The Cottage

“Congratulations!” Alex said, feeling a pang. She still missed Coop and the time they'd spent together. She had never expected it to end so quickly, and it still hurt a lot that it had.

Jimmy was hobbling around the room on his crutches, and his mother was trying to talk him into going to their house on Cape Cod later that summer.

“I can't get away from work, Mom. I have to go back sooner or later.” He had already promised them to go back the following week on crutches. He couldn't do home visits. But he could at least see people in his office. Valerie was going to drive him to work, and she was planning to stay with him until he was fully walking again, and able to drive.

“I feel like a kid with my mother driving me everywhere, and taking me to the bathroom,” he confessed to Alex with a rueful grin.

“Be grateful you have her,” Alex scolded him. They all had a nice evening together, and afterwards as she drove home, she wondered what Coop was doing. She knew he had flown to Florida for two days, to do a commercial on a sailboat. But he hadn't called her. He said he thought it was best if they didn't talk for a while, although he hoped they'd be friends one day. For the moment, it wasn't a cheering prospect. She was still in love with him.

Mark's kids came home after the Fourth of July. And three days later, Alex saw on her calendar that it was the day for Charlene's DNA test. They were supposed to get the results in ten days, and she wondered what was going to happen, or when she would hear about it. But two weeks later to the day, Coop called her. He was ecstatic, and had wanted to share it with Alex. The moment he heard, he'd picked up the phone to call her.

“It's not mine!” he said exuberantly, after he asked Alex how she was doing. “I thought you'd want to know, so I called you. Isn't that marvelous? I'm off the hook.”

“Whose is it? Do you know?” Alex was happy for him, although it tugged at her heart to hear his voice again.

“No, and I don't give a damn. All I care about is that it's not mine. I've never been so relieved in my life. I'm too old to have children at my age, legitimate or otherwise,” he said for Alex's benefit. He wanted to remind her, and perhaps himself, that he was not the right man for her, in case she was mourning for him. He missed her too, but every day he was more certain that he had done the right thing in ending it with her. And he was more adamant than ever that she belonged with a man who wanted to have children with her.

“I'll bet Charlene is disappointed,” Alex said pensively, still absorbing what he'd said. She knew it was a huge relief to him, and how worried he'd been about it for months.

“Probably more like suicidal. The father is probably a gas station attendant somewhere, and she won't be getting support and an apartment in Bel Air. Couldn't happen to a more deserving woman.” They both laughed, and Coop sounded more relaxed than he had in months. And the following week Alex saw in the tabloids in the grocery store a front-page piece that said COOP WINSLOW LOVE BABY NOT HIS! She knew it had to have been planted by his press agent. Coop was vindicated. Which left him footloose and fancy free, with his bills still to pay, and Alex still lonely for him. But he had made it clear again when he called that he wasn't coming back to her, not only for her sake, but for his. It no longer seemed right to him to be with a woman forty years younger than he. Times had changed. So had he.

“Okay, okay,” she said when Jimmy chided her for working more than usual. He could never see her. “So I still miss him. There aren't a lot of other people like him.”

“That could be a good thing,” Jimmy teased her. He had started working again and was feeling better than he had in a long time. He was sleeping well, and claimed he was getting fat on his mother's cooking, but he didn't look it. He had another month of physical therapy ahead of him, before he finally got his final casts off. He insisted on taking her to dinner and a movie, with his mother still acting as chauffeur. But he was in much better spirits, and as time wore on, so was Alex. She felt more like her old self again, and she enjoyed spending time with him. Maggie had been gone for six months by then, and Coop for one, and they were both healing from their emotional wounds.

“You know,” Jimmy said to her one night over Chinese dinner. He had taken a cab for once. His mother had a dinner date, and he didn't want to impose on her. Alex had said she would drive him back to the gatehouse. “I think you should start dating.”

“Really?” she said with a look of amusement. “And who appointed you as the guardian of my love life?”