asked. "He seems okay, but it's been a long time since he went to bed so early, and I don't even remember the last time he turned down an after dinner walk and ice cream." He looked at Mouse over his glass as he took a sip.

Mouse told him what happened that day, starting with his "friends" calling him a baby, going all the way through what Aunt Stacy had said to him, Mouse and Leo's discussion of what happened when people died, and ending with poor Leo getting sick, and telling Mouse he believed his mother had left because he'd been bad, somehow.

Watching the expressions unfold on Henry's face would've been comical if it hadn't been so damned sad, Mouse reflected.

"Damn Stacy and her stupid religion," Henry railed, huffing out a breath. "I could wring her fake pious, self-righteous little neck for poisoning his mind like that!" He tossed off his wine and refilled his glass. "I knew I shouldn't have let her stay with us. I definitely shouldn't have agreed to go to her fucking church with her, but she's the only family Leo has left, and she came all the way here from California to see us, and I felt bad, you know? I knew she was a religious kook, too. It never occurred to me she'd say anything like that to him, especially out of my hearing."

He sighed. "Sorry for my language."

Mouse waved his apology away.

"I just can't believe he kept it from me for this long," Henry marveled. "Why didn't he tell me?"

"He felt so guilty," Mouse said. "I think he thought you'd be angry with him." She shook her head. "Amazing, the ideas little kids get."

Henry raised his glass in her direction. "Thank god for you, Mouse. I'm glad he felt like he could talk to you. Thanks, truly."

They sat in silence for a minute, sipping their wine.

"May I ask how your wife died?" Mouse finally ventured. "Leo said his aunt told him to be glad her suffering was over?"

Henry nodded. "Sure. It's not a secret or anything, though it's not particularly pleasant." He drank some more of his wine.

"You know what? Never mind," Mouse interjected, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have asked."

"No, it's okay," Henry insisted. "Like I said, it's not pleasant, but it's over, and it's just words now. I don't think Leo remembers it, which I'm thankful for." He took another swallow of wine. "Josie died from complications during our second pregnancy." He swallowed, looked around the room, and continued. "She had a complete placental abruption in her thirty-third week, right after Leo turned two. It's a very rare thing to have happen. She wasn't a smoker, or a drug user, she wasn't the age for it, or any of those things, but it happened anyway. She was at home, and I was at work, of course, and she started having terrible cramps. She thought at first she was just having false labor, and she didn't want to go through the bother of leaving Leo with someone, or taking him to the hospital or whatever, I'm guessing. She waited until I came home to tell me, and I let her convince me to do nothing, which was incredibly stupid." He shook his head. "Josie was always focused on Leo, on me, she always put herself last, and she insisted she was fine. Then, suddenly, she was bleeding, a lot, and the pain was unbearable." He let another huge breath. "I called an ambulance because we don't own a car, of course. I mean, why would we?" The question was obviously rhetorical, and his voice held so much self-loathing.

"Don't," Mouse begged. "Please don't do that to yourself, Henry. It wasn't your fault."

"So by the time they got here, I'd managed to get her to the lobby, and she was bleeding so much." Henry put his hand on his face. "I called Sara from the office to come stay with Leo, who was sleeping, because it was the middle of the night, and I took a taxi to the hospital.

"She didn't even know who I was the last time I saw her," Henry said, his voice soft. "She was in so much pain. They did an emergency C-section to try to save our daughter, but it was too late for her, she'd been deprived of blood and oxygen for too long, and she was stillborn."

Mouse wanted to tell him to stop, but he was somewhere else, in the past, and he probably wouldn't have heard her, anyway.

"So then they were working to try to save Josie, transfusing her and trying to stop the bleeding and all that, but she'd lost too much blood, and her organs shut down or whatever, and it was just too late." Henry looked at Mouse and drained his glass again.

"I'm so, so sorry," Mouse said simply. "I don't even know what else to say."

"No, please, I should've told you, at least the broad strokes, before," Henry said, reaching out to pat her leg. "It relates to Leo, and I should've let you know.

"He doesn't have to remember what happened to feel the loss, the lack of her in his life," Henry concluded. "I should've known.

"You've seen how he looks around sometimes?" he asked. "Outside, down hallways and all that?" At Mouse's nod, he continued. "Do you think he's looking for her?"

Mouse shrugged. "I don't know. I'm hoping he'll open up and tell me pretty soon, though. We've been getting closer, you know?"

Henry nodded, smiling. "Yeah, I've noticed. He's really coming out of his shell. You coming to us has been the best thing in the world for him, Mouse, the very best thing in the world, I think." He swirled his wine, staring at the contents of the glass. "I used to hope that he and Madeleine would hit it off, but they just never did."

Mouse kept her mouth shut.

"Do you think he'll be ready to go back to his preschool in the fall?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, I do," Mouse replied. "I mean, I'm no psychologist, you know, but in my layman's opinion, I think he's going to be just fine. He's a little sensitive. I mean, he's never going to be one of those rough and tumble little boys who just barrels through life, I think. He's always going to be thoughtful, careful, considerate, someone who looks around and sees things. That will never change. But you wouldn't want it to, would you?

Henry shook his head. "No. He's a great kid. I don't know what I'd do with a kid who wanted to play 'war' or monster trucks or whatever."

He looked thoughtfully at Mouse. "How did you ever get so smart about kids, anyway? You don't have any, and you're not a child psych major or anything, you know?"

Mouse laughed. "I'm not particularly insightful, I don't think. I'm just, like I said at my interview, an auntie to a lot of nieces and nephews, and I was the youngest of nine. My parents were pretty strict with their first kids, it sounds like, but by the time I came along, it was pretty much just 'no crack on the coffee table,' you know?" She shrugged. "I'm not that complicated, but I did have a lot of time to think about being a kid, I guess.

"And Leo's special," she concluded. "I love being with him and figuring him out. And I think we untangled a pretty big knot today." She smiled.

"You have a beautiful smile, Mouse," Henry said, regarding her fondly.

"Thanks," she responded, taking a sip of her wine.

"No, don't get all quiet and embarrassed," Henry chided her. "You need to learn to take compliments."

She shook her head. "It's fine, I know what I look like," she said. "The first thing I ever heard about myself when I got to NYU was that I was a 'Butter Face'," she continued, hoisting her glass in a mock toast before draining it and holding it out for a refill.

"Butter Face?" Henry asked as he topped off her glass. He was grinning, expecting a joke. "I don't believe I've ever heard that particular moniker before. What does it stand for?"

"Oh, come one, you know this one," Mouse laughed.

Henry shook his head.

"Really? You really don't know?" Mouse rolled her eyes a little. She made her voice low, in imitation of the boy in her dorm she'd heard say it, to another boy, in the stairwell, after she'd walked by. "That's the new freshman on the seventh floor. She's a real Butter Face. You know, her body's okay, but her face--"

Henry, who'd been smiling in anticipation of the punch line, looked as if the expression had been slapped off his face.

"What?" he gasped. He looked stunned.

"Henry, come on," Mouse gave him a good-natured little shove. "It's okay, really. Like he said, my body's okay, and my face isn't that bad. Like you said, you like my smile, right?"

Henry was shaking his head.

"My nickname is Mouse," she continued. "I never went to a dance in high school, and I haven't gone out on a date in the entire time I've lived here." Mouse drained her glass again, and set it down on the coffee table, perhaps with a bit more of a bang than she'd intended. "I'd say those things kind of tell a story, wouldn't you?"

Henry drained his own glass, carefully set it on the coffee table next to hers, and slowly, deliberately, leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. He touched no part of her body but her mouth, but it was like a current of electricity was passing between them.

Mouse didn't know what to think. She thought this was never going to happen again, and she could tell from his body language that he didn't want it to go any farther than that one kiss. So she just enjoyed it for what it was, leaning into it, opening her mouth a little.

As for Henry, even though he was the instigator, he was almost as surprised as she was. One minute he was almost as sad as he could remember being, reliving his wife's miserable, painful death; then, he was looking at the exquisite young woman in front of him, listening to her call herself ugly and watching her laugh about it.

Then, before he could call himself a pedophile, or the worst kind of hypocrite, he was leaning into her loveliness, her softness, and capturing her mouth with his, tasting the wine on her lips with his tongue, pressing on her to open up, feeling how hot and wet she was as their tongues touched.

All he could think was wow.