could have gone to the Maldives, or Paris, or stayed home in our pajamas. Why did you let me talk you into attending a party full of people who think you slept with the hostess last year? How could you parade me in front of these people without telling me any of this?”
Nick paused. “You seemed keen, like you needed a party, and I wanted to help lift your spirits,” he said. “But a useful side effect was proving to Annabelle that I meant what I said, and that you and I are solid. I assumed any grapevine would have already snuffed itself out. These people all look the other way for each other as easily as breathing.”
“I should have gotten a vote, Nick,” I said. “I’m not just a prop. Regardless of what other people might think.”
“I am an idiot,” Nick said, taking my hand and rubbing my ring. “May I be honest?”
“I thought you already were.”
Nick ignored that. “I let myself get swept up in how well we’d been doing all year, and the baby news made me so happy. We were happy. I didn’t want that to end. And then…” His lips trembled. “I’ve felt so gloomy. I don’t know how to pull out of it, and I knew laying this on top of it wouldn’t help either of us.”
He looked so glum, his face mirroring the way I had felt inside since the miscarriage. My heart cracked. I propped up my elbow on the back of the bench and rested my chin on my arm.
“You have to stop sparing my feelings, okay?” I said gently. “About the baby, about whatever else is going on in your head, about the Annabelles of the world. I’m sure there will be more of them.” I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. “I was scared when I got pregnant that we weren’t strong enough. But we have to stop treating our marriage like it’s something that could break.”
“I just don’t like fighting with you,” he said.
“Too bad, because we’re definitely going to fight about something over the next fifty years,” I said.
A smile played around the corner of Nick’s mouth. “Not possible. I’m perfect, you see.”
“Except when you floss in front of the television.”
“At least I don’t leave all my shoes on the ground by the door.”
“I can’t walk that far in half of them! If you love me, you’ll let me put a shoe rack in the coat closet.”
Nick did a pitch-perfect imitation of Bea. “No, Rebecca. You’re not a farmer.”
We giggled, the tension mostly broken.
“This part is always so easy with us,” I said. “We have to get better at the rest.”
My head fell on his shoulder, and we watched as everyone in the rowdy croquet game in the distance turned to scurry inside for the countdown.
“Happy New Year, Bex,” he said. “I hope we get this one right.”
“Me too,” I whispered as a cheer went up inside the house.
CHAPTER FOUR
With every day that passed, the ache of our miscarriage throbbed a bit less. Ultimately, along with time, what really helped bring me back to myself was art. It was restorative to concentrate on creating with my eyes and hands; to take blankness and craft it into something better, and believe that my body would be able to do it again, too. And because art requires a singular focus, an almost meditative kind of attention, I didn’t think about anything other than the leaf or the cloud or the blade of grass that I was trying to re-create. I had to be in the moment, and my brain could push everything else to its edges.
The view from our bedroom terrace had a gloomy beauty this time of year, and I’d taken to starting my day out there in a puffer coat, sketching for as long as my schedule let me. Today, the dense cloud cover had brought the park’s wintry grays into the starkest relief, so I’d made an enormous travel mug of coffee and was elbow-deep in its shadows when an urgent rapping came on the glass door. I turned to see an anxious Greevey.
“Ma’am, you have a guest,” he said, querulous and urgent.
“Who is it? Tell them I’ll be down in a minute,” I said, glancing down at my charcoal-smudged hands.
“I tried to keep her in the reception room,” he said through clenched teeth, just as I heard a familiar imperious voice behind him: “This isn’t nearly as hideous as it used