up. “Are they on your case? Why?”
“That would be something to talk about in our capacity as friends.” She hadn’t told anyone about her and Jake, but she suddenly kind of wanted to. Mostly because she hadn’t heard from him since she’d left his place yesterday morning. Which wasn’t all that unusual, she told herself. Anyway, she’d been planning to try to cool it a little with him, anyway.
“Right. Gotcha.”
“So for an IUD, I’ll need to give you a pelvic exam and test you for STIs. Then I’ll give you a prescription for the actual IUD, you bring it back, and I’ll insert it. Sound good?”
She pulled a curtain while Eve undressed, and they talked about the different models and how much pain to expect during and after insertion.
Nora gloved up for the exam. “Here we go.”
“Is it weird to be friends with people and then have your fingers in their vagina?” Eve asked cheerfully.
Nora chuckled. “It’s actually not as weird as I thought it was going to be.”
“What about balls, though? That must be weird. You feel up someone’s balls and then you run into him at, like, the farmers’ market?”
She remembered how nervous she’d been about that very thing, about whether people should call her Dr. Walsh or Nora. All that junk had just faded away. “Not really. I think I’ve learned to compartmentalize.” Even more, she sort of liked the whole feel-someone’s-balls-and-run-into-them-at-the-farmers’-market thing. She felt like a mother hen to the town—in a good way. She handed Eve some tissues. “All done. I’m going to write you a requisition for blood tests. Get those done and get this”—she handed Eve her prescription—“filled and make an appointment to come see me. IUD insertion is generally easier when you’re on your period because your cervix is dilated, so if you can, try to time it so you come back then.”
“Great. Thank you so much. Dr. Walsh.”
“Nora.”
“Yeah, but we’re compartmentalizing, right?”
Nora smiled. “Right.”
“But do you want to hang out in another compartment soon? I haven’t seen you since you got back, and— Crap. I never even asked you about your family, the funeral.”
“It’s okay, and yeah. Let’s get together. Let’s get together soon.” She suddenly felt like she really needed to…be in another compartment with someone who wasn’t Jake. “But can we do it not at the bar? Or the inn?”
“Oooh, the plot thickens.”
Hopefully not.
Definitely not.
Or at least it was highly statistically unlikely that the plot was going to thicken.
“How about Maya’s place?” Nora suggested. “I’ll arrange it with her and let you know.”
“Great!” Eve said. “Can’t wait to have some drinks and talk about something other than my vagina.”
Right. We’ll talk about mine.
It was the second day of the new year, and Jake was still freaking out. It was the day Jude would have been four years and three days old. Because Jude’s birthday was December thirtieth.
Jake always spent Jude’s birthday by the lake. Sometimes on it, in the canoe, depending on how cold it was and how icy the cove was.
Regardless, he always spent Jude’s birthday alone. The first year, Sawyer and Law had invited him to a movie, and when he’d demurred, they’d tried to elbow their way into his house. What he’d said that day, rebuffing them, was the most he’d ever said directly to them about Jude—about the Jude-shaped hole in his life. “I am only going to say this once. I know you mean well, but back the fuck off. December thirtieth is never going to be a normal day. I don’t want it to be. Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”
And to their credit, they had. It hadn’t come up again, with them or with anyone else. Probably because he made sure to spend every subsequent December thirtieth alone. Well, alone with his boy under the big starry sky next to the big black lake.
Until the year he hadn’t spent December thirtieth alone with his boy.
Because he’d forgotten his boy.
His hands were frozen as he paddled back to shore. He’d spent most of today canoeing. Yesterday, too, after Nora had finally fallen asleep and he’d crept out of the cottage. His muscles ached from all the paddling, but it still didn’t feel like enough.
He should have felt bad leaving her—she was mired in her own grief, and none of this was her fault. But what he had done—what he had not done—was too big for him to stay there.
It still was. Being on the move was the only way