Moritz, going to the nursery school to pick up their children in New York, or working on psychiatric research projects, and giving lectures. She was leading three lives all at once. Eventually, Blake stopped begging her to come with him, and resigned himself to traveling alone. He was no longer able to sit still, the world was at his feet, and never big enough for him. He became an absentee husband and father almost overnight, while Maxine tried to make a contribution to bettering the lives of suicidal and traumatized adolescents and young children, and their own. Her life and Blake's couldn't have been further apart. No matter how much they loved each other, eventually the only bridge they had left between them was their kids.

For the next five years, they led separate lives, meeting briefly all over the world, when and where it suited Blake, and then she got pregnant with Sam. He was an accident that happened when they met for a weekend in Hong Kong, right after Blake had been trekking with friends in Nepal. Maxine had just won a new research grant on anorexia in young girls. She discovered she was pregnant, and unlike the other pregnancies, this time she wasn't thrilled. It was one more thing for her to juggle, one more child for her to parent by herself, one more piece of the puzzle that was already too complicated and too big. But Blake was overjoyed. He said he wanted half a dozen kids, which made no sense to Maxine. He hardly saw the ones they had. Jack was six and Daphne seven when Sam was born. Having missed the birth, Blake flew in the day after, with a box from Harry Winston in his hand. He gave Maxine a thirty-carat emerald ring, which was spectacular, but not what she wanted from him. She would much rather have had time together. She missed their early days in California, when they were both working and happy, before he won the dot-com lottery that radically changed their lives.