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dropped Toby off at the Oasis Verde day care. It was hard, but we paid our bills and Eric made good progress on his mobility. His doctor was satisfied, yet for months I continued the covert reports of discrepancies in my husband the way he was before the eight minutes and after. One day, the doctor finally stopped me mid-sentence and gave me a referral to a therapist.
    I’ve never been so embarrassed.
    I made myself go. Anna let me say what I needed to say without worrying about how ungrateful it all sounded. I really believed I had no right to feel the way I felt. Yet I felt it anyway.
    She asked me what he was like when I was pregnant. He was so Eric—in the best way. He went with me to every prenatal visit. We met a doula, or labor coach. She insisted we develop a birth plan and emphasized the benefits of making rational decisions in advance. Eric loved the idea of a birth plan, but he was insulted that I’d even consider a doula. He thought her job existed on the assumption that men weren’t capable of assisting with labor. His final contribution to the birth plan? No doula.
    Ha.
    I told Anna about the night Toby was born. It’s not often that you can pinpoint the exact time—within eight minutes—when your marriage fundamentally changed. I was convinced that if Eric and I could unpack those eight minutes, if we could understand what had happened to him, agree on the problem, then maybe we could flowchart a way to get back to ourselves.
    Fingers on the linked roots of a nut grass, I chase them to the source and reach for my spade. At least, I hope it’s the source. I keep digging.
    Eric accompanied me to therapy only once, but the minute he sat on that couch, I knew it wasn’t going to work. I realized I must’ve made him sound like a jerk, because Anna was clearly surprised by what she saw in Eric. He came across as attentive, honest, and admirably determined to recover, still walking with a cane at that point. You see, I have one of those husbands. Everybody understands what I see in him. Everyone tells me how lucky I am.
    Mid-session, I started to cry. What could I say? He wasn’t a jerk. He just wasn’t himself. I wadded up the tissue in my fist, and we spent the rest of the hour talking about managing my expectations.
    Thud bursts out of the feather grass, shaking the tennis ball cover like he’s got a snake in his mouth. When I startle, the root of the nut grass breaks off in my hand. I shake the dirt off the cluster. Maybe I got it all.
    Of course Eric’s different; he had a life-threatening accident. Of course he’s different; he’s a father now. I can’t expect him to be the same. That’s what Anna would say. It’s what my friends tell me. It’s what I tell myself. I’m managing my expectations.
    But those eight minutes changed him. I know what I know.

CHAPTER SIX
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    THE AIRPLANE GAME
    E aster is a bust. For the entire week prior, I try to get Toby interested, painting eggs and talking about the Easter Bunny. If a three-year-old could say “meh,” he would. In fact, he’s been “meh” about everything except John Robberson and that airplane game. He’s got Sanjay hooked on it, too.
    Today, I actually forced him to bring a toy dump truck to the park. It didn’t work.
    “Does the airplane game bother you?” I ask Lakshmi, not taking my eyes off the boys.
    “Look at them. Sanjay is following along like an obedient puppy. That bothers me a bit,” Lakshmi says. “This is clearly Toby’s game.”
    She’s right. It’s the same every day. Toby always crashes; it’s never Sanjay.
    “They should take turns,” I say. “I’ll talk to him.”
    “I don’t think it will work,” she says.
    We watch the familiar crash, but this time the boys make such a fuss, we go check on them. Toby is lying on the ground, pretending he has a broken leg. Sanjay can’t rescue him, Toby explains, until he gets a cast like John Robberson.
    “You have to lay down,” Sanjay insists, as he applies the