Everything After(34)

Emily felt a surge of envy and reminded herself to take a deep breath. “I think Chris is pressuring you to make a choice that puts you in a terrible position.” She tried to keep her own feelings neutral. She wanted to help Tessa, she felt for Tessa. But she was also, she realized, jealous of Tessa, whose body had produced a beautiful baby girl without even trying. “Have you talked to Chris about any of this?”

Tessa nodded. “Sort of. I tried hinting once that maybe he could come home earlier and be with her while I’m studying—I wouldn’t feel quite so bad that way—and his suggestion was that we ask one of our moms to keep Tessa until I finished school.”

“How did that make you feel?” Emily asked, keeping her face unreadable, even though it felt like a vise was squeezing her heart. Having this conversation with Tessa right now seemed almost cruel.

Tessa pulled the tips of her hair in front of her eyes, examining her split ends. “Like he doesn’t really care if she’s around. Or maybe worse, doesn’t actually want her around. He said it’s not true, just that he wants things to be easier for me, but I don’t know. It’s not like she’s a box of sweaters we can leave in my mom’s basement. She’s an actual person, our baby, and it would change her relationship with us if we asked one of our moms to take care of her until May. But I don’t want to dismiss his ideas, either.” She looked up at Emily. “What do you think?”

Emily smiled slightly, sadly, but didn’t say anything. There was a brief silence in the room until: “You want me to figure out what I think,” Tessa said.

“You got me,” Emily answered. She was glad she’d been able to keep her voice steady when saying that, because all she could think about was the unfairness of it all. That she and Ezra had everything they needed to take care of a baby and they didn’t have one, and then here was Tessa whose boyfriend was making it clear that they weren’t ready for a baby, and perhaps didn’t even really want one but had one regardless.

While Tessa kept talking, Emily wondered if this job made her take herself out of the equation too often, tamp down her own thoughts and feelings and opinions too much. She was always waiting for other people to decide how they felt, giving them space and helping them figure out their own minds, and ignoring her own. She’d been trained to be objective, to be patient, which were good traits in general, but she wondered if sometimes it put her in a strange role in her marriage. The way she’d been trained to interact bled into her relationship with her husband. It created a situation in which Ezra expected her to be a wife who comforted him, and usually she could be. But sometimes, when she was the one who was hurting, she didn’t have the emotional strength to comfort him. She couldn’t be anything more than a wounded woman who needed comforting herself.





29



That night, Emily got home from work and set out all the ingredients for fresh pesto: basil, pine nuts, olive oil, pecorino, garlic, salt, pepper. Even though she still felt raw and wounded, she wanted to make an effort. She looked at the pasta maker, wondering if she had time to hand-make pasta.

It was already six, so she decided to go with boxed fusilli, and put water on the stove to boil. She texted Ezra: Hope your day went well. What time will you be home?

She picked the smallest leaves off the basil so the pesto wouldn’t taste too minty and put them in the mortar and pestle they’d gotten for their wedding.


So sorry, Em. Hala just asked if I could take her call tonight—her brother flew in to surprise her for her birthday. So I said yes. Her night call goes straight into my call tomorrow, so it looks like I’ll be sleeping here tonight. Really sorry. See you tomorrow.



Emily let out a breath, as if she’d actually been punched in the gut. She wanted to talk to him. If he didn’t come home, they couldn’t work through things, get their relationship back on track, back to normal. If he didn’t come home, that gnawing feeling inside her wouldn’t go away, the one that made her feel off kilter, like her life was sliding sideways. Then another text came through: I’m still trying to wrap my mind around everything, still thinking about us. This wasn’t just about him doing a favor for Hala.

Emily stared at the texts. She’d really hurt Ezra—perhaps more than she’d realized. More than he’d hurt her, it seemed. She put the phone’s cursor in the response box. She didn’t particularly want to apologize—and honestly, she wanted him to apologize for not being there for her, for not telling her about Malcolm’s death—but she would if it helped get him home, if it made him process all of this more quickly.

I’m so sorry I hurt you, she wrote. I just never thought those stories about my past would matter. What matters is now, what we have together. The past is the past. I was a different person then.

It felt like that. Like there was one Emily in college, and another one now. There were attributes they shared, but they were two different people. They made different choices, had different passions.

Emily typed again. I love you.

Then she stared at her phone, waiting for those three dots.

He didn’t respond.

Which usually meant that some code had gone off in the hospital and he was rushing to a patient’s bedside. But she wondered now if that was actually the truth.





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