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had been over for more than a year. Mary settled on the refrain she’d used so often during their marriage. “You don’t understand.”
    “You’re damn right I don’t understand,” said Colm, clearly fighting to keep his voice down so that the few other patrons wouldn’t hear. “This—this is
sick.
He’s not even human.”
    “Yes, he is,” said Mary, firmly.
    “I saw the piece on CTV about your great breakthrough,” said Colm. “Neanderthals don’t even have the same number of chromosomes we do.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” said Mary.
    “The hell it doesn’t. I may only be an English professor, but I know that means they’re a separate species from us. And I know that
that
means you and he couldn’t have children.”
    Children
, thought Mary, her heart jumping. Sure, when she’d been younger, she’d wanted to be a mother. But by the time grad school was finished, and she and Colm finally had some money, the marriage had begun to look rocky. Mary had done some foolish things in her life, but she at least had known better than to have a child just to shore up a faltering relationship.
    And now the big four-oh was looming; Christ, she’d be menopausal before she knew it. And, besides, Ponter already had two kids of his own.
    Still…
    Still, until this moment, until Colm had spelled it out, Mary hadn’t even thought about having a child with Ponter. But what Colm said was right. Romeo and Juliet were simply a Montague and a Capulet; the barriers between them were
nothing
compared with those between a Boddit and a Vaughan, a Neanderthal and a Gliksin. Star-crossed, indeed! She and he were
universe
-crossed, timeline-crossed.
    “We haven’t talked about having children,” said Mary. “Ponter already has two daughters—in fact, year after next, he’ll be a grandfather.”
    Mary saw Colm narrow his gray eyes, perhaps wondering how anyone could possibly predict such a thing. “A marriage is supposed to produce children,” he said.
    Mary closed her eyes. It had been her insistence that they wait until she’d finished her Ph.D.—that had been the reason she’d gone on the Pill, and to hell with the Pope’s injunction. Colm had never really understood that she needed to wait, that her studies would have suffered if she’d had to be mother and grad student simultaneously. But she knew him well enough even that early in their marriage to understand that the bulk of the work raising a child would have fallen to her.
    “Neanderthals don’t have marriages like ours,” Mary said.
    But that didn’t appease Colm. “Of course you want to marry him. You wouldn’t need a divorce from me unless you were going to do that.” But then his tone softened, and for a moment Mary remembered why she’d been drawn to Colm in the first place. “You must love him very much,” he said, “to contemplate excommunication just to be with him.”
    “I do,” said Mary, and then, as if those two words had been an unfortunate echo of their own now-distant past, she rephrased the sentiment. “Yes, I love him very much.”
    The server came and deposited their entrées. Mary looked at her fish, quite possibly the last meal she would ever have with the man who had been her husband. And suddenly she found herself wanting to give some amount of happiness to Colm. She’d intended to hold firm on her desire for a divorce, but he’d been right—it
would
mean excommunication. “I’ll agree to an annulment,” said Mary, “if that’s what you want.”
    “It is,” said Colm. “Thank you.” After a moment, he sliced into his steak. “I suppose there’s no point in delaying matters. We might as well get the ball rolling.”
    “Thanks,” said Mary.
    “I have just one request.”
    Mary’s heart was pounding. “What?”
    “Tell him—tell Ponter—that it wasn’t all my fault, our marriage breaking up. Tell him I was—I
am
—a good guy.”
    Mary reached over and did what she’d thought Colm was going to do