had ever beaten Karen McCann. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to focus on calling my dad or my sister or on my surgery or my chemo or what they might find inside me.
So instead, I will focus on making my poor, shell-shocked husband deposit his sperm on the way to my surgery. Because I will beat this. I will win. And when I do, we will be so happy to have these beautiful embryos waiting to become babies, ready for us to hold them in our arms.
Amelia
GLORY DAYS
I DIDN’T CONSIDER MYSELF THE kind of girl who runs home to her mother, but as soon as I left that doctor’s office, I wasn’t able to control my urge to buy a plane ticket home. Maybe I needed something familiar to anchor me back to earth, or maybe I wanted to get the unpleasantness of telling my family over with.
After a sleepless night in a hotel that was quite luxurious but left me feeling even lonelier, I boarded a plane home that early morning, sunglasses over my eyes, which were swollen and blurry from crying and lack of sleep. As I shoved my carry-on into the overhead compartment, a simple ding on my phone—a reminder of Martin’s birthday party—sent me back into sobs, prompting the woman in front of me to look at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. Thad and I loved Martin’s birthday parties. And Martin was my friend. I got to keep him in the divorce.
I wanted to tell Martin so, but I couldn’t risk anyone knowing what was going on until I told my parents. They were going to be outraged and devastated; the last thing I needed was for them to hear the news from someone else first.
I sat down in my window seat in the very last row of the plane, the only seat available so last-minute. I pulled out my phone and texted Nanette, my editor. So sorry, N. I can’t make it in today. Major emergency. Flying home to Cape Carolina. I will fill you in on all when I get back.
Typing bubbles appeared immediately, followed by Nanette’s response: Oh no, babe. You okay? Can I help? Anything you need. Take as much time as you want. I’m here for you.
I knew she was. I also knew she was panicking because we were supposed to be putting the December issue of Clematis to bed today, and while Nanette had the technical skills and know-how to do it herself, she depended on me, her managing editor, the deputy to her sheriff, for far more than I thought she even realized.
I tapped my thumb on the group text my oldest friends, Sarah, Jennifer, and Madison, kept going at all times. We had grown up together, and the three of them had returned to Cape Carolina. I was the only outlier who had moved away for good. I wanted to tell them. I needed to tell them—at least that I was coming home, if not the reason why. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet.
As I leaned my head against the plane window, watching Palm Beach become smaller and smaller and then fade to white, I couldn’t think about next steps. All I could think about was how to tell my mother. My mother loved me more than anything, but she also had ideas about how my life was going to turn out. I thought she would be disappointed in me. My divorce was a mark on her sterling reputation.
But then I had a thought that neither consoled me nor made me feel worse: Thad had never really been mine. I had been a part of a life he was trying to live, a pawn in a game that he had tried to play and lost. A tiny part of me pitied him, felt sad he had spent years living a life that must have felt like it was the wrong size and color. But I think what worried me most of all was that I really, truly hadn’t known.
In fact, I used to feel sorry for my friends. Their marriages were so boring. Thad and I went dancing, we took art classes, we traveled on a whim, we laughed all the time. I couldn’t reconcile how the man who told me how beautiful I was, who looked at me with pure admiration, was the one who had betrayed me.
Thad had called and texted me no fewer