“What about this one?” Mom asked me, handing me a dog-eared book whose hardcover spine was peeling away from the binding. “A Bargain for Frances.”
“Of course we need this one!” I yelped. “Wait, wasn’t this Lacey’s?”
“You may be right.” Mom frowned. “I do recall buying this because she’d developed a habit of wanting whatever you’d gotten more than anything she had.”
“This book made me want a china tea set,” I said, riffling through the pages. “I’ll take it. She had her chance.”
Mom grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
She and I were sitting in my old bedroom, rooting through boxes of things she’d pulled out of the attic and from my closet and under my bed—remnants of my childhood that she’d been storing in rooms that still looked remarkably like when we’d last lived in them. When Lacey got pregnant, Mom had summoned her to Iowa to sort through the memories. Now it was my turn. Even though my baby was still theoretical.
“I’m also obviously taking all of the Frog and Toad books,” I said, scooping those over to my side of the floor. “And Sweet Valley High.”
Mom laughed. “Those were used when we bought them,” she said, holding up a tattered copy of the one where Regina Morrow’s heart explodes from snorting cocaine. “Now they’re disintegrating. They’re relics.”
“But I need them!” I clutched the one where Enid gets in a plane crash to my chest. “How else will my kids learn never to date Bruce Patman?”
“Try basic parenting.”
“I’ll be too busy teaching protocol and posture and how to wave.” I looked around my room, and noticed that the knob was still missing from the top drawer of my dresser. “Being here reminds me of how free we really were. How much room I had to be messy and figure my shit out. I don’t know how to raise a monarch.”
“Neither did I, and it turns out I raised one anyway,” Mom said. “Honey, no one really knows what they’re doing when they have a baby. You’ll make mistakes, either with the baby part or the monarch part, or both, but everyone does. I still think about the day your dad and I brought you and Lacey home from the hospital. We were terrified. I put your diapers on backward more than once. Don’t even get me started on how bad he was at cutting your baby nails.”
I glanced at a framed photo of Dad and me in our matching Little League uniforms. We’d been assigned to be the Yankees that year. We’d been so mad about being forced into those uniforms that I think we won the championship halfway out of spite.
Mom glanced down at a box and smiled, then withdrew a grimy softball and tossed it from one hand to the other. “My point is, you both turned out well, regardless, and so will your kids,” she said. “Nicholas will be a much different father than the one he had. I hope you know that.”
“I do.” But my voice was querulous.
“Where is all this coming from?” Mom asked. “You haven’t put yourself through all these medical procedures if you’re gun-shy about having a baby. Are you having second thoughts about Freddie?”
I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “Maybe.”
That night on the train, I had sat by myself in the lounge car after Nick and Freddie retreated to their cabins. But at a certain point, I’d let him percolate long enough. I’d found Nick sprawled on his narrow bed, his head on one of two riotous plaid pillows, palms over his eyelids. I closed the door and clicked the lock, then turned toward the bed, right as the train hit a curve and all but tossed me at him.
“I’m flattered,” Nick had teased, but there was strain in his voice.
“Talk to me,” I said, arranging myself at the foot of the bed.
“About what?”
“Cute.”
He lifted his palm to look at me. “We could do what you said and get a random donor and not tell anyone.”
“Too late.”
He made an indecipherable sound. “Then I suppose a fake pregnancy and secret adoption are out of the question?”
“I assume you’re joking,” I said.
Nick made a face. “Like 90 percent.”
I kicked off my shoes and crawled over, snuggling up against his long body. “When Dr. Akhtar brought up sperm donation, I shut her down. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but I knew the idea of using Freddie would pick open old scabs,” I said. “And I