BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Shadows Of A Perfect Life

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ts of coffee, and probably dicked around on the Internet for a while before finally deciding to get

," I said, feeling a twinge of regret. I'd gotten use

"I could g

you just

this morning on the Yeti, got some breakfast

one on two r

ched, and I tried to swallow that benign envy that here

the side door, toward Allie's house. "That's your n

" I said. "Her name's Allie. De

sin

know, I d

she wasn't-I'd hit t

ugh we were in our early 30s now, his attitude hadn't

mpression, okay? I'm the one

oi? I don't think so. Wh

uch. S

t Declan'

she's smart and shit. I'm g

e window was open, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, no matter how hard I strained. Ben's back was to me, and he was partially blocking Allie's face, though it looked like they were having a conversation of sorts. She had a smile on her face, I could see that much, and then it looked like she wa

was backward. "Well..." he said, and then he

I asked, trying to

really looking to get in a relationship right now." He laughed. "Not that I was aski

sy,"

soon, but he thought it looked like I could get another couple hundred miles out of it first. When Declan woke up, we all piled

ston University, and she told me a friend of hers who worked at a clinic in rural Maine was going to be moving to California soon and was actively looking to hire a replacement, as opposed to shutting the clinic. When I had first started

than five minutes with them. What I hadn't been expecting was Ben to move, too, but he did, some six months later, saying that he want

und; most often it would be me, pushing Declan in the swing or chasing him down the plastic slide, with a gaggle of mothers all sitting together, gossiping at a picnic

could do to change that. It was easy to think back to mistakes that had been made and how things could have been done different