Accident Read Free Page A

friends, and well liked by most of them. It didn't surprise Page at all that he had offered to take a bunch of them to the movies and dinner at Luigi's.
    His two boys were college age now, and Chloe and Allyson were the same age. Chloe had just turned fifteen at Christmas, and she was as pretty as Allyson, although very different. She was small, with her mother's dark hair, and her father's big blue Nordic eyes and fair skin. Both of Trygve's parents were Norwegian, and he had lived in Norway until he was twelve. But he was as American as apple pie now, although his friends teased him and called him the Viking.
    He was an attractive man, and the divorcees of Ross had been greatly encouraged by his divorce, and somewhat disappointed since then. Between his work and his kids, he seemed to have no time at all in his life for women. Page suspected that it wasn't so much a lack of time, as a lack of confidence or interest.
    It was no secret that he had been deeply in love with his wife, and everyone also knew that in her desperation, she had been cheating on him for the last couple of years before she left him. She'd been something of a lost soul, and married life and monogamy were more than she could cope with. Trygve had done all he could, counseling, and even two trial separations. But he wanted so much more than she had to give. He wanted a real wife, half a dozen kids, a simple life, he wanted to spend their vacations going camping. She wanted New York, Paris, Hollywood, or London.
    Dana Thorensen had been everything Trygve wasn't. They had met in Hollywood while they were scarcely more than kids. He had been trying his hand briefly at writing scripts, fresh out of school, and she had been a budding actress. She loved what she did, and hated it when he asked her to move to San Francisco. But she also loved him enough to try it. She tried to commute for a while, tried some repertory work with ACT in San Francisco. But none of it worked out for her, and she missed her friends, and the excitement of L.A. and Hollywood, and even working as an extra. She got pregnant unexpectedly, and Trygve surprised her by insisting on marrying her, and after that everything went downhill pretty quickly. She wound up playing a part she had never wanted. And when Bjorn, their second child, was born with Down syndrome, it was too much for her, and somehow she seemed to blame Trygve. She knew she didn't want more kids, she wasn't even sure she wanted to be married. And then Chloe came, and blew everything, as far as Dana was concerned. From then on, in her eyes, her life became a nightmare. Trygve tried to do all he could, and his political articles in The New York Times , and assorted magazines and foreign journals, were doing well by then. He managed to support all of them. But all Dana wanted was out. For more than half their marriage, she could barely be civil to him. All she really wanted was her freedom. And all Trygve wanted was to make it work. And he irritated Dana even more by being the perfect father. The impossible dream, married to the wrong woman.
    He was patient, kind, always happy to include other children in their plans. He took groups of children camping and fishing with him, and was a major force in organizing the Special Olympics, at which Bjorn excelled, much to everyone's delight, except Dana's. She couldn't relate to any of them, even when she tried. And Bjorn was, in her eyes, the ultimate shame and disappointment. In the end, she was a woman whom no one liked, an angry soul, raging at a fate that others thought wasn't so bad. Her children were wonderful, even Bjorn with his special sweetness. And Trygve was a husband most women envied. But it came as no surprise when Dana began having frequent affairs. She seemed not to care who knew what she did, especially Trygve. In truth, she really wanted him to end it.
    When she left him finally, everyone was relieved, except Trygve, who had allowed himself to drift slowly downstream