to tell anyone, but Martha knew that she’d meant not to tell people who knew them, like family friends and neighbors and that kind of thing. It didn’t hurt anyone that Martha told Jaz. She had to. This was the kind of thing you had to talk about, so that you were able to process it.
“Can you believe it?” she’d asked. “Can you believe that in this day and age, someone could be so careless?”
“It happens,” Jaz said. “I believe it.”
“I mean, at colleges these days, people are practically forcing condoms on kids. Well, not at my school they didn’t, but that’s different. It was a Catholic school. Still, you can get them anywhere.” Martha had heard Will say this exact thing the night before, wondering aloud how on earth his son hadn’t been able to find a simple condom.
“It happens every day,” Jaz said. Martha thought Jaz was probably trying to calm her down, but what she was really doing was making it seem like this wasn’t a big deal. When it was. Her brother had gotten someone pregnant. There was going to be a baby. She was going to be an aunt. This was a very big deal.
Martha had been spending more and more time with Jaz in the kitchen. Mr. Cranston was sleeping a lot more and they’d all decided it was a good idea to have the nurses look in on him more often. Now they came in the afternoon as well as at night. Martha was sure that meant her job was gone, but Jaz assured her it wasn’t.
“There’s still no one here in the mornings. Plus, we need you for all the things that nurses don’t do,” she said. She was trying to reassure Martha, but it just made her feel worse. She was a nurse. She should be doing more than buying books and retrieving the TV clicker.
When she asked what was wrong with Mr. Cranston, she always got the same answer: everything. It was the winter, the recovery from the surgery, just general exhaustion. Martha had imagined that she’d come in as the caretaker and nurse Mr. Cranston back to health, then leave when he was better. She never told anyone this, of course. They’d all told her from the beginning it wasn’t going to go like that. It was just harder to see in person.
Jaz asked Martha what Cleo was going to do. She said it very carefully, like she wanted to remove all judgment from her words.
“She’s going to keep it,” Martha said. She tried not to sound like that was a stupid question, but really. If Cleo was going to have an abortion, would Martha even be talking about this? “We’re really happy about it,” she added. Just in case Jaz misunderstood.
MARTHA HAD A LOT ON HER PLATE. In addition to her new job and the Max-and-Cleo family crisis, she was officially house hunting again. She’d called up the Realtor she’d been working with last year and told her she was ready to resume the search. When she’d told Cathy this, she hadn’t gotten the response she was looking for.
“Martha, what are you waiting for? Just do it already,” Cathy said.
Martha was too surprised to talk at first. She was used to Cathy’s blunt way of speaking; it was one of the things that she admired about her actually. But this sounded mean, impatient almost.
“I am,” she said. “I’m going out with the Realtor tomorrow. I’m just waiting for the right place for me. Last year just wasn’t the time to buy.”
Martha hadn’t actually told anyone what had happened last year. The truth was that she’d been sort of fired by her Realtor. And even though she knew that’s not how it worked, it still felt that way. She’d been working with Sarah for almost a year, meeting on Saturdays and driving around to different apartments. Sarah was a few years younger than Martha, and was funny in a predictable and not terribly clever way. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, and always talked in an upbeat manner when describing the places they were going to see, using Realtor short-speak that Martha liked—washer and dryer in unit, en suite bathroom, outdoor area.
She was peppy, which you had to be in realty. There were lots of awful places out there, and you had to be persistent to find the right one. Martha figured that Sarah identified with her, wanted to find her the perfect place in the right