SOMEONE ELSE'S CHILDREN

Prologue

I was my first husband’s second wife, my second husband’s third, and my third husband’s fourth. In some crowds, it makes for spicy conversation—in others, it’s poison gas.

That hadn’t been the plan. I’d dreamed of a big messy family of my own. On Sundays and holidays my kids would sit around a huge table eating and laughing with cousins and aunts and uncles the way my sisters and I had at our paternal grandparents. Annually we’d trek toward extended family the way my parents had taken us west to my mom’s home town of Washburn, North Dakota where my sisters and cousins and I had carried lilacs in the Memorial Day parade then cantered back to Grandma and Grandpa’s for a family reunion picnic marked by stories of the old days and comments as to how we’d grown.

My like-minded husband would help me create a fantasy family where all was as well on the inside as it looked on the outside. Our children would feel loved for who they were, not what they did, loved for, not in spite of, their dips and quirks. As young adults they’d follow their dreams instead of mine, their success gauged by measurements they chose. Though I am in the background of this picture, I must admit, I’m basking.

Part of me wished I could have left it at that: one hard-working husband, two or three well-adjusted kids, me, and a station wagon.