Most of all, though, Josh was really, really good with my family. My prickly father had adored him; my mother still did, as he always made her feel like the most important person in the room. He asked Hadley for advice, which was basically her love language. And whereas most men made Piper—who had praying mantis proportions and exaggerated facial features and had been a model since she was fourteen—feel like she was on display at the zoo, he acted like she was . . . well, normal. As a result, they were more friends than in-laws.
But if I had to pinpoint our problems (and I’d always tried awfully hard to avoid doing just that, as what good ever came from searching for trouble?), Josh and I were one of those couples whose conversations revolved almost entirely around our families and careers. Come to think of it, that was probably why we preferred to go to the movies for date night. And for the past year or so, we’d made love about as often as solar eclipses occurred. He swore it was because he was stressed about work. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if that, too, was secretly related to his reticence to be a father.
“What’s this about, Laine?” he said, rubbing his forehead.
Bad enough that his launch was the reason he seemed to think I shouldn’t have brought up divorce. But if Josh couldn’t see that my heart had been broken into a thousand paw-shaped pieces and that the only way to fix it was to tell me he wanted to try for a baby—today, and preferably right there on the kitchen floor before the fajitas triggered his reflux—
Well, then he and I had come to an end.
There was the issue of my not wanting to hurt him. Except he didn’t look hurt. He was still standing there as calm as if I’d just informed him that I’d overcooked the chicken. I suppose I was, too, and now my eyes were dry.
“And if you weren’t launching?” I said. “Then would you think it was a good time?” Experience told me that in about three to four months, his app, which was supposed to help people power nap, would have already gone the way of the mastodon. Of course, I wasn’t really talking about coordinating our separation. But I couldn’t bring myself to say, This is about you, after a dozen years of marriage, not knowing the one thing that would make me say never mind about getting a divorce.
It occurred to me that I was giving him an ultimatum of sorts, which wasn’t like me. But I hadn’t felt like myself since Belle had died three weeks ago. And I wasn’t sure I ever would again.
“Laine,” he said with a sigh, “you’re missing the point.”
“Isn’t that the point?” I said, trying hard to keep my voice down; Josh and I didn’t fight, and I certainly didn’t want anything, even severing our marriage, to change that. “You and I aren’t on the same page anymore. We want different things.”
“That’s crazy.” His dark eyes narrowed. “But maybe I’m missing something. What exactly do you want?”
I stared at him, wondering if he’d failed to mention a recent head injury. Was he actually asking me to spell it out? When Josh had proposed all those years ago, I asked him what he saw for our future—after all, he loved talking about what was up ahead. He’d responded, “Well, Laine, we’re going to be filthy rich and have a happy family.” And the latter part of that declaration was exactly what I wanted to hear. I hadn’t cared about a fluffy white dress and a magazine spread of a reception, or even swoon-worthy vows. No, I wanted a child. Being one of three myself, I knew that more usually meant less attention. Just a single small human to love me would do. They’d be the center of my universe, and naturally Josh’s, too. That’s what I’d wanted from my own mother; although she’d loved me and done her best, her focus had been not unlike wonky cellular service, in that getting through required you to stand in the exact right spot when the stars were aligned. But me? I’d get lots of things wrong, no doubt. My child, however, would always know that I was there for them.
“Just wait,” Josh had said, gazing at me like he’d hand me the moon if I asked for it. “We’ll be amazing parents one day.”
But one day still had not come.
Now, if I confessed that the D-bomb I’d lobbed at him was actually a pre-paternity quiz, it was entirely possible he’d give in just to keep the peace. Because if Josh and I had anything in common, it was our aversion to hurting other people’s feelings. And that was great when it came to, say, artfully declining an invitation to a multilevel marketing sales pitch disguised as a cocktail party. But this was our future child we were talking about, even if said child was still just a single cell in my body. And they didn’t deserve to have a parent whose heart wasn’t really in it.
So I took a deep breath, silently apologized for the half lie I was about to tell, and said, “I don’t know what I want, but it isn’t this.”
TWO
LAINE
Josh spent that evening acting like I’d been the one who’d suffered a concussion. “You’re just upset about Belle,” he kept muttering. “It’ll pass.”
And at first, I’d wondered if he was right. Still, I decided to sleep in the small second bedroom of our town house. I used it as an office, but we kept a futon in there for the houseguests who’d never actually materialized; Josh’s family wasn’t far from Ann Arbor, where we lived, and mine expected us to visit them in New York (probably because that’s what we always did). I’d assumed that one day in the near future, it would become a nursery. I’d even painted the walls a delicate gray so that it would be easy to redecorate when we were ready. Best-laid plans and all that.
As it happened, sleeping on a lumpy mattress that smelled like wet dog—but my wet dog, which was at once comforting and heart-wrenching—only made my biological clock tick even louder. So when my phone lit up on my desk the following morning, I’d been in the middle of Googling all things fertility.
It was Hadley, so I declined the call to continue reading about how decidedly un-rosy my pregnancy prospects were. It was the end of May; I would turn thirty-eight in July. Some of the medical websites I’d been browsing suggested I might still have time, since my mother’d had Piper at thirty-seven. But that had been her third child, and in a cruel twist of fate, it turned out that the more children a woman already had, the less trouble she typically had getting pregnant. And Hadley, who was forty but also luckier than me and loaded, had gone through fertility treatment for more than two years before finally giving birth to her twins.
Come to think of it, Hadley was probably the best person to talk to about this. Trouble was, I didn’t actually want to tell her about Josh. Hadley and I hadn’t been close as kids—she was always off running this student organization or doing that honors project, and then she graduated from high school early and took off for Yale, and that was that. I hadn’t needed her back then. But as adults, we’d come to realize that being raised by the same parents at the same time was like being the last few to speak a dying language. Admittedly, Hadley and I were more alike than we were different, whereas Piper was, quite frankly, unlike anyone I’d ever met. Really, Hadley was my closest friend these days.
Yet she was nonetheless my sister—and a sister said things that most friends would not. The minute I admitted what I’d done, she was going to list all the reasons I was a fool. Worse, I wouldn’t be able to tell her the truth about why I’d made that decision, because either she or Piper would call Josh and tell him that this was about me wanting to start a family immediately, and he would then acquiesce to impregnating me out of obligation. How odd that the thing I’d spent years longing for was now the very one I was trying to avoid.
I’d just put my phone on silent when Hadley’s name appeared on the screen again. My sisters and I had a rule: if it was important, we’d call twice. I sighed and picked up. “Hey, Had. What’s wrong?”
“You tell me,” she said.
I hated when she did that—pulled out her freaky psychic ability to just know when something was upsetting me. She’d probably sensed a disturbance in the force the moment I dropped a grenade on my marriage last night and had been waiting for me to muster the courage to tell her about it.
“You’re the one who called twice,” I pointed out.