The Life Intended Read Free Page A

raising an eyebrow at him.
    Max collapses in giggles. I wait until he straightens back up again and says, “Miss Kate, that’s so silly!”
    “Silly?” I exclaim in mock horror. “Silly is as silly does, mister. Now are you going to sing with me or not?”
    “Sing it again, sing it again!” Max says.
    I wink at him. “I’m so handsome that all the girls stare,” I repeat, strumming my guitar.
    This time, Max sings it back to me, so I move on to the next line.
    “I’m just turned ten; I’m getting so—” I sing.
    “—old!” he cries, puffing his chest out and holding up ten fingers. “I’m getting old!”
    “You got it, old dude!” I strum again and conclude my on-the-spot verse. “But the best part of me,” I sing, “is my heart of gold.”
    I stop strumming and put my hand over my heart as Max sings back, “The best part of me is my heart of gold!” He giggles again and claps his hands over his mouth “But my heart’s not made of gold!” he exclaims through his fingers. “That’s silly again!”
    “You’re right!” I tell him. “But what that means is that I think you’re a very, very nice person, Max.”
    He breaks into a grin and throws his hands in the air. “You’re nice too, Miss Kate.”
    I put my guitar down so that I can hug him. Today, I needed him and his cheerful innocence more than he needed me. But I don’t want him to know that. These sessions aren’t supposed to be about me.
    “Thanks, Miss Kate!” Max cries as he squeezes me hard around the waist, pressing his head into my shoulder. “I love you!”
    “Max, you are very special,” I reply, surprised to feel tears prickling my eyes. “You be a good guy for your mom this week, okay?”
    “Okay, Miss Kate!” he says cheerfully. Then he bounds over to give Joya a hug.
    “Thanks, Kate,” she says with a smile, getting up from her chair as she returns her son’s squeeze. “Max, why don’t you go out and see Dina in the waiting room? I just need to talk to Miss Kate for a minute.”
    “Okay!” Max agrees. “Bye, Miss Kate!” he cries as he dashes out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
    I turn to Joya. “Everything okay?”
    She smiles. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You don’t seem like yourself today.”
    I shake my head, chiding myself for letting my personal life bleed into my professional one. “No, I’m fine, Joya,” I say. “Thanks.”
    She takes a step closer, and I can see doubt in her eyes. “Things with Dan are still going well?” she asks.
    “Things are great,” I answer quickly. Joya and I have gotten to know each other well in the last five years. I know, for example, that she’s a single mom struggling to make ends meet and that she’d do anything to make her son’s life as normal and as easy as possible. She knows that I’m still struggling with the grief left over from Patrick’s death nearly a dozen years ago, but that I’m finally dating a guy I’m serious about, someone everyone in my life agrees is perfect for me.
    “Is it something else, then?” she asks gently.
    “Really, it’s nothing,” I respond too quickly, too brightly. I see something in her eyes flicker. “Don’t worry about me,” I add with as much confidence as I can muster. “I’ll be fine.”
    But after Joya takes Max’s hand and leaves, her face full of doubt, I sink into the chair behind my desk and put my head in my hands. It takes me another five minutes before I can force myself to open the file folder my doctor gave me today, the one filled with terms like chronic anovulation and primary infertility .
    T wo hours later, I’ve finished up my notes on today’s clients and I’m headed south on Third Avenue toward Zidle’s, the intimate bistro on the corner of Lexington and Forty-Eighth that’s become a favorite of Dan’s and mine over the last year. We have a reservation at seven, and the closer I get, the more ferociously my heart thuds.
    I’ll have to tell Dan about the