experience. Just think how many women have had experiences similar to yours who are out there right now, hurting, feeling alone.”
Patrick reached out and reclaimed her hand, and she let him take it.
“What I’m saying is, you could help those other women by sharing your experience.”
“You want me to use my miscarriages to make me more likable.” Her voice was flat, affectless. She knew she should feel outraged, but instead she just felt numb.
Patrick turned toward her, squeezing her hand in his. “I would never ask you to do something you’re not comfortable with, so if this isn’t something you want, just say the word and we’ll drop it. It’s just . . .” He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, something he always did when he was nervous. “I think Rich might be right, that sharing your story might be a good thing. Not because it will make you more likable, or even because it might help other women who are struggling. Becs, you’ve been carrying this weight around with you all on your own, and it’s crushing you. I’ve been trying to help carry it, but it doesn’t seem to be enough, and . . .” He shook his head. “I just think if you shared your story with the world, you’d be sharing that weight, too.”
Silence. All Rebecca could hear was the faint whir of the computer and the hum of the fluorescents and the rush of blood in her ears. Five miscarriages in eighteen months. Her doctor said it was normal, nothing to worry about. “It takes longer for some women’s bodies to get the hang of it,” he’d said, as if carrying a child in your body were the same as learning to tie a cherry stem with your tongue, or recite the alphabet backward. A cute little knack. All the test results had come back normal. “There’s nothing stopping you from having a baby,” the doctor had added. “Just give it time.”
Five miscarriages. Five dreams held for a moment, only to be lost.
Patrick was right: she had been carrying the weight of it on her own, and it was crushing her. She could feel it in the heaviness of her limbs, the way her bed called to her in the middle of the day, the way she flinched in bright sunlight as if burned.
Maybe her story could help someone feel a little less alone.
Maybe sharing it would make her feel a little less numb.
“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll try.”
Outskirts of Fort Sumner, New Mexico—165 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait didn’t know what had made her steal that candy bar.
First of all, she was pissed at herself for screwing up. She should have had a spare gas can in the back, but as soon as Rebecca asked, she could see it clear as day sitting in Alyssa’s garage. Cait had loaned it to her for a camping trip and forgotten to ask for it back. Stupid of her. Careless. And then the gas station attendant had been such a creep, looking at them like they were trash, and screwing them by hiking up the price of gas. Scott insisted on filling up the gas can. She knew that he was just being nice, but it pissed her off nonetheless, and made her feel even more stupid and useless than she already did. It was her car, her drive: she should have been in control of it, but instead it had been Rebecca who paid for the gas and Rebecca who thought to sweet-talk Scott like that, because she didn’t trust Cait to handle the situation. It had been a little much, Rebecca fawning over Scott like he was some kind of white knight and then saying she’d done it to “save” them, as if Cait needed to be saved.
Anyway, Cait had been pissed, so she’d told those two she had to pee and she’d swiped a candy bar and a pack of gum on the way out. She hadn’t stolen anything since high school, when she and her friends had run rings around the poor security guard at Walmart. They stole makeup, mainly. Tubes of sticky lip gloss, shimmery bronzer, bottles of nail polish. Nothing that was worth much, but more than she could afford.
It wasn’t her parents’ fault that they were poor. They both worked, and worked hard, her father out on the telephone lines and her mother as a receptionist at the local dentist. They had tried to get ahead—they’d tried so