You love your best friend. You trust her with your life.

But could you give her the most precious gift of all?

Alex’s life is a mess. She’s barely holding down a job, only just affording her apartment, and can’t remember when she was last in a relationship. An unexpected pregnancy is the last thing she needs.

Martha’s life is on track. She’s got the high-flying career, the gorgeous home and the loving husband. But one big thing is missing. Five rounds of IVF and still no baby.

The solution seems simple.

Alex knows that Martha can give her child everything that she can’t provide.

But Martha’s world may not be as perfect as it seems, and letting go isn’t as easy as Alex expected it to be.

Now they face a decision that could shatter their friendship for ever.

Provocative. Emotional. Affecting.

Share The Other Mother with your best friend.

Previously published as This Fragile Life.

The Other Mother

Kate Hewitt

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Kate Hewitt 2013

Kate Hewitt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472017109

Previously published as This Fragile Life.

Version date: 2018-07-23

After spending three years as a diehard New Yorker, KATE HEWITT now lives in the Lake District with her husband, five children, and Golden Retriever. She enjoys such novel things as long country walks and chatting with people in the street, and her children love the freedom of village life—although Kate often has to ring four or five people to figure out where they’ve gone off to!

She writes women’s fiction as well as contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Modern, and whatever the genre she enjoys delivering a compelling and intensely emotional story. Find out more about her books at www.kate-hewitt.com.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Dedication

Extract

Endpages

Book Club Questions

About the Publisher

Chapter 1
MARTHA

It’s not good news. It never has been, so at least I’m expecting it and it’s easier to take. Except maybe it isn’t, because after I disconnect the call I bow my head and press my fingers to my temples and then I do something I never do. I cry.

I can hear the snuffling sobs I’m still trying to suppress echoing through the empty bathroom stalls at work. They sound awful. I sound awful, like some completely pathetic nutcase instead of what I am, which is a highly successful advertising executive with everything I’ve ever wanted.

Except a baby.

“Come on, Martha,” I say aloud. “Pull yourself together.” And it almost works, my little self-scolding, except another sob tears at my chest and comes out of my mouth, an animal sound I absolutely hate. Plus I’ve got snot dripping down my chin; if anyone saw me they’d think I was falling apart. And I’m not. I am absolutely not.

“Pull yourself together, damn it,” I snap, and my voice is a sharp crack in the silence, a warning shot. I take another deep breath, tuck my hair behind my ears, and let myself out of the stall.

I stare starkly at my reflection because I’ve never been one to shy away from the harsh truths. Like the fact that I’m thirty-six and have gone through five rounds of IVF and none have worked. I’m essentially infertile, and I’m not going to have a baby of my own.

That’s too much to take right now, so I focus on the immediate damage. My reflection. My make-up is a mess, my supposedly waterproof mascara giving me raccoon eyes. My lipstick is gone, and there are marks on my lip where I’ve bitten it. I don’t remember when.

I set about repairing the worst of it. I take a travel-sized bottle of make-up remover and my make-up bag out of my purse. I even have cotton balls, because I am always prepared. Always organized, always with a to-do list and a bullet-point plan, and within a few minutes my make-up is repaired, and I fish through my purse for my eye drops since my eyes look pretty reddened and bloodshot. I’ve thought of everything.

Except this.

Despite everything pointing to it, I haven’t let myself think about failure.

Tonight I’m going to have to go back to our apartment and tell Rob it hasn’t worked again. It feels like it’s my fault, and it is, really, because it’s my body that is rejecting the fertilized eggs. And even though I know he’ll be easy and accepting about it because he always is about everything, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the thought of admitting defeat, failure, even though I know that I must.

This is the end of the road. Five rounds of IVF. Over sixty thousand dollars. Not to mention all of the doctor’s appointments, the investigations, injections, invasions. All pointless, wasted.

We agreed a while ago that we wouldn’t try again.

And so we won’t.

I tuck all my equipment back in my bag, zip it up, give my reflection a firm no-nonsense smile. Yes. Good. I look good; I look pulled together and in control as usual, as always.

And I act as if I am for the rest of the day, going over ad copy and giving a PowerPoint presentation for our new account, an environmentally friendly laundry detergent. I hesitate for only a second, not even a second, when the screen in front of the dozen listening suits turns to an image of a mother tickling her newborn baby’s feet. I’d forgotten I’d put that one in there, but of course you’ve got to have the baby shot when it’s laundry detergent, right? It’s all about the perfect family. The perfect life.

Resolutely I stare at that image and drone on about how Earth Works will transform lives. As if laundry detergent actually makes a difference. I feel like Miss America simpering about world peace, but it’s okay because everyone is listening and nodding and I know this is working, I’m working, because I’m good at what I do. I’m amazing.

And when the day is over I take my trench coat and my briefcase and I wait for the C train to take me uptown to the two-bedroom preWar Rob and I bought two years ago, when property prices were low even for Manhattan and it seemed like such a good investment. That was right before the third IVF attempt; I was still high on determination.

The apartment is quiet and still when I let myself in, and I’m glad because I’m not quite ready to face Rob yet, even though I know this is more my heartache than his. He’s always been okay with not having kids, but then Rob has been okay with most things in life. In that respect we are totally different.

I walk through the empty rooms that smell faintly of the lavender cleaning spray our housekeeper, Melinda, uses. Everything looks neat and in its place, and the sense of order soothes me. I feel my calm returning, my sense of self, and the pain and the crippling disappointment start to recede.

By the time Rob comes home fifteen minutes later I am the epitome of organized calm. Dinner is cooking, I’ve opened a bottle of wine, classical music is playing on the sound system.

“Hey,” Rob says as he strolls into the kitchen. He has shed his blazer and is carrying it over his shoulder, hooked on one finger. He drops a kiss on the back of my neck and hangs his coat over one of the kitchen chairs, loosens his tie.

And for one blind, blazing second I am furious; I am overwhelmed with a silent rage. Didn’t he know Josie—the fertility specialist—was going to call today? Or did it not even cross his mind all day, maybe not even all week, since I went in for the embryo transfer? So typical. Sometimes easy-going becomes thoughtless, even cruel. I take a deep breath and when I speak my voice sounds normal, light.

“Hey.”

“Work okay?” Rob asks and takes a beer out of the fridge.

“Fine.”

“You had that presentation today, right?”

“Right.” He remembers that, but not this? I take a breath, flip a piece of chicken. “Josie called.”

“Oh.” Rob stills, the bottle of beer halfway to his lips. “Shit. It’s not good news, is it?”

“Nope.” I smile, because I don’t know what else to do. I’m not going to cry again. Ever. Rob has never seen me cry, not once. No one has, not since I was about fourteen. I glance down at the chicken, using all my concentration on flipping another piece. Oil spatters and lands on my wrist, but it almost feels good because at least that pain is quantifiable, manageable. At least it ends.

“Martha.” Rob puts his beer down, pulls me a little bit towards him. I resist. “Martha, I’m sorry.”

And then I go, because I need to, I need this. Him. His easiness takes the edge off me, just a little. I rest my forehead on his shoulder and he puts his arms around me; for the first time since I got the news I can imagine feeling normal again. Maybe even happy.

“It’s okay,” I say. “After four tries, we didn’t have high hopes for this one, did we?”

“Still,” Rob says.

“I know.” My throat is tight and I swallow to ease the ache. “I was expecting it, really. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a relief. I mean, no more trying, right? We agreed on that.” I say it matter-of-factly even though there is a question in my heart, bursting in my lungs.

“Right,” Rob says, and he sounds so sure.

“So at least we can close the door on this. That’s a good thing.” I’m nodding, too much. I stop. Rob doesn’t say anything, just looks at me and I feel my own eyes fill. I turn away quickly to flip the chicken.

Everyone knows the basics about IVF. It’s difficult, it’s expensive, it doesn’t often work. I knew those basic facts even before I did all the research, scoured websites, read books and articles and even medical journals. But no one tells you just how difficult it really is. Or the fact that by the time you consider it as an option, you’re already desperate. You wanted to be pregnant yesterday, and one of the first things the doctor tells you is that it’s going to take a while. First you have to take the fertility drugs to stimulate your ovaries into producing more eggs. Tricking them, essentially. Then you have to get the eggs, and, trust me, that’s not as easy as it sounds. I had to take two days off work, the first for the actual procedure, which requires sedation and local anesthesia, and the second because I had such bad cramps afterwards.

So now you’ve got the eggs. The man gives the sperm; at least that part is pretty simple. The doctor puts the egg and sperm together in a process called insemination; this is what happens when people have sex and get pregnant. For people like me and Rob, think Petri dish.

And then these fertilized eggs are now embryos; they are little hoped-for babies. Except they’re not, because every time I’ve gone to have the embryos transferred to my uterus, suspended on a speculum and inserted into my cervix, it hasn’t worked. They don’t take. Those embryos—what happens to them? I often wonder that. Do they just wither and die like plants out of water? Do I pee them out right away? I’ve never asked my doctor. It seems like a silly question.

In any case, I went through this grueling round of pokes and procedures five times and so it makes sense to be done with it. We can’t afford any more rounds, not really, and then of course there’s the emotional toll. After the fourth round I was, I admit, a little low. Rob talked about the emotional toll then, said he was worried about me. About us. I asked him to try one more time.

But that’s not going to happen this time. I know that even though part of me wants to keep trying. I hate the thought of just giving up. It’s so not me, and yet here we are, eating our dinner in silence, knowing it’s over.

I know there are other options. I cannot even tell you the number of people who have lectured me about adoption when I mentioned I was going through IVF—which wasn’t that often, because it is not the kind of thing you just drop casually into a conversation.

“Haven’t you considered adoption?” someone always asks, round-eyed, as if they can’t believe I wouldn’t give some poor, needy child a home. The people who ask this question usually have children of their own, or, if they don’t, they haven’t considered adoption themselves. It’s always a great option for someone else.

And I have considered adoption. Briefly. I read an article in The New Yorker on someone who did psychological evaluations for children being adopted from Russia. It terrified me.

Then I went on a website for domestic adoptions in the state of New York. There was something slightly disturbing about the way the site was set up, a sort of point-and-click at the child you want. They had little write-ups on each child, usually with something about how ‘Sam has challenges with his temper and self-control, but in a patient, loving home he will thrive’.

I closed my browser window on that one.

Then there were the other options. Surrogacy came to mind, since the whole reason we went down the IVF route is because my Fallopian tubes are blocked, but I hated the thought of another woman carrying my baby. Mine. And the legal ramifications are, of course, tricky. In fact, when I did an evening’s worth of research on it, I discovered that surrogacy is illegal in some states, and the genetic parents’ rights aren’t even recognized. Scary stuff, and nothing I wanted to get involved with.

Besides, I thought then I could beat this. It felt like a challenge, and I’ve always been good with challenges.

Except now I’m not.

We don’t talk about it much over dinner, and I’m glad. Rob knows me, knows when to press and when to hold back, although maybe he just doesn’t care as much. I can’t always tell. That night in bed he reaches for me, and, even though I’m not much of a cuddler, this time I curl into him, tangling my legs with his, pressing my cheek against the steady thud of his heart as he strokes my hair. I don’t cry; I just lie there and let myself be held.

Maybe, I tell myself, this won’t be so bad. After a while it won’t feel so much like loss, like grief. At least we have each other, I think as Rob kisses my head. At least I have Rob.

Chapter 2
ALEX

This is how it happened; this is how it always happens. I got drunk. I finished work, I was meeting my friend Liza at a bar on Fourth Street and Avenue A. We had a glass of wine each, and then I saw Matt across the bar and he gave me the kind of goofy grin that convinced me I was half in love with him six years ago.

He came over, we talked, and at some point Liza must have made herself scarce because I don’t remember her going or even saying goodbye.

We went outside, still talking, giggling over nothing. It was early July and the air was warm and drowsy and I had a little buzz from several glasses of wine. We’d fallen into that kind of playful didn’t-we-have-a-fun-time-together routine that is the default for relationships that ended without really going wrong. We dated for a couple of months and drifted apart without any real reason why, at least not that I remember.

And it didn’t seem as if Matt remembered it either, because he was definitely working the flirt, and I didn’t mind. We were walking uptown, and then we were a block from my apartment, and suddenly we were right outside. We just somehow wandered right over there, and upstairs, and onto the futon in the corner of my studio.

Afterwards I lay on the futon nurturing the last of my buzz while Matt rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Something about the way he just lay there made me feel faintly uneasy, but I let it slide.

“Shit,” Matt said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Not exactly the kind of pillow talk you want to hear. I rolled onto my side.

“What is it?” I asked, because I thought maybe he’d left his wallet or his phone at the bar, something like that.

“This was a mistake.”

Oh. That kind of shit. “Probably,” I said, because it seemed better to agree with him, and I wasn’t imagining that we were going to launch into a full-fledged relationship or anything.

But then I saw that Matt was scrambling off the futon, searching for his jeans, muttering and cursing all the while. So this was a really big mistake, apparently.

I lay there, watching him, kind of bemused by how seriously he was taking everything. He finished dressing, stared at me.

“Sorry,” he said, and I almost asked what for, but he was already gone.

Now it’s three weeks later and I’m going over that whole evening, wondering how and why it happened, but of course I have no more answers now than I did then. I let it happen, as I’ve let most things happen in my life, because it’s so much easier. No expectations, and so no one is hurt. Not even me.

Except now I’m pregnant.

Termination, of course, is the most sensible option. It’s certainly the first one that comes to mind, because after I stare at those double pink lines for a second I’m reaching for my phone, scrolling through my contacts for the Margaret Sanger Center on Bleecker Street. I’ve had an abortion before. Two, actually. I had them early, when the embryo was no more than a couple of cells. I equated the procedures to Pap smears, and didn’t waste a moment regretting what was or wasn’t. It seemed like the right choice for someone in my position: feckless, fancy-free, without health insurance or in a committed relationship.

And I’m still all that, yet this time my thumb pauses on the button and I stare at the number and something in me thinks, Wait.

I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve read enough magazine articles and women’s health brochures to know that your fertility starts to decline at thirty-five. Also it’s more likely you’ll have a baby with genetic problems or disorders or whatever. Basically, at thirty-five, you start to get old.

I switch my phone off and stare again at the pregnancy test. I don’t know what to think. I’m not sure what I feel. I’ve never thought about motherhood, babies, that whole deal. I never saw myself as maternal, not really. My own mother wasn’t, even though she was your typical milk-and-cookies stay-at-home-mom, so maybe it’s genetic.

I throw the pregnancy test in the trash and I go to work at the little café where I’m a barista four mornings a week. For my other job—my real job, I like to think, even though it pays less—I teach art at an after-school program for disadvantaged kids. I scrape by, living in a sixth-floor walk-up on Avenue C, which is at least two avenues too far east for either comfort or convenience, and I have no savings and no health insurance. Not exactly the kind of life most thirty-five-year-olds aspire to, but it hasn’t bothered me until now.

Until a baby.

No, I can’t think that way. Won’t, because everyone knows it’s not a baby yet. It’s maybe a couple of cells. Barely visible to the naked eye. Anyway, I might not even be pregnant. False positives and all that, and even if I am pregnant, I could still lose it.

And so I don’t think about it, and I still don’t think about it, and then I wake up one morning and roll over on my futon and retch onto the floor. Morning sickness. And I know I need to start thinking about it, and I reach for my phone, and I still don’t call that number.

I go on for another week, not thinking about it, except now it takes more concentration. Not thinking about something becomes an activity requiring determination, effort. And that’s how I’m not thinking about it when I take the 6 train uptown to have dinner with my friend Martha and her husband, Rob.

Martha and I are about as different as two people can be and always have been. I think that’s what makes our friendship work; we have never been jealous of each other, never in competition, never wanted what the other one has. We tease each other, in a good-natured way, because I think we’re both not-so-secretly appalled by the other’s lifestyle choices. But we can laugh about it too, and I think we both like the break from our lives that our friendship gives us.

Except now I’m wondering what Martha would feel if I told her I was pregnant. I never told her about those two abortions, because they’ve been trying for a baby for what feels like for ever. They gave up after the fifth round of IVF last month, and even though she doesn’t talk about it I know it bothers her. Martha can get very chilly and tight-lipped when she’s upset. That’s about as emo as she goes.

As I enter their building and the doorman waves me up—that didn’t happen the first time I visited—I decide not to talk to Martha about this baby. No, not a baby, never a baby. This pregnancy. This…issue. And it makes me a little sad, that I can’t, because, honestly, I think I’d like someone to talk to. And Martha usually has very sensible, no-nonsense kind of advice, not like my other friends, who tend to be a bit easy-going and even flaky like me.

I’m distracted as I greet them, giving Martha an air kiss because she doesn’t do hugs and making cheek-to-cheek contact with Rob because he’s a lot more in touch with his feelings, at least for a guy.

Martha is smiling, seeming relaxed as she tosses this fancy salad with home-made dressing. I don’t think she actually likes to cook, but she certainly likes to do things properly.

“How’s life in the ‘hood?” Rob asks as he hands me a beer without asking, and I take a sip before I think, Maybe I shouldn’’t.

What is going on with me?

“Fine,” I say. “You should come slumming downtown some time, Rob. Get a taste of the real New York.”

Rob pretends to shudder and Martha just smiles and shakes her head. It’s a long-running joke between us, how different our lives are. Martha and Rob have never even been to my apartment, and I think they’d be horrified if they went. It’s one step up from the ghetto in their world, but I don’t mind. I like my life. I do.

And it has no room for a baby in it.

I put my barely touched beer bottle down on the counter with a loud-sounding clink.

“Let’s eat,” Martha says cheerfully. “You haven’t gone vegan or anything, have you, Alex?”

“Actually, I’m on a fruitarian diet.”

“Fruit-what?” Rob says, and I roll my eyes.

“Joke. When have you ever known me to turn down a greasy burger?”

“I don’t think Martha’s ever made a greasy burger in her life,” Rob says as she brings the salad to the table in their little dining nook. He puts his arm around her and for a second she stills, as if she’s taking strength from that little caress. I see Rob’s face soften and I know he must feel protective of her since the last failed attempt at IVF. Watching them like this gives me a funny little ache, because I’m happy for them and yet somehow sad for myself.

They’re the ones who should be celebrating an unexpected pregnancy, a miracle. Not me.

I’m still thinking like that as we eat our salad, and I don’t pay too much attention to the conversation about a film festival Rob is judging, one of his hobbies.

“What’s up with you, Alex?” Martha asks as we finish the salad. She nods towards my plate, and I realize I’ve put all the bits of blue cheese to one side. I had the most ridiculous thought that blue cheese would be bad for the baby. I don’t know why I’m thinking this way, why part of me is acting like I’m actually going to keep it.

“Sorry,” I say. “Tired.”

“Hard week at work?” Martha asks with that teasing smile that lets me know she doesn’t really take my job seriously. She’s never said as much, but part-time barista work at thirty-five is pretty sad in her eyes. I know Martha feels I could have made more of myself; I went to a good college, I’m from an upper-middle-class home in Connecticut, I’m fairly smart. In Martha’s world I’m a failure.

“Yeah, work, I guess,” I say, trying to smile, because Martha has brought out the main course and it’s fish. It’s a fancy kind of fish, tilapia or something, in a lemon and herb sauce, but the smell of it is crazy intense. It smells like week-old mackerel to me and before I can help myself, before I can say anything more, I’m lurching upright and running to the bathroom off the front hall.

As I’m puking into the toilet I realize I haven’t even managed to close the door behind me, and Martha and Rob can hear everything.

I flush the toilet and rinse my mouth out, wash my face. After a few seconds I walk back into the dining room. Rob is looking bemused but Martha has gone very still, very alert. “Stomach bug?” Rob suggests, sympathetically, and I nod. Martha says nothing.

I don’t eat any of the fish. In fact, my little puking episode pretty much puts a damper on the whole evening, which is to be expected. I do manage a few forkfuls of rice, and I pass on the dessert and coffee.

“What about some ginger tea?” Martha suggests. “It’s supposed to settle the stomach.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Really. It was just a one-time thing.”

And still Martha says nothing.

I have this horrible feeling she knows, and I feel worse for trying to hide it from her, although, really, I didn’t exactly have time to tell her. Still I feel a certain cool kind of assessment coming from her, and I don’t remember what we talk about for the rest of the evening. Not much, anyway.

I’m exhausted by the time I head home on the subway, and then take the 14th Street crosstown bus all the way over to Avenue C. I live on the top floor of an old tenement building, which is as bad as it sounds, although I’ve never minded before. At least I have my own place.

Yet now as I climb the stairs I’m thinking all kinds of ridiculous thoughts. Like how hard these stairs would be if I were nine months pregnant. And how there is no way I could haul a stroller up six narrow flights.

It’s past eleven by the time I finally get back to my apartment, and I see it all through this new lens of quasi-motherhood, these critical and despairing eyes I don’t like. It’s one little room, about fifteen feet by ten, with a tiny sink, a two-burner stove, and a mini fridge tucked in one corner. The bathroom holds a shower stall and toilet, no sink, and besides the futon, a table, and a bookcase I have no real furniture. I keep my clothes in a jumble of plastic crates stacked on top of one another.

I sink onto my futon, and I no longer have the strength not to think about it. Not to realize how ridiculous and impossible and stupid this all is, to contemplate for one second the possibility of actually having this baby. Of being a mother.

I don’t even want a baby, do I? I’m pretty sure I don’t. Yet this isn’t even about want; it’s about something deeper, something fundamental and biological. This might be my last chance. My last chance for a life I never even wanted before.

Three days go by and I still don’t call that number.

Chapter 3
MARTHA

Alex is pregnant. It beats like a bass drum through my mind, giving me a headache. Alex is pregnant. I count the symptoms silently, the throwing up being the most obvious one of all. She took one look at that fish and heaved. But there were others, I think as I lie in bed next to Rob that night. She looked pale, drawn. She put all the blue cheese in her salad to one side. She seemed a little dizzy when she stood up. She’’s pregnant.

I haven’t told Rob my suspicions, and I don’t intend to, not yet. He’d probably be happy for her, the way he’s happy for everybody, and her fertility would highlight my own failure as a wife, a woman.

I am furious that I can’t get pregnant after five years of trying and Alex can just fall into it. It’s probably a mistake. Alex isn’t seeing anyone as far as I know, and her life isn’t exactly set up for a baby. I can’t imagine her as a mother.

And then I realize that maybe, probably, she won’t have it. It’s early. She could still have an abortion. She probably will have an abortion.

And I feel a chill enter my soul, a terror I don’t understand. I know, on a purely analytical level, that what Alex does with her pregnancy has no bearing on my life. Yet I can’t escape this inexplicable fear that slips coldly through me, that somehow her ending this pregnancy will end something for me.

It’s absurd, because everything’s already ended for me.

I feel Rob’s hand rub my back, sleepy, half-hearted. “You okay?” he asks, and I wonder why he is asking. Am I tense? Can he feel it? He’s been so careful with me since the last IVF attempt, and I felt as if we were moving on. Just a little, but my soul was healing.

Now everything feels ripped open and raw.

“I’m fine,” I say, and Rob rolls over and falls fast asleep, slack-jawed and snoring. I lie there, staring up at the ceiling, everything in me tight and taut and angry. And all I can think is, Alex is pregnant. Pregnant. And I’’m not.

Alex and I have been friends, first by default and then by choice, for over twenty years. Our parents are neighbors in the same Connecticut suburb; they’ve been friends for even longer than we have. When we were growing up we were thrown together at all those awkward family functions, dinners and drinks parties and days at the beach. At first we circled each other warily, too different from one another to attempt to find any common ground. Alex is younger than me by a year, but in junior high she seemed cooler. She had the indifferent air of a rebel, even though I don’t think she actually did anything that rebellious. Still, I was the do-gooding people-pleaser: I got straight As; I had braces; I wore knee socks pulled up high until seventh grade. Alex seemed cool to me.

Looking back, I know Alex intimidated me; she was friendly but also indifferent, dreamily in her own world. I think even then I was both jealous of the kind of comfort she had with herself, and grateful for her overtures of friendship—playing video games in her family’s basement, wandering over to our neighborhood playground to hang out on the swings—even as part of me resented it, and the fact that I needed it, that I was the needy one.

Then my braces came off and I lost the knee socks, I grew three inches and two bra sizes and in tenth grade I was suddenly, superficially cool. It was a low-grade kind of thing; I was never in the actual popular crowd. But I had a boyfriend, I got into Yale, and my father bought me a navy-blue Mazda convertible for my seventeenth birthday. I was cool and Alex, who had never quite pulled together the rebel look, who had average grades and a random assortment of arty friends, no longer was.

And part of me was glad about that.

We were still friendly during all those tediousget-togethers, although I at least felt more smugly in control. I doubt Alex even noticed. At school, we stayed in our separate groups and never spoke, hardly even saw each other. We were in different years, after all.

Then my junior year in college I came home for summer break, intending to get some crappy job and make some money before going back to Yale. I hadn’t got the internship I wanted and I was feeling pretty low, and so I ended up fighting with my mother, which wasn’t, to be honest, all that uncommon an occurrence. Well, actually it was; since I was about sixteen I’d managed my mother as best I could, which mostly meant avoiding her, especially if she’d been drinking.

But that night we argued, I don’t even remember about what, and my mother locked me out of the house, and I ended up going across the street and knocking on Alex’s door.

I still remember how she opened the door: messy, rumpled, as if she’d just rolled out of bed although I don’t think she had. She didn’t look surprised to see me, even though we hadn’t spoken properly outside of family functions in years. She just smiled, said, “Martha, hey. Come on in,” and asked if I wanted a drink.

We drank beers out on her back patio; she was there alone, because her parents had gone on some golfing vacation for a couple of weeks. They travelled a lot, I remember, and Alex always seemed to have the house to herself.

I remember feeling a kind of vague, appalled pity for her, which I have probably felt on some level ever since. She hadn’t got into a good college; it was decent, some random place in Maine, but it wasn’t the kind that opened corporate doors. But then I couldn’t see Alex knocking on those doors, either. I remember watching her that night, in a sort of amazed fascination. She was drinking her beer almost absently, so unfazed by everything: her own wandering life, my sudden appearance, the limits of possibility on her own existence. She didn’t mind any of it, and, even though that horrified me, part of me was, I think, just a little bit jealous. To be so at ease, so relaxed and assured that life would unfold as it was meant to, like a map…! Yes, I was jealous.

At that point, of course, college was everything to me. I’d made Phi Beta Kappa my junior year and even though I hadn’t got the internship I’d wanted I was focused. I had a double major in English and Media Studies and I volunteered at an ad agency in New Haven during the school year. I had ambition, I had plans, I had everything, and Alex’s art major and aimless plans seemed awful to me.

And yet, despite our differences, we became friends. Real friends, not just ones forced together for yet another cocktail party or barbecue. I like being around Alex, mainly because she’s so different from me. She’s one of the few people who can actually make me belly laugh, although admittedly it’s rare. And she’s so relaxed about everything that when I’m with her I find myself unwinding just a little, just enough. Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me; maybe she needs one person in her life who gives her good advice, who tells her like it is. I like to think that she needs someone like me.

But now? If she’s pregnant? I feel as if it could change everything.

I wait three days and then I call her. I suggest we meet for coffee at a little place on Twenty-Third Street, halfway between my work place and where she is a barista. I take a cab and get there early; I order an iced latte and take the table in the corner.

She arrives twelve minutes late, which annoys me just a little because this is my lunch break, and I generally don’t take hour-long lunches. But that’s Alex, and I get that. Like I said, we’re different.

I smile, stand, place my cheek a half-inch from hers. We sit, and I ask if she wants a coffee. She shakes her head.

And then I say nothing, because for once I have no plan, no bullet points to cover. I want to ask if she’s pregnant, and yet I’m afraid to at the same time. Then Alex does something she hardly ever does; she takes the lead. She smiles and sighs and says,

“I know you know.”

And then suddenly it’s easy. “You’re pregnant.” She nods. I let out a shuddery breath, although I’m not sure what I’m feeling. Vindication? Jealousy? Relief? It’s all mixed up. “How far along are you?” I ask and she just shrugs.

“I’m sorry,” she says after a moment, and I stiffen.

“For what?”

“It just…it doesn’t seem fair, does it?” She looks at me with dark, sorrowful eyes and my throat starts to ache.

No, it damn well doesn’t seem fair, but weirdly I’m glad she’s acknowledged it. “What are you going to do?” I ask quietly.

“I don’t know.”

I feel a little better hearing that, although I’m not sure why. “What about the father?”

“I haven’t contacted him.”

“You’re not—dating?”

She lets out an abrupt laugh and shakes her head. “No.”

“Well.” I sit back. “I want to support you.” This sounds trite, and yet I mean it.

“I thought I was going to get rid of it,” she says in a low voice, not looking at me. “I mean, no-brainer, right? There’s no way I can have a baby.”

I don’t reply to that. “And then what happened?” I ask.

Another shrug. She still won’t look at me. “I don’t know. I keep meaning to call and then I just—don’t.” She glances up at me and I see a surprising welter of pain and confusion in her eyes; I’m so used to seeing Alex seeming laid-back to the point of indifference, the emotion surprises me. “I’ve had two abortions already,” she says and looks away again. I feel a cold ripple of surprise; I didn’t know that, and I’m surprised she didn’t tell me. We’ve been good friends, maybe even best friends, since college. Since that night I showed up on her doorstep and she let me in, no questions asked.

She sighs wearily. “I don’t know. I’m being stupid. I mean, there’s no way I could keep a baby. I don’t even have health insurance. And in any case…” She pauses, lowering her head so her hair falls in front of her face. “I can’t really see me as a mom, can you?”

No, I can’t, but this doesn’t seem like the time to say it, so I just murmur something unintelligible.

“I mean, I’d probably forget it somewhere, I’m that flaky,” she says with a little laugh that still sounds sad. “And you know, babies are so full on, aren’t they? They don’t just go away when you’re tired of them or whatever.” I say nothing and she laughs again and shakes her head. “Listen to me. Just the fact that I’m saying all this proves my point, right?”

I have a terrible feeling that she’s asking this question because she wants me to tell her that it doesn’t, that she’d be a good mom, she can do this. I don’t say any of it. The words bottle in my throat so I can barely swallow, because I know what I want now, and I want it so badly. “You don’t have to keep it,” I hear myself saying, and I sound weird, distant, as if someone else is talking and I am floating up above the table, watching this play out.

Alex stares at me, frowning, clearly waiting for more. And there is more. “You don’t have to keep it,” I say again, firmly now. “But you don’t have to get rid of it either. You could give it to me. Rob and I could adopt the baby, Alex.”

Chapter 4
ALEX

I hear what Martha says and I am both completely shocked and not surprised at all. I stare at her, my thoughts tumbling through my mind in an unholy kaleidoscope, so I can only snatch at fragments: if she adopts this baby, I’’ll see it all the time. We’’ll have to explain to our parents. I’’ll be pregnant and yet I won’’t have anything at the end. Martha will be so happy.

I shake my head. I’m not sure what I want to say or even think. “Martha—”

“Just think it over,” she says quickly. “I know it’s a lot to process, and of course there’s a lot we both need to think over. It’s a big deal.”

Hell, yes. It’s a very big deal. And still I just stare.

“Only if you want to,” she adds. “I mean, if you’re really sure you don’t want to keep it yourself. It’s an option, that’s all.”

An option that changes everything. How can I turn it—her—down? How can I get an abortion now, without seeming totally selfish? And if I did want to keep it, how could this not always be between us? The baby Martha could have had. The baby I shouldn’t have, that I feel as if I don’t deserve because I didn’t want it in the first place. Because I can’’t be a mom.

“Of course,” Martha continues, “Rob and I would make it worth your while.”

“You’d…pay me?”

“No, not pay,” Martha says. A faint blush touches her cheeks. “That’s illegal, in any case. I just mean we’d make sure you were taken care of, Alex. The medical bills and everything. I mean, even maternity clothes can be expensive. You know, the whole thing could kind of be fun. Almost…almost like we’re both pregnant, you know?” She smiles, and for a second I am reminded of years ago, our senior year of college, when we went to Fort Lauderdale together for spring break. We had an amazingly silly, fun time, just the two of us, kicking around on the beach and in bars, goofing off.

That vacation cemented our friendship so much that even when our lives veered in dramatically different directions, we still met up for coffee or dinner or a glass of wine. I was Martha’s maid of honor, even though she had three gorgeous, accomplished friends from Yale who could have easily stepped into those shoes. She told me she asked me because she was going to be tense enough dealing with her mother, and she needed someone to help her relax.

And even though I’ve rolled my eyes at her controlling and OCD tendencies, I’m glad to have someone like her in my life. I’ve needed someone like her in my life, because if I didn’t I’d just flake out completely. And I know, I absolutely know, she’d make a wonderful mom. A little strict maybe, and probably totally by the book, but still, a good mother.

But to my baby?

Martha is still staring at me, waiting for what? An answer, already? “Sorry,” I finally mutter. “I’m still processing all this.”

“Of course you are. I am too. I’m sorry to spring the idea on you like that. It just popped into my mind.” She bites her lip, and for a second she looks more uncertain, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

And I don’t answer, because I’m still reeling, and part of me is thinking, Yeah, maybe you shouldn’’t have.

Martha returns to work a little while later; I don’t remember what the rest of our conversation was like. She talked about some ad account for women’s running shoes she was working on and I just blanked out. I still feel blank as I take the 6 train down to Union Square and then walk across to the Sunflower Café on Third Avenue.

I’ve been working at the Sunflower for ten years; it’s a funky little place with a relaxed atmosphere and a laid-back owner, Julia, who actually cares about her employees, all three of us. It’s me, Jasmine, and Eduardo, and I get along with both of them.

As I walk in I see it’s me and Eduardo on duty today, and I put my bag in the back and slide on my apron without really meeting his eyes. I still feel weirdly blank, and I’m not sure I can manage a normal conversation.

Eduardo is cool about it though; he just moves over to give me room at the cash register while he’s on the espresso machine, since he’s better at it than I am.

“You okay?” he finally asks when there is a lull in business and the café’s four tables are empty. It’s a beautiful day in early August, warm but not too hot, sunlight gilding everything in gold. Everyone wants to be outside.

I nod, although I feel a little dizzy and definitely nauseous; I’m still reeling from Martha’s suggestion. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say and Eduardo doesn’t reply, just raises his eyebrows. I know I’m not fooling him. And then, maybe because he’s a pretty nice guy or maybe just because I’m still so dazed from my conversation with Martha, I blurt, “I’m pregnant.”

Eduardo doesn’t say anything; he seems totally unruffled. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s not pregnant. He’s about ten years younger than me, gorgeous, Latino, a dancer. He’s in a modern dance troupe and I’ve seen some of his shows. I kept my eyes on him the whole time; he moved with a sensuous, sinuous grace I didn’t notice when he was working the espresso machine.

I let out a shuddery breath and stare at the cash register. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What are you thinking about doing?” Eduardo asks, and I can’t tell what he thinks about anything from his tone.

“Well,” I say slowly, “termination seems the obvious choice.”

“But?”

“But I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I say, and with a jolt I know I mean it. I really don’t want to go down that road this time, although my feelings about why not are too difficult to untangle right now. Maybe I want to try to be different, but I’m not sure how different I can be. “I can’t have a baby, though,” I say and Eduardo just waits. “I mean, my life is totally not—I live in a walk-up. On the sixth floor. I have no health insurance. I have no money.”

I shake my head at the sheer impossibility of it all and then Eduardo says softly, “But?”

“But?” I repeat blankly, even though I know what he means. Do I want this baby? I can’t think past the impracticalities, the impossibilities. It’s as if a brick wall has been built in my mind, and I can’t see past it. I certainly can’t go around it.

But I know I don’t want to get rid of this baby.

Do I want to give it to Martha?

I think of her and Rob at dinner the other night, the strength and sorrow I felt from both of them. I imagine how happy this baby could make them. I know they’d be good parents. Rob would make up for her OCD tendencies, her need to micromanage. They’d balance each other out in parenthood just as they do in marriage. They’d be perfect, a perfect team. At least they’d be a lot better than I would. I know this, and yet weirdly it hurts. In this moment I wish, bizarrely, that I were different. I almost wish I were more like Martha.

“You have time,” Eduardo says quietly. “Even if it feels like you don’t, you do. Don’t rush into anything.”

After work I head home, because I’m too tired even to think of doing anything else. I’m working at the community center tomorrow, teaching basic drawing to twenty-two nine-year-olds, and I need to go over my lesson plan. Not that my job is really about lesson plans; it’s more about just being there for the kids, offering them a different outlet. I love it, and for a second I think that if I can be a good teacher, maybe I could be a good mom.

But even I’m not that optimistic. I know being a teacher and being a mother are two totally different things.

Back in my apartment I collapse onto my futon, exhausted, nauseous, heartsick. My mind is churning with Martha’s words and my thoughts. I imagine her holding a baby, the baby I gave birth to, and it seems so impossible and yet there is something so right about it too. Martha might be tense, unemotional, even cold, but she’s also been one of my closest friends.

She’s given me brisk talking-tos when I needed them, when I’d broken up with yet another low-life commitment-phobe. She wrote a personal reference for my job at the community center. I’ve drunk more wine at her kitchen table—she doesn’t allow it on the sofa—than at anyone else’s.

But now? This? It feels so much bigger. Scarier. And even though I don’t know what of, I know I’m afraid.

Lying there watching the evening sunlight streak slanted patterns onto the floor, the room hot and airless, I realize I need to get in touch with Matt. I haven’t even thought about him since that night, that oh-so fateful night that started this all. But if I’m not terminating this pregnancy, which I think I have now accepted that I’m not, I need to tell him I’m pregnant.

Don’t I?

I don’t really know the ethics of this kind of situation. If I give the baby up for adoption, does Matt need to know? Does he have legal rights? What if, God forbid, he wants the baby?

I roll over onto my side and reach for my laptop. The Internet is slow this time of day, whenever everyone is returning home from work and going online. It used to exasperate me, the thought of all those nine-to-fivers scurrying back to their bolt holes and plugging into cyberspace. Sitting there impatiently waiting for a search engine to load, I sympathize a bit more.

I type biological father rights adoption into the search box, and find a site about New York State adoptions laws. I read that biological fathers only have rights if they’ve been living with the mother for at least six months prior to the birth. It surprises me, that little wrinkle, because it seems so…arbitrary. What if you’d been living with someone for five months before the birth? Five and a half? Does the father have no rights then?

I keep reading, now about the biological mother’s rights in an adoption. It seems like nothing happens before the actual birth, and even after the birth the birth mother—me—has forty-five days to change her mind. I read that if the birth mother does change her mind, the adoptive parents can contest it, and there is what is known as a ‘best interests’ hearing. A custody case. A legal battle.

It all sounds awful, so embittered, everything a minefield. Of course, it wouldn’t be like that with Martha and me. We’re friends, after all. Yet I still feel a churning inside me as I push the laptop away and roll onto my back. It’s getting dark now, the sunlight fading into dusk, turning all the colors to gray. Below me I can hear the squeak of my neighbor’s bed springs, the tinny sound of his TV. I’ve squeezed past him on the stairs, a tough-looking guy with a buzz cut and tribal tattoos all up his arms. He usually mutters a grumpy hello.

Do I need to tell Matt? Not legally, apparently, but ethically, morally? I think I do. He obviously regretted our reunion, but we got along when we dated and I think he deserves to know. It’s his child as much as mine.

I reach for my cell phone and scroll through my contacts. He’s still there; I never deleted him, but then I never delete anyone. Still, it’s been six years and he left in a hurry. I’m not anticipating him being happy about this call, but I suppose a little part of me still hopes.

A woman answers, laughing, clearly with someone. I hang up.

I lie there, the phone pressed against my chest, feel that fragile little hope blow away like so much ash. I’m not even sure what I was hoping for. It’s not like I thought we were going to get together, turn into some family.

I blink in the oncoming darkness and wonder what to do now. Who was that woman? I know it could be anyone, his sister, his friend, his wife. We didn’t exactly get into any deep conversation that night five weeks ago.

After a few minutes of just lying there, not thinking, I pull the laptop back towards me and log onto my Facebook account. I’m not a huge Facebook user, but I still have an account and a random couple hundred friends from various stages of life: high school, college, early twenties, some other teachers at the community center. Matt is on my friend list, and after a second’s hesitation I message him.

Hey Matt. Do you mind calling me? We need to talk. I give him my cell number just in case he doesn’t recognize it on his phone, and I’m about to close the window when I see an old message from Martha. Curious, I click on it.

It didn’’t happen.

It’s dated six months ago and I remember it was after her third attempt at IVF failed. That one affected her more than the others; we went out for a drink and when I asked her about it she spoke to me in this high, chirpy voice and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later she came back with slightly reddened eyes, ordered another drink, and started talking about the latest literary masterpiece she’d read for her book club.

For Martha, that’s big emotion. Considering the dynamics in her family, I’m not surprised.

I stare at those three words and feel my emotions see-saw and slide around, an earthquake in my mind. How can I refuse her this? Why am I even hesitating?

Lying on my futon in my tiny, hot apartment, I cannot imagine a baby here. And what about a toddler? A preschooler, a six-year-old, a teen? A human being, totally in my care, dependent on me, loving me. Maybe. All of it is terrifying.

In any case, I don’t have the money. I have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account and that has to see me through the end of the month. And as for the rest… Childcare? Healthcare? I can’t even afford the maternity clothes Martha said were so expensive. What about diapers, baby food, a stroller, braces, college?

I suppose I could make it work if I had to; I could ask my parents for help. I shy away instinctively from that thought because, strange as it might sound, my parents aren’t really into being parents. When I was growing up most of my friends envied me my laid-back parents, the total lack of rules or curfews in my teenaged life. And I reveled in it, then.

But it’s made any kind of relationship between us now kind of…not.

In any case, I don’t even want a baby, not really. I don’t want to raise a child; I can’t have that much responsibility.

But I can have a baby for Martha, a baby who I know will be wanted and loved immensely. I know, however uptight Martha is, she will love this child absolutely.

My child.

My phone rings, and I see that it is Matt. I feel something close to relief, although it’s completely unwarranted. Still, someone to talk to. Someone who is, at least a little bit, in this with me. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.

“Matt?”

“Hey, Alex.”

“Sorry to bother you. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Not really,” he says, but he sounds edgy. My heart sinks. I want him here, fully present and focused. I want him to have wanted to call.

“I called a little while ago and a woman answered your phone.”

“I know.”

He doesn’t say anything else and after a second I say, uncertainly, “Sorry.” No answer. I sit up, cross my legs, take a deep breath. “Matt, I’m pregnant.” Silence. After a second or two I hear him moving, closing a door. Clearly going somewhere more private. I lean my head against the wall, close my eyes.

“You’re sure?” he asks in a low voice.

I suppress a tired sigh. “Yes.”

Matt doesn’t answer, and that’s probably answer enough. But what was I expecting, really? He left my apartment cursing and groping for his keys.

“I don’t expect anything from you,” I say stiltedly. I have never had this conversation before. “I’m just calling you because I’m keeping the baby and I thought you ought to know.”

“You’re keeping it?” He sounds appalled.

“I mean, I’m not having an abortion,” I explain. “I’m thinking of giving it up for adoption.” And I know then that I really am, and I feel a weird mix of relief and sorrow.

“Oh. Okay.” He sounds relieved, and why shouldn’t he be?

“I just wanted you to know, in case—” I stop. He waits.

“Alex?”

“In case, you know, you had any objections.”

Another silence. “I don’t have any objections,” he says finally, quietly. “I mean, I’m sorry it happened this way. For you. For me. But if it makes some couple happy—”

Yes. Yes, it will.

“Okay,” I say, and my throat is tight. When I draw a breath it sounds ragged, revealing.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Matt says, his voice sad. “I should have told you before. I mean—that night. The thing is…” He clears his throat. “I just got married.”

Chapter 5
MARTHA

I don’t tell Rob about my conversation with Alex, my offer, and it doesn’t take me too long to realize that this might become awkward. If she says no, then I’ll just forget all about it. But if she says yes? Can I really tell Rob I made this kind of suggestion without consulting him?

I squirm at the question, and what it reveals in me. In him, and in us. What am I afraid of? That he’ll list the complications, the dangers, and say no?

I won’t let him.

In any case, Rob is usually the one with the crazy ideas, the sure-let’s-do-it attitude. I’m the one making lists, pointing out problems. But I still don’t tell him. I don’t want to risk it.

The next afternoon I close the door to my office and type private adoption laws New York State into the search engine on my computer. I’m not thrilled with the results.

Do adoptive parents have any rights here? All I’m seeing as I scroll through the pages are how the biological parents can call a halt to the proceedings at any time, even a month after they’ve given their baby up. And as for private placement adoptions, which is what Alex and I would be arranging, there are no legally binding agreements at all before the birth, no matter what you get down in writing, or when.

I close the browser window and lean back in my chair, dazed. We’d have to engage an attorney, I realize, and there would be all sorts of legal ramifications. No matter how much good will is on either side, it could become awkward. Definitely emotional. Maybe unpleasant.

More possibilities tumble through my mind. Our families, for one. Will we tell our respective families what we’re doing? How can we not? Our parents are still neighbors and friends, after all. I imagine my mother’s response and inwardly cringe. Will she gush and think it’s wonderful, or will she go all melodramatic and predict certain doom? With her, it’s hard to tell.

And what about Alex? Will she still be my friend? Will she be involved in her child’s—my child’s—life? I resist that possibility instinctively, even as I recognize how selfish it is. But how will we explain it to family, to friends, to this child? It all feels very messy.

Yet messy is better than emptiness. It’s better than the nothing I was coping with before.

I’m still dazed, still reeling with possibilities, when my cell rings, and I see that it is Alex.

I answer the call, hold my breath. I can’t say anything more; my heart is pounding too hard.

“Martha?”

“Hey, Alex.” With relief I hear myself, and I sound relaxed, assured. I reach up and smooth my hair, adjust my earring. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you. And Rob. About…about possibly adopting my baby.”

And even as a thrill of pure adrenalin, unadulterated victory, runs through me, I feel a tiny pinprick of something else. Doubt, maybe fear.

My baby.

I suggest Alex comes over tomorrow night, but she asks if she can come over tonight instead. “I’d just like this all to be dealt with sooner,” she says. “It’s been on my mind a lot.”

“I understand,” I say quickly. “Of course.” But I need to talk to Rob first. Still I tell her it’s okay and I text Rob, asking him to come home early from work so we have an hour or so before Alex arrives.

Not ideal, but it could still work. It has to work.

He arrives home just as I am ordering Thai; I’m too wired to think of cooking. I smile and wave, gesture to the phone. Rob smiles back, loosens his tie, and waits for me to finish.

“What’s up?” he asks as soon as I’ve hung up.

“Sorry, did I interrupt something at work?”

“No, just the usual.” Rob works in mid-level finance, a job he seems neither to like nor dislike. I’ve always considered myself to be the more career-focused one; he makes good money but prefers his other pursuits, biking and pick-up basketball, judging the odd minor film festival. I, on the other hand, do not have any hobbies.

“So?” he asks as I flit around the apartment, pouring him a glass of wine, arranging magazines on the coffee table so their corners line up.

I stop. Take a deep breath. Face him. “Something’s come up.”

Rob stills, eyebrows raised. “Something good?”

“Yes. I think so. Definitely.”

“Okay.” He sits down at the dining room table, takes a sip of wine. Waits.

“You remember when Alex came over to dinner?”

“Like, the other night? Yes.”

“Remember she threw up?”

He makes a face, a kind of wry grimace. “Yeah, I remember that, Mats. I cleaned the toilet.”

“Right. Well, it turns out she’s pregnant.” I wait, not sure how to get to this next part, and Rob just stares.

“Okay,” he finally says and I plunge.

“She isn’t in a position to keep the baby.”

“Is that what she thinks?”

I tense, resist the urge to retort, snap. “Yes, we talked about it over coffee yesterday.” He nods, but he’s eyeing me warily. What does he think, that I’m pressuring my best friend into giving me her baby?

Am I?

No. There has been no pressure. There’s been no pressure at all.

“So what is she going to do?” he asks eventually and I take another deep breath.

“Well, she doesn’t want to have an abortion.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not like getting your tooth pulled,” I say a bit sharply. “It’s a big thing for a woman, Rob. A big, tough emotional decision.” I don’t mention that she’s already had two. That’s beside the point, and it’s her business anyway.

“Sorry,” Rob says mildly. “It just seems like something she might consider.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to go down that route.”

“And she doesn’t want to keep the baby.”

“No.” But now I’m wondering if that is really true. Did she even say that? I can’t remember. She seemed so unhappy and confused, and of course she can’t keep the baby. She just can’t.

I take a deep breath. “We—we discussed having her give the baby up for adoption. To us.”

And Rob doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Not anything at all. I break first.

“Say something.”

“This is kind of a shock.”

“What do you think?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. The last time we talked about adoption, you were totally against it.”

“This is different.”

“Yeah. Really different.”

There’s an edge to his voice I don’t like, an edge that creates a crack between us. I feel it, feel the tension of knowing that in this we are not on the same side.

Yet.

“Rob, I just meant that I didn’t think we were in a position to adopt a child with a—a history. But this would be a baby, Rob. A newborn. We could be there when he or she is born, we could take her home the next day—” I’m running ahead of myself, way ahead, and I know that, but I just can’t stop. “It would be so different. It would be so much more like having our own baby, just that I wouldn’t be the one who is pregnant.” And really, that’s not so bad. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the nausea and the weight gain and the stretch marks.

Rob nods slowly; I can see he’s warming to the idea. “But it’s Alex,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

“I know it might be strange to have a friend as the birth mother,” I say carefully. “I’ve thought of that.” Sort of. “But I think if we’re all just really clear and up front about what our expectations are, then it could work.”

“If we all agree on those expectations.”

“Yes.” I don’t want to think about us not agreeing, or the fact that at any point in the next eight months—nineAlex could pull out and decide she wants to keep her child. Her child. Because no matter what she promises or we agree on, it will be her child until a court date is set forty-five days after the baby is born.

Even now, when this thing is barely off the ground, I get that.

“I don’t know, Martha,” Rob says, running a hand through his hair. “I need to think about this.”

“Of course you do. We both do. And Alex too. But—” I pause, then plunge once more. “She’s coming over in fifteen minutes to talk about it.”

Rob starts, almost tips his wine glass over. “What? Martha, I’ve barely—”

“I know, I know,” I soothe, “but she’s feeling anxious and wants to get everything sorted out as quickly as possible—”

“Sorted out? Have you already said yes?”

“No, of course not. I just suggested the idea.”

“You suggested it.”

“Yes—”

“Not Alex.” He speaks flatly, and I stiffen.

“What are you implying, Rob?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want Alex to feel—feel like she has to do this. And I know how much you want a baby.”

“You think I’m pressuring her into this? Is that what you think?”

“Not intentionally—”

“Then how?”

“I don’t really want to get into the dynamics of your friendship with Alex, Martha, but it’s not like you guys are, well, normal—”

“Normal?“ My voice rings out. “What do you mean, we’re not normal?”

Rob sighs. “I only meant that you’re really different from each other. There’s a disparity—”

“We had one conversation about this,” I say. “One. That’s it. And then today she called me and asked me to talk. So whatever you’re worried about, it’s not like that. Okay?” My voice is shaking. Rob gazes at me, and his brown eyes seem soft with sadness. He rises from the sofa and puts his arms around me, and I realize I am trembling.

“Okay,” he says quietly, and as the intercom buzzes I twist out of his embrace.

Chapter 6
ALEX

I’m feeling incredibly nervous about this meeting. I actually threw up on the sidewalk outside their building, although that might have been the nausea. It’s got worse over the last few days, and I can barely keep anything down.

I called Martha on impulse, because I think I’ll feel better once something’s settled. Yet now that she’s agreed and I’m here I’m not so sure any more. I might not want an abortion, but I’m not sure I want to give this baby up. No, that’s not true. I know it’s completely impractical to keep a baby. I really do get that. And I know I’m not cut out to be a mom. No, the thing I’m feeling uncertain about is giving this baby to Martha.

Which makes me a complete bitch, because she’s practically my best friend. I should be saying stuff like there’’s no one I’’d rather adopt my baby than you instead of wondering if I’m making a huge, awful mistake.

But giving a baby to a friend…a control-freak friend like Martha…it just feels so weird. So awkward. And Martha doesn’t really do awkward, so I have no idea what this is going to look like. Feel like.

Rob greets me first, giving me a hug, which is more than he usually does, and inwardly I squirm at this sign of what feels like pity. Martha stays back, smiling, although I see an uncertainty in her eyes, a surprising vulnerability, and I feel like telling her it’s going to be okay, or even hugging her. She would so not go for that, and I smile at the thought. I smell the greasy, spicy aroma of takeout food and my stomach lurches. Again.

“Sorry,” Martha says, and it kind of freaks me out how she notices everything. “We ordered in. Thai. I’ll clear it up.” She bustles around taking paper cartons and foil dishes back to the kitchen, which at least gives her something to do. Rob and I just stare at each other.

He smiles wryly, rubs the back of his neck. “Come on and sit down.”

We sit, him on a chair and me on the big overstuffed sofa by the window overlooking Central Park West. I’m looking around the room with these new eyes, these mother eyes, except I’ll never actually be a mother. But now I see the room with all its substantial furniture—real furniture, solid wood, not plastic or particle board. And there are photographs in sterling-silver frames, and real art on the walls, modern stuff. The walls are painted a soothing sage green with pale gray trim, and even the paint looks expensive. The area rug is soft and thick under my feet, and out of the corner of my eye, on the polished coffee table, I see copies of Country Life and Harper’’s Bazaar, their corners lined up.

“How are you feeling?” Rob asks, and I turn to face him, see him still smiling wryly, clearly uncomfortable but trying to work through it.

“Oh, you know.” I wiggle my fingers. “So-so.”

Martha comes back in, still bustling. She stops on the threshold and looks at us and it seems to me like she is planning her attack. But then Martha has always been a planner, a battle general; when I toyed with the idea of going to grad school about five years ago she presented me with a printed list of pros and cons over coffee.

The memory, strangely, relaxes me, reminds me that despite our differences and the gaps when we don’t see each other, we really are friends. I trust and love her. I do.

“How are you feeling?” Martha asks, coming to sit down in the chair opposite Rob. I wiggle my fingers again, give the same line. She nods. We all stare.

Rob breaks the silence first, by clearing his throat. “Maybe you should tell us what you’re thinking, Alex.”

What I’m thinking? I want them to tell me what they’re thinking. “Well, obviously I’m pregnant.” Silence. “And I’m not really in a position to keep the baby.”

“Not in a position,” Rob says, “is different than not wanting to.”

Is it? I blink, and realize I am, suddenly and inexplicably, near tears. “Well,” I say, and my voice sounds a little thicker, “in this case it isn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?” Rob asks quietly, and across from him I feel Martha tense, as if a wire is running through her.

I blink again and feel moisture gather at the corners of my eyes. Damn. This is not how I wanted to start this conversation. They’re both staring avidly at me, so it’s impossible to hide. I touch the corner of my eye with my fingertip. They both notice; Martha looks down and Rob reaches for a tissue.

“Sorry,” I say. “Pregnancy hormones.”

“The thing is,” Rob says, “you know we’ve been trying for a baby for a while. And I don’t want that knowledge, or your friendship with Martha, with us, to influence your decision.”

Well, of course it’s going to influence my decision. I wouldn’t even be here if we all weren’t friends, or if Martha didn’t want a baby.

“I mean,” Rob clarifies quietly, “the decision about whether you want to keep the baby yourself.”

Martha is so tense she could practically snap. She is gripping the arms of her chair, but she notices and puts her hands in her lap. She still doesn’t speak.

“I can’t keep the baby,” I say, and I hear the tiny lilt of a question in my voice. I know they hear it too because Martha clenches her hands tightly together, her knuckles like little bony hills of white, and Rob gives me a sympathetic, understanding kind of smile.

“Why can’t you?” he asks.

“Have you been to my apartment?” I try to joke, but it falls flat. “Look, I’m not like you guys. We know that. I’m single, I have no savings, my apartment is a sixth-floor walk-up…” I shake my head. “I want my child to have more than that.” It sounds kind of lame and superficial, but it’s true. I think.

“Let’s forget about all the obstacles for a moment,” Rob says. “The real question, Alex, is do you want to keep this baby? Because if you do, then we can explore ways we can support you in that.”

I can hear the silence from Martha; it’s like a pulsating, living thing. Rob is smiling at me kindly, but I see the worry in his eyes and I know what he’s really thinking. He wants me to be sure. Well, duh. If I’m not sure, if I change my mind, I’d break both their hearts.

I’m not going to change my mind. Which is why it’s taking me so long to say yes.

“That’s really nice of you, Rob,” I say, and my voice sounds clogged again. “But it’s not really about the money or my apartment. Those are excuses.” I take a deep breath. “It’s about me.” And it hurts to say that. “I don’t think—I mean, my life is—” I stop, take a breath as thoughts and images flash through my mind. My tiny, messy apartment, my carefree life, the two abortions that I never even thought about but somehow now make me ache. “I’m not really mom material, you know?”

Neither of them says anything. I try to smile. “And I want to do this for you. You guys are so great, and you’ve been wanting a baby for so long…” I trail off, near tears again. “I really would love to make you happy,” I finish, and even though I am near tears—and not happy ones—I do mean it.

Rob gazes at me steadily, but he looks pretty emotional too. “Maybe you should think about it for a while.”

“I have thought about it. A lot.” I don’t want to go back to my crappy apartment and see all the potential child hazards. I don’t want to scroll through my life in my mind and realize how a baby could never, ever fit into it. I don’t want to feel as if my choices have been mistakes.

So I take a breath, and then I say it. “I’d like for you and Martha to adopt this baby.”

Martha lets out a rush of breath and Rob nods slowly. “I’d still like you to think about it for a while.”

“Rob—” Martha sounds exasperated, almost pleading, and I understand because I feel the same way.

“That’s really nice of you,” I say again, “but I am sure.” I give a wobbly smile that feels as if it could slide right off my face. “Being sure doesn’t mean I’m not going to be emotional, you know.”

“I know. This is emotional for all of us.” Rob lets out a shaky laugh, and we sit and stare at each other, all of us wondering, What now?

Then, to my complete surprise, Martha lurches off her chair and comes over and hugs me. I can feel the sharp angle of her collarbone pressing into my shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispers against my hair, and a tear trickles down my cheek as my doubts, in this moment at least, fall away.

Chapter 7
MARTHA

When I put my arms around Alex surprise jolts through me. This is not me. I acted on impulse, an impulse I never have, and I can feel the tension in Alex’s body at my embrace, and then it slowly dissipates and she hugs me back.

Okay, enough. I disengage as gently as I can, smiling even though part of me feels like crying out of pure emotion. I am going to have a child of my own. I’ll hold her—I’m already thinking of the baby as a girl—the day she’s born. The minute she’s born, because I want to be there when Alex delivers. There are so many things I want, and they are tumbling through my mind and crowding in my mouth but I force it all back. Too soon. I know that.

“Okay.” Rob smiles at Alex and leans back in his chair, his hands on his thighs. “Well, we have plenty of time to figure out how this is all going to work. Plenty of time.”

And I nod as if I agree, because I don’t want to freak Alex out, but my mind is racing, racing. I am thinking about her pregnancy, and how everything has changed because she is now carrying my baby, but I want to be respectful and I definitely don’t want to push. A sudden thought flits through my brain and pops out of my mouth.

“Have you talked to the father?”

Alex’s mouth quirks in a sad little smile. “Yes.”

“And he’s—he’s okay with adoption?”

“Yes.” A pause and she glances down at her lap. “It’s Matt.”

It takes me a few seconds to place the name, and then I remember an old boyfriend of hers from years ago—I met him a couple of times—and the first thing that flashes through my mind is relief. I know Matt. He’s a good guy. He has good genes.

Is it awful for me to think that way? Is it wrong?

“Well, that’s good,” Rob says into the silence. “I think, legally, you might need his consent before you sign the adoption papers.”

And suddenly it’s as if he’s thrown a bomb into the middle of the room, he’s lobbed a hand grenade and it lies there on the floor, waiting to detonate and spill out all its ugly words. Words like legally.

Because this is—this will become—a legal transaction, and there will be papers to sign and rights to give up and, no matter how friendly we are, how much we like each other, it will be uncomfortable. Painful.

“Of course,” Rob says, and I think he realizes he shouldn’t have gone there so quickly, “that’s a long way away. We don’t even have to think about any of that until you’re close to delivering.” Alex nods and he continues, his voice turning just a little too hearty, “The important thing now is that you stay healthy. That the baby stays healthy.”

And I’m racing ahead again, wondering if I can recommend an OB. Would it be rude to ask her if she’s taking folic acid supplements? And what about prenatal yoga?

We don’t talk much more after that, and eventually Alex leaves. Already it feels a little awkward, although I feel as if it shouldn’t. We’re friends, after all. I touch her shoulder at the door, wanting somehow to convey how much I appreciate what she’s doing, how happy I am.

“This is such a great thing you’re doing, Alex,” I say. “This is such a gift.”

She smiles at me, although she still seems a little teary. “You’ll make a great mom, Martha,” she says, but there is a note in her voice that makes me feel as if she is thinking she wouldn’t. And I want to say she would, in her own funky way, but I can’t because I’m not sure I believe it and in any case I’m too afraid. I don’t want to risk this. So I smile and squeeze her shoulder and then she is gone.

Rob and I clean up the kitchen, watch some TV. We don’t talk about it by silent, mutual agreement, maybe because it feels so new, so fragile. Words will poke holes in possibility; they will breathe life into our fears.

That night in bed, in the dark, we lie there side by side, our minds spinning, saying nothing. I want to touch Rob; I want him to roll over and pull me against him, make me feel safe. I want to banish the memory of our argument before Alex arrived, the disapproval and suspicion I saw in his face.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he finally says, and his voice is full of both wonder and fear.

“Me neither.”

We’re both silent, just breathing, and then Rob says, “I think we should see a lawyer.”

I’m shocked; it’s not like him to think that way. I’m the suspicious, cynical one. “Already?”

“Just to be prepared. Informed. You know these types of private adoptions are tricky? I mean, I looked up on the Internet and they’re not even legal in every state. And there’s a lot of laws regulating everything, even how much money we spend.”

“I know that.” I’ve spent a fair amount of time online myself.

“Alex could change her mind even after the baby is born, like a month after, and she’d be within her legal rights.”

“I know that, Rob.” My voice is sharp. “Look, you sound like you know everything, so why do we need to see a lawyer?”

“Because reading a couple of articles on the Internet isn’t the same thing as getting advice from a professional.”

“But there’s no advice for now, because you don’t actually sign any papers until after the baby is born. Most people don’t even approach a potential birth mother until much closer to the due date.”

“I know that,” he says, “but it might help to speak to someone who’s familiar with these kinds of situations, who can advise us on how to act now.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t want to fuck this up, Martha.”

“I thought you didn’t care whether we had kids,” I retort, before I can think better of it, and Rob turns to me in the dark.

“I didn’t think I did. I never let myself hope. But now there’s an actual possibility that in eight months we could be holding our child…” I hear the optimism in his voice, but, instead of making me happy that he wants this as much as I do, it fills me with panic and fear. If Rob wants this as much as I do, the stakes are so much higher.

Now, if we lose out on this baby, Rob will be hurt too. And I have a horrible feeling that, just like with the IVF, it will be my fault.

In the end I agree to see a lawyer, and we go to her office in midtown one day during our lunch hour. Her name is Rebecca Stein and she’s tall and spare and sharply dressed, clearly my kind of woman, and yet I don’t like her.

“These kinds of adoption agreements between friends can be complex,” she says, which is no more than what Rob has said, what I know, but I still don’t like her saying it. “To be perfectly frank, it would be far easier on all parties if you arranged a private adoption through an agency or even an advertisement and conducted everything through a lawyer.”

Yes, I know that. I’ve seen the ads in the back of the free newspapers, I’ve watched Juno. I know there are thousands of desperate couples who will pay women to give them their babies, and that even if we put an ad in tomorrow we might never get picked. Alex is already pregnant, already willing. I could be holding my child in less than eight months.

“We’re committed to this particular situation,” I say and Rebecca Stein nods.

“Then you need to think very carefully about your relationship with the biological mother, and be very clear in the paperwork about what kind of relationship she will have with the child after he or she is born. I’m afraid I’ve seen these types of situations ruin a friendship all too often. And more than a friendship,” she finishes, her voice heavy with emphasis. A marriage. A life. Many lives.

I sit back in the chair. Am I willing to risk my friendship with Alex, for the sake of this child? And, to my shame, the answer is obvious, easy. Yes. Yes, I am.

Rebecca talks about the paperwork we’ll have to fill out closer to the time, the pre-certification, fingerprint records, child abuse checks, home study, all of it, but I tune it out. I am thinking about what she said.

What place will Alex have in our lives after the baby is born? Will this be an open adoption, so our child knows Alex was her birth mother? Have some kind of relationship with her? I reject that idea instinctively; it’s too…communal. But what’s the alternative? We all keep this huge secret, and it spills out eventually, awful and ugly? Or Alex just tiptoes quietly away and never bothers any of us again? How could that even happen, considering how our families are friends? How will we explain to our parents?

Rob touches my arm. “We should go.”

It’s ten minutes past the end of my lunch hour, and I have a meeting in fifteen minutes. An important meeting. I walk out of the office and into the sunshine in a daze. I am reeling from all the questions I don’t have answers to.

A couple of days later I phone Alex and ask her if she wants to meet for coffee. We haven’t spoken since she came to our apartment; Rob and I wanted to give her some space. She agrees, and we meet at a cute little café in the East Village. It is nearly the end of August but amazingly it doesn’t feel muggy or hot; everything feels clean, the sidewalks hosed down, the air fresh. We sit outside, and I drink coffee and Alex sips orange juice.

“How are you?” I ask. “How are you feeling?” She looks terrible.

She shrugs. “I’ve been better. This morning sickness thing pretty much sucks.”

“I’m sure.” I pause, wondering how much advice to offer. But then I think how I’ve always offered her advice; that’s been my role. It shouldn’t change now just because of this. I shouldn’t change at all. “I’ve heard protein in the mornings helps. A fried egg or bacon or something.”

Alex makes a face, as if to say gross, and shakes her head.

“Or eating lots of little meals all throughout the day,” I continue. I know all about being pregnant, even though I’ve never been. And never will be. “Never letting your stomach get completely empty.”

“Right.”

I can’t tell anything from her tone, whether she’s annoyed or not, and after just ten minutes I’m tired of feeling like I have to tiptoe. “Alex, you know I’m so excited about this, and I want to be involved in your pregnancy, but if I’m being too pushy just tell me to back off, okay?” I smile, trying not to feel so tentative, and Alex shakes her head.

“Martha, of course I want you to be involved in my pregnancy. We’re friends, after all.”

I take a breath. “Well, in that case, can I recommend a great OB? She was the one I was going to use, you know, if…” If IVF had worked. If I were pregnant instead of Alex. I swallow, smile. “She’s really good.”

“I’m sure she is.”

There is something hesitant, almost repressive about Alex’s tone, and I start to feel on edge again. There are going to be so many of these conversations, and I know we need to work through them. “What is it?” I ask and she sighs.

“Martha, you know I don’t have health insurance.”

“Dr. Cohen doesn’t take health insurance.” A lot of in-demand OBs don’t. You pay out of pocket and claim it back from your insurance company afterwards. Only in a place like New York could this happen.

Alex shakes her head. “And how much does she cost?”

I stare at her for a second, trying to figure out why it matters. Then it hits me. “Alex, I told you that Rob and I will pay your medical costs.”

She bites her lip, looks down. “Right.”

And I am wondering how she has forgotten this. I pause, feel my way through the words. “I mean, of course we would. It’s expected in these situations.” She nods, and I tense. “That’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

She looks up and her expression veils. “Yes, of course. Of course. I’m grateful.”

“You don’t need to be grateful. I mean, I’’m grateful. Rob’s grateful.”

A smile flickers across her face. “So everybody’s grateful.”

“Great.” I smile back, and even though I think we’ve both relaxed a little it still feels a bit too much like a truce. Already I miss our friendship, the jokey ease Alex always had with me. “So I’ll give you the OB’s number?” I finally say, and she nods. “What were you thinking you’d do, I mean, otherwise?” I’m just curious, honestly, because I mean, really? What…?

“I qualify for free prenatal services,” she says quietly. “My income is that low, amazingly enough. There’s a clinic in Brooklyn.”

A clinic in Brooklyn? I try, I really do, to keep my face neutral. Expressionless. Because inside I’m appalled. I’m horrified. I don’t want Alex going to some welfare clinic in Brooklyn. I don’t want my baby going there.

I swallow, say nothing, because with every second that passes between us I am realizing just how hard this is going to be.

Chapter 8
ALEX

I’m doing that not-thinking thing again. After I met with Rob and Martha at their place, I felt a huge wave of relief, followed by an almost unbearable wave of grief. I knew I was making them happy, which made me feel happy. Sort of. But I also felt as if I was losing something, even if it was my choice. I told myself it was natural to feel some sadness; this was a big deal. I touched my still-flat stomach and told myself to start thinking of this little bean inside me as Martha’s baby, Martha’s child.

The thought hurt.

In any case, the next few days I didn’t have time or energy to think much because I was feeling so sick, and work was crazy both at the café and the community center. We always run a week-long day camp at the end of August, and Julia gives me the week off at the Sunflower so I can be involved. Before all this happened I was excited about it. I always like the summer camps. Now I’m wondering how I’m going to make it through an eight-hour day without barfing or collapsing from exhaustion.

And all the while, at the back of my brain, I’m composing a to-do list Martha style. Buy prenatal vitamins. Call the OB. Think about everything, because I know there will be more conversational minefields about how everything is going to work, and I need to be prepared; I need to get myself into a mental place where I can handle all this stuff without freaking out or wanting to burst into tears.

Except I don’t want to think.

The first day of camp is absolutely sweltering, one of those end-of-summer heatwaves, and the gym where we register the campers is airless and teeming with kids. Jim, the director of the camp, puts me on the welcoming committee by the door, and one little kid comes in holding his big brother’s hand, about five years old and scared shitless. He stops in the doorway, pulls on his brother’s hand as if he’s trying to make him take him back outside.

“Hey there.” I smile and crouch down so I’m eye-level. He’s got the most amazing eyes, huge and dark with long, lush eyelashes. His eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “What’s your name?” I ask. He doesn’t answer and his brother prompts him with a little push on his back.

“Ramon,” he whispers, and I widen my smile.

“Hey, Ramon, I’m Alex. I run the art department. Do you like to paint? Or draw?” He stares at me uncertainly, and I wonder if he’s ever had the opportunity. A lot of the kids who come through these doors haven’t; I love introducing them to paint and clay, freshly sharpened pencils and crisp, thick white paper. It’s like candy to them, or magic.

“Ramon,” his older brother prompts, exasperated, and silently he shakes his head.

“Well, you can try both with me,” I tell him. “Whatever you like. We have clay too, and a kiln.” He’s wide-eyed and I know he probably doesn’t know what a kiln is, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s about possibility.

I smile at the big brother and as I stand up they go past me, to the registration table, and something in me tugs hard at the sight of Ramon’s little hand encased in his big brother’s, that tie of family. It makes me feel as if I’m missing out on something, as if I’m lonely.

I push the feeling away and go to greet some other kids.

The day ends at four o’clock, and I smile at Ramon as he runs towards his big brother. I noticed how quiet he was all day, how shy. During the art period I gave him a big piece of blank white paper and a tub of crayons and he just stared at me, as if he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Then he watched the other kids going crazy with the colors, scribbling and doodling everywhere, and he spent the last fifteen minutes of class very carefully drawing a rainbow.

I sat next to him, giving encouragement, and his shy smile cracked open my heart. I can’t believe how emotional I’m being. I like working with kids, but I also like leaving them at the end of an afternoon. I like being a teacher, not a mom, being invested enough but not too much, but something about Ramon’s quiet shyness makes me protective. Or maybe it’s just the pregnancy hormones, making me see every kid here as someone’s child, someone’s person to love.

It’s close to five by the time we’ve cleaned and locked up, and as I walk outside I realize I have no plans. I haven’t told any of my friends about my pregnancy, and yet I don’t have the strength to hang out with them and pretend life is normal. I could call Martha, but that would be more of a negotiation than a conversation at this point, and just the thought exhausts me.

I stop outside my building, everything in me resisting climbing those steep stairs and sitting in my hot, cramped studio alone for the rest of this glorious summer evening.

I turn around and start to walk back towards the community center, although I know it will be locked up, empty. I suddenly feel the barrenness of my life, wandering the streets of the Lower East Side alone, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. No one to talk to.

I’m used to being alone; I usually like it. I’ve always thought of myself as independent, secure in my singleness, a free spirit. Now I just feel the absence of real relationships in my life, a loneliness I never felt before. I never let myself feel it.

I’m walking down Avenue A but at St Mark’s Place I turn west and start walking across past all the funky clothes shops and tattoo parlors interspersed every so often with the ever-present Starbucks. At Third Avenue I start walking south again until I hit Fourth Street and I’m in front of the Sunflower. It’s busy with customers waiting for their skinny lattes and chai teas, the door propped open to the still, hot air.

I’m not even sure why I’m here, until Eduardo suddenly appears from the alleyway that leads to the back entrance. He’s wearing a white tank top and cargo shorts, a backpack hooked over one shoulder. He stops when he sees me, eyebrows raised.

“Alex?”

“Hey.” I try to smile, although I’m still not sure why I’m here, or why I’m so very glad to see him.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing, really. I just…” I stop, swallow. I’m trying to remind myself that I don’t actually know this man very well. We’re work colleagues, yes, and we’ve joked behind the counter and I’ve seen him dance and we did have that one semi-intense conversation when I told him I was pregnant but added up that’s not all that much. He shouldn’t be my go-to guy, the person I need when I’m feeling lonely or lost, but the truth is I don’t have anyone like that in my life. I just didn’t realize it until now.

Eduardo hitches his backpack higher on his shoulder. “You hungry?” he asks. “You want to grab a bite?”

And it seems like the most wonderful offer in the world. I nod, too desperate and relieved to feel pathetic. “Yeah, that would be great.”

We go to Veselka’s on Tenth and Second Avenue, the Ukrainian diner that is a fixture of the East Village and has the best pierogis in the world.

“So,” Eduardo says as he bites into his huge burger and I slather my pierogis with sour cream. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

I don’t pretend not to get what he’s asking. “I’m not having an abortion,” I say quietly, and he nods in what feels like approval, or maybe just acceptance. For some reason I don’t say any more. I don’t tell him about the adoption or Martha; I don’t want to go into all that right now. Instead I take a bite of pierogi and ask him about his dance rehearsal. For a few hours, a single evening, I don’t want to be this sad pregnant woman whose life feels like a jumbled mess. I just want to be a woman in Manhattan enjoying the company of a guy friend who happens to be incredibly attractive.

And maybe Eduardo gets that, because he starts telling me about his rehearsal and neither of us mentions pregnancy again.

Chapter 9
MARTHA

I don’t call Alex for a week. I think about it all the time, and twice I start to scroll through my contacts to call her number before I stop myself. I am not going to micromanage her. It’s going to be awkward enough without me seeming like I’m checking up on her all the time. I know that, but it feels weird—abnormal, somehow—not to call her. We’re friends, after all. Admittedly, we only saw each other every couple of weeks if that, but not calling her now isn’t just about being busy or forgetting; it’s a choice.

Still, I obsess in other ways. I can’t bring myself to buy a pregnancy magazine, but I surf the Internet constantly. I find so many websites, more than I’d ever imagined, because I’ve never allowed myself to indulge this way. I’ve never had so much hope. I read about the development of the fetus, and I wish I knew exactly how far along Alex is. I didn’t even ask her the due date.

I also find message boards for adoptive parents. I resist these at first, because there is a part of me that doesn’t want to admit that’s what I am. If I hold my child the day she is born, the minute she’s born, how can I be an adoptive parent? It’s just a matter of genetics, really, and a little pain.

Yet as the week goes on and I don’t hear from Alex I finally break down and read the message boards one evening after work. I’m horrified, and yet I can’t stop. There is story after story after story of canceled adoptions, heartbroken parents who now won’t be parents. I read about a birth mother who met the parents and loved them and shared Christmas cards and barbecues and then the day after the baby was born she changed her mind and sent a social worker to tell them.

I read a story where parents took their son home and had him for six weeks. Six weeks, and then a social worker came and took the baby away and they never saw him again. Their son.

“Hey.” Rob sits down next to me on the sofa, puts an arm around my shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

I quickly close the browser window. My fingers tremble and I feel sick.

“Adoption forums?” he says, frowning.

“Just reading some different stories,” I say lightly and Rob squeezes my shoulder.

“Don’t get your information from the Internet.”

“I’m not sure where to get it from at this point.”

“I know.” He’s silent, and so am I, because this is so big and strange and neither of us knows how to deal with it. “Sometimes I wonder if this is a good idea,” he says slowly, and I freeze, fighting a frustration at his typically flip-flopping attitude. What happened to not wanting to fuck this up?

“Of course it’s a good idea,” I snap, and he sighs.

“Eight months is a long time, Martha.” We both know what he’s really saying. “I wish we could just fast forward through everything,” Rob continues quietly. “Till the moment the baby’s ours.. Everything signed and sealed.”

I nod, my throat tight. I know how he feels, and yet I also feel cheated. If this is the closest to pregnancy I’m ever going to get, I’d like to enjoy it. I’d like to feel the wonder of the first kick, the ultrasound photo, all of it, without the ever-present fear.

“I mean, you hear about adoptions falling through all the time, don’t you?” Rob asks, and, since I’ve just read of dozens, I have to agree with him, even though I don’t want to. I want to hear the good stories, the happy stories, the stories where the birth mother handed the baby to the adoptive parents with a teary smile and then—

And then what? Disappeared?

I close my laptop and lean my head against the sofa.

Rob rubs my shoulder, my arm. “There’s another part of me,” he says, “that wants to start getting excited now. I mean, that’s the normal thing, right? You tell your families, you buy the nursery furniture, you pick out names. You get excited, that’s part of it, you know?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “I know.”

“I want to be excited. Now that it could be real…” He stops and I look away. I feel that churning of guilt and fear, as if I’m the one who’s got to make this happen. It was my idea; I’m the one who is forcing this through. Rob might get excited about it, he might want this baby, but he’s still going to be laid-back about it. I’m going to be the one to manage everything, to make it work.

It’s always been that way between us, and I’ve never minded because we know we’re different, and we play to our strengths. But right now part of me wants Rob to man up and tell me everything’s going to be okay, that he’ll make sure it is.

Rob stares into space for a moment before he asks the question neither of us dared say aloud before. “Do you think Alex is going to change her mind?”

“She can’t,” I answer automatically, even though I know she can. “She can’t take care of a baby,” I amend because I think that much is true.

“She can, Martha. Plenty of women are single moms with no money or health insurance.”

“I know that but surely she wants more for—” I stop suddenly, because it has occurred to me that Alex can give her child more. Her parents are, if not wealthy, then certainly well off. They could afford to supplement Alex’s income, to support her and her child. If she really wanted to have this child, she could.

But she doesn’’t, I tell myself. She agreed to this. She wants this for us, for her. But another inner voice, sly and yet so logical, tells me that she’s only seven or eight weeks along, it’s still so early, and she’s still shocked and confused. She’s got a whole pregnancy to reevaluate her decision, even to meet someone and decide she wants a family. And what about Matt? He’s a good guy. Maybe he’ll decide to step up and be a dad.

“If she changes her mind,” Rob says after a long moment of silence, “we’ll support her the best we can. I know it will be hard, but…” He tails off, and I say nothing.

How could I possibly support the woman who will have ripped out my heart? Rob turns to me with a lopsided smile. “It’ll probably all be fine,” he says, and I know he’s feeding himself his usual line. He needs to believe it. “But if it isn’t,” he continues, “she’s still your friend. Our friend.”

And that is the difference—one of them, anyway—between Rob and me. He would support Alex. He’d even be happy for her. He’d make himself see the damned bright side of things.

As for me? I’d dwell in the darkness and pain. I wouldn’t support Alex; I wouldn’t be able to speak to her if she decided to keep my child, even if Rob obviously would.

Chapter 10
ALEX

Camp fills up my time and thoughts, and I’m glad for the distraction of kids and art and craziness. I’m tired of being inside my own head, of constantly thinking about this baby and what will happen in about seven months. Ramon lights up when he sees me, and tackles my knees. I hug him, smoothing his silky dark hair, feeling that strange tug of longing and love that scares me with its sudden intensity.

I’ve enjoyed most of the kids I work with, although some have been complete pains in the ass. But even with the sweet ones I’ve been happy to leave them at the door, to forget them almost completely when I’m out of the classroom. To let them go, which I do, easily, freely.

A few have touched me, but it’s only now that I realize I’ve always kept a little distance, been a little aloof, Martha-style. Or maybe it’s my style. I can’t think of too many people I’ve let close in my life; even my parents and sister are distant. But maybe that’s them.

In any case Ramon draws me in. Makes me want something nebulous I’m afraid to name and almost resent. I don’t want to feel this much. I don’t want to wonder.

That afternoon he’s picked up by his mother rather than his older brother, and she looks about five years younger than me. She’s wearing a sundress of cheap cotton, her dark hair pulled back in a long ponytail, and her face is tight and pinched. She nods tersely at me as I say goodbye to Ramon, and he hugs my knees again.

She clucks, kind of bemusedly impatient, and I smile. “Ramon loves to draw.”

She glances at me, completely nonplussed, and then reaches for Ramon’s hand. “Vamonos, Ramon.”

He follows her obediently, his little hand in hers, and something twists inside me. I don’t know her circumstances, but I know enough about the demographics of the kids here to guess that she is probably low income, without insurance, living in a tenement. Just like me. And she has at least two kids. She did it; why can’t I?

I’m totally different from that woman, I tell myself. I have more choices, and I chose this. Adoption. Martha and Rob as parents, me making them happy. Me being happy because motherhood is not part of my life, my plan.

Except I’ve never really had a plan.

And watching her I can’t quite ignore the little kernel of envy I feel burrow down inside me. Of resentment. I feel as if I wasn’t given a chance to try to be different, to come up with a plan. I didn’t give myself one, and it’s too late now.

That evening my friend Liza calls me and asks me to go out. I say yes even though I’m still tired and nauseous, because I want just a little of my old life, my old self, back.

We meet at a bar on Hester Street, a dark cave of a place in the basement of a restaurant, with throbbing music and flashing lights. I have a headache within minutes of my arrival. Liza is there along with a couple of other mutual friends, people I know from art showings and yoga classes, dance festivals and the 4th Street Food Coop. They’re all like me, working several jobs to feed their passion, happy and rootless.

Except I’m not like that any more.

I force the thought away because for one night, for a few hours, I want to forget about it all, and just be me again.

Except just minutes into the evening, I realize I don’t know who that is any more. I listen to them talk about vacations on Fire Island and an art installation in Thompson Square Park, a new restaurant in Chelsea, some performance art on Mulberry Street. It’s my world, the world I loved and lived in, and now it feels as foreign to me as the moon, as barren as a lunar landscape. And I hate that, because I don’t want to change. I don’t want to feel dissatisfied with a life that once made me so happy.

At least I think it did.

And yet already I am changing; I fight it, but still it happens.

Liza goes for drinks and she raises her eyebrows when I say I just want orange juice. She comes back with some lurid-colored girly drink for herself and hands me my juice.

“Pushing the boat out tonight, huh?”

I just smile. She narrows her eyes. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

I almost choke. “What?”

“No alcohol, you look like shit—sorry.” She shrugs. “What am I supposed to think?”

“Come on, Liza. Jump to a few conclusions, why don’t you?” I take a sip of juice and look away.

“You are,” she says, and even with the blaring techno music I can hear the quiet certainty in her tone. “If you weren’t, you would have totally laughed it off. But you didn’t.”

And I know she’s right. I handled that completely wrong, at least if I intended on keeping it a secret. But I don’t know if I really want to any more.

She leans forward. “What are you going to do? You’re keeping it, obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“If you’re not drinking.”

“Right.”

She leans back, a little smile on her lips. “So…Mommy.”

I flinch. I can’t help it. And I’m not prepared for the lightning shaft of pain that slices through me, leaves me breathless. Mommy.

No, that’s not me. That will never be me.

And as Liza looks at me curiously I try to feel the relief that thought should give me. It doesn’t come.

Chapter 11
MARTHA

When I finally call Alex, I make sure to sound upbeat and casual. She sounds alarmingly subdued.

“So, how are you feeling?”

“Tired. Nauseous.” She sighs and I resist the urge to offer more advice.

“Have you been to the OB?” I ask and she hesitates, so I know she hasn’t.

“I will,” she says. “There’s not much point yet, really.”

“Isn’t there?” Immediately I know I sound too sharp. I take a breath, release it slowly. “How far along are you, anyway? I forgot to ask.”

“About eight weeks.” She still sounds subdued, and it irritates me.

“Well, let me know when you make an appointment and I’ll go with you,” I say, as lightly as I can, and it’s only after the words are out of my mouth that I realize maybe she doesn’t want me to go with her.

“Okay,” she says after a moment, but she doesn’t sound enthused and I force some more small talk before we finally both call it quits.

Afterwards I sit at my desk, alternating between anger and fear. Are all our conversations going to be this awkward? I hate feeling as if I have to tiptoe around her and yet I’m too afraid not to. But this is going to be my child, and I want some say in her pregnancy decisions. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? It certainly feels reasonable to me.

That evening I wait for my friend Maggie in Bryant Park. She’s running late so I surf the Internet on my smartphone, and end up, as usual, on one of the many pregnancy websites that chart fetal development.

At nine weeks, your baby measures 2.3 cm in length and weighs less than 2 grams. Earlobes are visible, as are fingers and toes.

2.3 centimeters. That’s what, an inch? An inch of infant, of life, waiting for me. My fingers clench around the phone. I feel a throb of longing, a surge of fear. A single inch and I am desperate.

“Hey, Martha.” Maggie comes up behind me, and her sharp glance takes in my phone’s screen before I can shut it off. “Baby Bump dot com? Are you serious?”

I click my phone off. “Hey to you too.” I smile, tightly. Maggie raises her eyebrows.

“I know you can’t be pregnant.”

And bizarrely, this hurts. The absolute certainty she has, because I know it too. I can’’t be pregnant. It’s been five years since Rob and I started trying, four years since they found the scarring on my Fallopian tubes caused by undiagnosed PCOS. Three years since the first IVF attempt, when I still felt keyed up with hope and determination, both leaching away with each further attempt.

And now? Now I feel hope again, and it terrifies me.

“I’m not,” I say lightly. “But a friend is.” Maggie just looks at me, her eyes slightly narrowed, and I know she’s wondering why I’d be scrolling through fetal development for a friend. It’s definitely not my style, but I don’t feel like getting into the uncertain complexities of what’s going on with Alex.

“This baby thing has hit you pretty hard, hasn’t it?” she finally says and I tense. Great, now she feels sorry for me.

“Let’s go,” I say, and we head towards the gym on Eighth Avenue where we work out together three times a week.

This baby thing. I know Maggie doesn’t understand it, doesn’t feel it as I do. We’re the same age, but she’s defiantly single, still enjoying the club scene, the carousel of boyfriends. I’m secretly sneaking glances at pregnancy magazines at the newsstand.

I’m not sure I totally understand the baby thing either. I had a plan; I’ve always had a plan. Rob and I started dating in college, were engaged at twenty-six, married at twenty-seven. When the ring was on my finger I mapped out our lives: pregnant at thirty-two, another at thirty-four, family complete and back to work full-time at thirty-five. Perfect. Except of course it didn’t happen that way, and the more life veered from the plan the more I wanted it, needed it, and having a baby became a way to prove myself, almost an obsession.

As it is now.

Maggie doesn’t mention babies while we work out, side by side on treadmills and then fifteen minutes with free weights. We shower and head up to the café on the second floor, take two stools at the bar and order our usual protein shakes.

Maggie talks for a while, and I try to listen. I usually like hearing about her cases, her colleagues, the cut-throat atmosphere that energizes me. And I like to reciprocate, talking about multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, my pitches and longed-for clients, the whole thing. Yet today I can barely summon the will to listen and Maggie notices.

“What is up with you, Martha?” she asks, and she sounds faintly annoyed.

“Sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

She frowns. “Is it still the baby thing?”

I can tell from her tone that she feels I should have been so over ‘the baby thing’ ages ago. Years ago.

“Actually, it is,” I say, and then because I need to tell someone, I need to relieve this awful, aching pressure that is building and building inside me, I say, “My friend who’s pregnant? She’s going to let us adopt the baby.”

Maggie stares at me for a moment, her eyes widening, and then she blinks. “What friend is this?” she asks, and there is something so skeptical in her tone I almost wince.

“You don’t know her. She’s a friend from high school.”

“And she’s willing to give you her baby?”

“She’s not in a position to keep it.”

“So she has an abortion.”

“Maggie.” My throat is tight. “We want this baby. And she wants to give it to us. People do this all the time, you know. Private adoptions.” I speak firmly, as if I believe it. Maybe if I say it enough I will.

“Well, all I can say is, you’ve got a really good friend there.” She drains her shake, and I am left silent, spinning, because the question ricocheting through my brain is: do I?

Do I have a really good friend? That good?

I don’t know the answer.

Chapter 12
ALEX

The second to last day of camp Ramon runs right to me as soon as he comes in the doors of the gym. I crouch down, give him my biggest smile. He’s opened up these last few days, smiling more, laughing a little, his eyes lighting before his long, curly lashes sweep downwards. Today though he hugs me almost fiercely, burying his head in my shoulder. I can feel the tension in his little body and I ease away.

“Hey…hey. You okay, buddy?” I realize I shouldn’t have asked, because his expression irons out and he turns away from me. I feel a twinge of concern, a lurch of fear.

I don’t think much more about Ramon until he comes in for his art session towards the end of the day. I’m so busy, cranking out class after class of boisterous kids, trying to keep them focused and interested and the paint off the walls or each other. Camp is coming to an end so they’re more hyper than usual, and several times jokes turn into fights and I’m wading right into the middle, separating them with heavy hands on shoulders, even as part of me longs to curl inward and protect the vulnerable barely-there curve of my belly. Even now, I think of it. Always, I think of it.

Ramon sits by himself during art, his bent arm hiding his paper. He lowers his head, his silky hair obscuring his face, everything hidden, protected, just as it was the first day, and I wonder what is going on and if his mother knows. If she worries. Motherhood is such a leap into the unknown, into the exposed emotions like peeled-back skin, and I’m glad I won’t have to feel all that. That will be Martha’s job.

But will I feel it? Will I not be able to resist? I already feel it, a little bit, with Ramon, and it hurts.

“Hey, buddy.” I come closer, touch his head just lightly because there are always rules about touching. I’ve broken too many by allowing him to hug me when he arrived. “What are you drawing?” I ask and crane my neck to see but he moves his arm and shows me anyway.

And that’s when I see it. Not the drawing, which I barely glance at, but the perfectly round circle, red and livid, on his inner elbow. It looks—and in my job I’ve seen them before—like a cigarette-burn mark.

Everything in me sinks with dread. I manage to say something about his drawing even as my brain buzzes.

As a teacher, I am legally required to report suspected child abuse. I make a call to Child Protective Services and within forty-eight hours I must file a written report. My part then is essentially done, and they take over. They might remove Ramon from his home, put him in temporary foster care. They might contact the police, if it appears the abuse is not from a family member. There could, in rare instances, be a court case, and I might be called to testify. But the likelihood is I’ll never see Ramon again and I’ll never even know what happens to him.

I’m cold, so cold, as I walk through the art room, murmuring encouragement and praise. I don’t want to call CPS. I never do, because it’s awful and ugly and yet so often necessary. I’ve done it twice before, and both cases were most certainly warranted. I don’t know what happened to either of the children involved, but already I feel more invested in this—in Ramon—than I ever did before.

I’m thinking about Ramon, but I’m also thinking about his mom. I remember how she smiled at him when she picked him up. How tired and pinched she looked, and part of me thinks, She’’s doing her best. Isn’’t that all any of us can do?

And after all, it’s one little mark. It might not be a cigarette burn. Hell, it could be anything. A birthmark. An accident. Anything at all.

I drift through the rest of the day, and when Ramon’s mother comes to collect him I move forward impulsively, smile at her even as I search her face for clues, her body for bruises.

“Hi, I just wanted to let you know how much I’m enjoying having Ramon at camp. He’s a budding artist, really takes his time with things.”

She stares at me, a little surprised, a little wary, and says nothing. She tugs at Ramon’s hand and says something to him in Spanish. And then they’re walking out of the gym, and I just stand there, undecided. Undecided about so much.

I decide not to call today. I’ll see Ramon tomorrow, get a better look at the mark. I know I’m rationalizing, at least a little, but I also know what it could be like with a low-income Hispanic woman. She might not even have a chance.

Still I feel as if I’m hiding something as I help clean and lock up the center. Normally I would tell Jim, the director of the camp, about my suspicions. But really, what is there to say? I barely know Ramon, and I didn’t get a good look at that mark. Even so, everything in me churns with fear for Ramon, sympathy for his mother.

I push it all out of my mind, or try to. It’s a beautiful day, a light breeze keeping it from being too hot, and I stop by the farmers’ market at Union Square. I love walking by all the stalls, the mounds of grapes and punnets of juicy red strawberries, soaps and honey from farms upstate. I buy three perfectly ripe peaches and a punnet of strawberries, my mouth watering at the thought of them.

Back in my apartment I wash and slice up all the fruit and put it in a bowl. I sit on my futon with the window open and the breeze blowing over me, and eat it for dinner. Such a simple act, and yet with it something in me loosens, lightens. This is me, I think. This is the me I’ve been missing, the me who enjoys the simple sweetness of fruit, my independence, the freedom and joy found in this moment.

I go to bed happier than I’ve been in a long time, since I first took that pregnancy test. And the next morning when I come to the community center Ramon doesn’t show up.

At first I don’t notice because I assume he’s just late. And then I’m busy with classes and kids and chaos, and I don’t think about it again until his class troops in for art, sweaty and rambunctious after a running-around game in the gym. I set them up all finishing the paintings they’re going to take home to their families, making sure the paint pots with their spill-proof lids are accessible to every pair of grubby hands, that everyone has a paintbrush and is actually putting paint to paper rather than to something else.

I pause, look around, tense. No Ramon. I think back quickly through the day, trying to remember if I saw him. When I saw him, because I want to have seen him even as I accept, the knowledge like a stone inside me, that I didn’t.

Somehow I get through the class, my mind numb, the kids around me a blur. The camp ends at lunch time on the last day and for the last hour we have a party in the gym with families invited, and as I circulate through the hyper kids and the tables with platters of supermarket cookies and watery red fruit punch I keep looking for Ramon. Thinking that maybe he will show up for the party, at least. He doesn’t.

While everyone is busy in the gym I go to Jim’s office and look through the registration files, find Ramon’s address. I’m working on instinct even as I’m wildly, savagely hoping that this is pointless, that it’s nothing. I feel a heavy certainty inside me that it isn’t.

Ramon lives in a housing project on Avenue D. In daylight it’s not really dangerous, but as the only white person I can see I feel both conspicuous and uncomfortable. Rap music blares from balconies, and a bunch of teen boys lounge in the doorway of Ramon’s building, drinking beer from forty-ounce bottles and laughing in a way that has alarm prickling between my shoulder blades. I have to squeeze by them, and they don’t move out of the way.

I’ve been to places like this before, but even so I am always astonished at how in just a few blocks I feel as if I’ve entered another country. I take the concrete stairs up to the third floor, and then down a narrow, urine-smelling corridor to Apartment 3F. The doorbell is broken and I knock.

No answer, and I knock again, my heart thudding in time with the loud raps on the door. Finally I hear someone shuffle to the door, open it with the chain still drawn across. My hope dies when I see Ramon’s mother glare at me from behind a tangle of dark hair. She has a black eye.

“I’m looking for Ramon,” I say, my voice croaky. “He didn’t show up to camp today and we’ve been concerned—”

She tries to slam the door in my face. I press my palm up against it, doing my best to keep her from shutting me out even as my heart rate skitters in sudden fear. “Please—”

“Go away.” Her English is thickly accented, but I can hear the helpless rage in her voice.

From behind her I hear a man’s voice, a low growl of Spanish. The chain rattles and the door swings wide open; a surly-looking man, no more than twenty-five, glares at me and I feel my heart pound in my chest.

“I’m looking for Ramon.”

“Véte,” he growls, which I know means something like ‘get the hell out of here’.

I swallow, make sure to still meet his eye. I am terrified of this man, of this situation, and of how vulnerable I am, with this fragile life pulsing faintly within me. The surge of protectiveness is sudden and undeniable, and I want to put a hand to my belly and shield my own child in a way I wasn’t able to shield Ramon. I resist the revealing gesture, but only just.

“Is he here?” I ask, and my voice trembles.

The man’s mouth thins. He takes a step towards me, one hand now clenched into a fist. “Rajá“

I take a step back and the door slams. I swallow, my mouth dry, and my stomach cramps. Swallowing again, choking back bile, I turn back down the corridor.

I keep my head down as I hurry down the stairs, through the projects, out onto Avenue D and then across to the center. The party is over, and the other staff are mopping the floor with its scattering of crumbs and pale puddles of spilled punch.

Jim glances at me from across the room, his face caught in a frown. “Alex—”

“I need to talk to you, Jim,” I say, starting towards him, but there is something wrong because he is shaking his head as he points to me.

That’s when I feel the stickiness on my thighs I hadn’t noticed before, and when I look down I see that my shorts are covered in blood.

Chapter 13
MARTHA

As soon as my cell phone rings at work I know it’s Alex. I set her number to a different ringtone, a soothing cricket chirp because God knows I’m tense enough already.

And I’m even tenser when I answer the call, because I hear the ragged note of tears in her voice.

“Martha—”

“Alex? Alex, what’s—?”

“I’m bleeding, Martha.”

“Bleeding?” Everything in me freezes. “What? What happened—?”

“It just started all of a sudden.” She makes a choking sound, as if she’s holding back a sob. “There’s a lot of blood.”

“Where are you?” My voice is high, sharp with anxiety. With terror.

“I’m at the center.”

Way downtown. I feel icy with adrenalin and shock. “Let me call the OB,” I say, striving for calm. “I’ve met with her before. I could get you an appointment today.”

“I’ll call,” Alex says after a moment, her voice still shaky.

“Okay. You have the number? You’ll call me when you hear?” My voice is sharp again.

“Yes,” she says, subdued now. “Yes, I’ll call you.”

I spend the next twenty minutes staring at my computer screen, simply waiting. Finally the phone rings and I snatch at it. “Alex?”

“They’ll see me today,” she says quietly. “At four.”

“I’ll be there.” Too late I realize that Alex might not want me there. But I need to be there. Still I force myself to say, “Only if you want me to. If you want somebody to go to the appointment with.”

Alex is silent for a long moment and I wait, my breath held, my heart beating hard. “I’d like that,” she finally says, softly, and I try to let my breath out slowly, so she doesn’t hear my rush of relief.

I leave the office at three-thirty and run into my direct supervisor, Mark Sheehan, in the corridor. He sees me obviously on the way out and raises his eyebrows.

“Going somewhere, Martha? We’re meeting in five upstairs, I thought.”

Shit. There is a pitch meeting for our newest account. I gave the main pitch to one of my juniors but I absolutely should be there, backing him up and adding my own spin. But I can’t. I can’’t.

“I’m really sorry, Mark,” I say. “I have a family emergency.”

“Family emergency,” he repeats, and I can tell he doesn’t believe me, which pisses me off. I haven’t taken all of my vacation days in any of the last three years. And most of the ones I took were for IVF appointments.

“Yes,” I say firmly, and meet his eye. “Family emergency.”

His mouth thinning, he nods, and I hurry towards the elevators, everything forgotten except for Alex—and my baby.

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