got this amazing thing going with our music, and I don’t want to risk it. If we slow down, if we get off the train we’re on now, I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to jump back on.”
We were both quiet for a minute as the words settled around us. As their meaning did.
“Do you want to carry this baby?” he asked softly, sliding his gloved hand into mine. “Do you want to have it at all?”
I followed his gaze out the window and watched some pine needles swirl in the winter wind.
“I don’t know,” I told him, honestly.
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” he said.
He let go of my hand, pulling a little plastic bag out of his pocket and rolling a joint. “Just a little,” he said, as he lit it and inhaled.
When he breathed out, it smelled so good.
“One hit,” I said, and then filled my lungs. I felt myself starting to relax. It was working already. Or maybe it was psychosomatic. But whatever it was, it felt good. Then I took another hit. And another. And one more after that. Deep drags that I held in my lungs until it felt like they’d burst.
“Hey there,” your dad said, taking back the joint. “Now that we know, you probably should chill with stuff like this.”
I thought about my mom’s theory: all things happen the way they’re supposed to. I was supposed to smoke. He was supposed to take the joint away.
“Why do you keep saying everything’s going to be okay?” I asked him. “How do you know?”
He shrugged. “After my parents got divorced, my mom always used to tell me and my sisters that everything is always okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it just means it isn’t the end.”
“So whatever happens, it’ll be okay.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling relaxed and kind of blurry around the edges.
“Yeah, whatever happens, it’ll be okay.”
I looked up at him, his eyes looking extra vivid, extra green. “Do you want me not to have this baby?”
He looked at me carefully, like he’d been having this conversation in his head for days. “I want you to make whatever decision feels right to you. It’s your body. I don’t want you to make a decision because you think it’s the one I want you to make, and then regret it. I’ll be here no matter what.”
I leaned over and kissed him. Even though I felt unlucky for so many reasons, in that moment, I felt so lucky that he was the man I was going through this with.
We kissed until your grandfather’s voice pierced the quiet winter sky calling us in for dinner.
And that was when everything went wrong.
17
When Emily stood up to get her coat to head home for the day, she made it only two steps before the intensity of the cramp in her stomach made her pause. She put her hand on the bookshelf to steady herself, her back hunched forward in an effort to stave off more pain.
She looked up and saw Priya in the door frame of her office, her coat on, her bag in hand, ready to head home.
“Are you okay?” Priya asked. The two women shared a wall between their offices. And sometimes shared lunch or a walk to the subway, too. Priya had come to ask if Emily was ready to leave for the day.
Emily shook her head. “I think I’m having a miscarriage,” she said.
xiv
Your dad climbed down the tree house first.
“Be careful,” he said. “Some of this wood feels rotted through.”
I knew I didn’t have to use the ladder.
“Want to see how I used to get down?” I called out the door.
“What are you talking about?” he called back.
I climbed out the window and lowered myself onto the branch below.
“Queenie?” he said. “What are you doing?”
“This branch was my elevator,” I told him. “Once I get close to the end, my weight bends it low enough to the ground that I can hop right off.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked as I started walking, my arms out for balance.
“I did this all the time,” I said, as I walked farther from the trunk. But the branch didn’t feel as supple as it used to. It wasn’t bending the way I remembered. I took another step.
And then the branch gave way. My body swung as I grabbed for the tree, but my fingers couldn’t find purchase. I was falling.