Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel by Frank Freudberg

understand, but Natalie, now’s the time for you to start thinking like that. You have an idea of what’s best for your children, and you need to start acting on it. Like I said, make notes, report things that put your kids at risk, build a case.”
    “Or maybe it’s that I’m too gullible,” she said. She got up and plucked a dead leaf from the stem of a magnificent sapphire-blue orchid. “I hear you. Now I feel guilty. I’ve been trying to take the easy way out, and that’s not good for the kids, either.”
    “Being a parent, it’s pretty much feeling guilty for something every day, isn’t it? All you can do is try to do better tomorrow, right?”
    “Yeah, that’s exactly it. You have kids, then?”
    Lock shook his head and looked down. “No.”
    She walked to the loveseat, picked up the clipboard next to him, and sat down. She put the clipboard on his lap. Her bare leg brushed the material of his suit. She smelled of something wonderful.
    He stood up, suddenly uncomfortable and feeling like a jerk. This is what he had wanted, but it was too soon. The children came first. What if he met Natalie’s husband and he turned out to be a good father? He didn’t think she would lie about it, but every divorce had two sides. He couldn’t start something with Natalie and still stay objective about what to put in his report.
    She looked hurt, and he searched for the right thing to say. His eyes fell on the tree in the back yard. “Can I ask you a favor? Can I see the tree in your yard?”
    She looked confused. “The albino? Why?”
    “It’s a hobby. Like bird-watching. It looks like a redwood, but they don’t grow around here.”
    “Lock, if you don’t think I’m…I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You just looked so sad.”
    “No,” he said, “it’s not that. You’re amazing. But I can’t think about that and do my job, too.”
    “Rain check, then?”
    “Rain check.” He smiled.
    Her expression brightened, and she said, “Come on out back, then.”
    He followed her to the tree, trying to feel good about doing the right thing, but it was hard. She said, “You’re right, the coast redwoods don’t do well in cold places. This one’s a dawn redwood, from China originally. Metasequoia glyptostroboides .” She pronounced the name carefully. Now he was impressed.
    “Not giganteum or sempervirens ,” Lock said. “I should have guessed that. How did it get this big, though? It has to be over a hundred years old, but with the white needles—”
    “I know,” she said, an angry frown creasing her brow. “It was so unique, I looked it up. The parent tree used to be right there.” She pointed, and Lock saw a low mound on the lawn where the stump must have been ground out. “A branch from the other tree fell and hit the house, and Witt decided to cut the whole tree down. He did it out of spite.”
    “Jesus,” Lock said. “Does he know that this one’s going to die as a result?”
    “I told him, and the tree guys told him, but Witt didn’t care.”
    “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Lock said, shaking his head.
    “Harder to imagine having a reasonable conversation with him now, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah. A lot harder.” He took out his phone and walked around the tree, taking over a dozen pictures.
     
    Lock started his car and pulled out onto the country road. On the way back to the office, Lock thought about Natalie, about the tree, and about a look she had given him that reminded him of an old girlfriend. It was a look of determination—a small frown followed by a forced smile, the conscious decision to make the best of things. It was exactly what Dominique did when faced with life’s larger difficulties.
    When he was about thirty and still teaching elementary school in Philadelphia, Lock had been frantically in love with Dominique. It wasn’t that she and Natalie looked alike, but he was starting to see they had many of the same qualities. Dominique had been a ballerina,