Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(56)

He untangled his fingers from my curls and sat down. “Are we talking about me here, or you? Personally, I don’t care very much about everything working out perfectly, but I’m not going to not take a chance because of all the what-ifs involved.”

I couldn’t come up with a single sarcastic response. Instead, I leaned toward him and kissed him. “I’m going to miss you terribly.”

“I’ll miss you, too. But you already know that.” He kissed me again, then said, “What about after treatment? What then?”

What did happen then? I stared vacantly as my brain cells fired past one another. Suddenly, I was not sitting in a coffee shop in the Caribbean with a man I was fairly certain I loved, but instead walking the cold, wet streets of New York, staring into the faces of a million strangers. I was filling out an endless string of job applications for positions I did not actually want, which would be summarily dismissed by human resources professionals or computerized screening programs that deduced I had not used the correct power verbs in combinations demonstrating my unbridled talent and ambition. I was on a string of progressively bad dates in a city where eligible men under age fifty were rarer than the ivory-billed woodpecker, and single women far younger, prettier, and less damaged than me swarmed like ants. In the future I had managed to conjure up, I was alive, which was more than I’d been able to say about my previous forecasts. Even so, I was adrift and alone.

“Aren’t I supposed to be enjoying the present moment?” I asked Shiloh.

“Touché. In this case, it seems like a good time to start at least contemplating what might make you happy.”

I gave him what I hoped was a sunny smile. “Let me think about it.”



And I did. The next few days were filled with more cafecitos y mallorcas, more strolls on the beach and excursions through untamed parks. A last Spanish lesson with Milagros, which began with travel-related terminology and devolved into the two of us drinking our faces off as she tried to teach me various ways to insult a drunkard. And most of the time, I tried to ponder what it was, exactly, that I might want if I did survive this disease.

It used to be that what I really wanted was a child of my own. Even more than I had yearned to be Tom Miller’s wife, I had always wanted to be a mother, preferably to a daughter named Charlotte, after my own mother (though a son would have made me equally happy, provided he didn’t mind being called Charlotte).

But it didn’t happen for Tom and me, even after years of trying and tests. When the doctor suggested in vitro fertilization—which my insurance did not cover and which cost as much as all of our fancy furniture combined—Tom hemmed and hawed about the expense, and when I said we should try to adopt, he balked, citing the gut-wrenching uncertainty of the adoption process, and said we should just let it go.

And I agreed, even though it was a lie against my soul.

It was not so much that the longing had gone away, but that in light of my marriage and health woes, having a child seemed sort of selfish, if not entirely beside the point.

But the night before I was scheduled to fly to Chicago, when Shiloh again inquired about what I really wanted, I did not pretend to be excited about a sparkling new career, or a shining outlook on life, or even the possibility of returning to Puerto Rico. Instead, I confessed that if, by some miracle I lived and was given the bonus gift of decent health, it was a safe guess that a child would again preoccupy my wishes.

“A child?” Shiloh said with surprise.

When I held Toby and Max, the heft of their chunky bodies and the silky down of their skin triggered a visceral, even greedy reaction: I wanted to gobble them up, somehow consume all that goodness. To live long enough to have my own child, to experience her first day of kindergarten, her high school graduation, maybe even the birth of her child—well, short of my mother’s resurrection, I could not think of a single thing that would be better. “I get it if that freaks you out,” I told Shiloh.

A hint of moonlight shone on his face. “Who said I don’t want kids, Libby? Just because I don’t have them doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to be a father.”

We’d been lying on a blanket on the beach, looking up at the stars. I sat up and shook the sand out of my hair. “I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“This isn’t a fight; it’s a tough thing to talk about. There’s a difference.”

I sighed and lay back again. “Sorry, it’s a touchy subject for me.”

“It’s okay. It’s touchy for me, too. If you had asked, I would have told you that I would love to have at least one child. A girl, if I had my choice.”

“I always wanted a girl, too,” I admitted. “I’d call her Charlotte.”

He nodded. “For your mother. What about Charlotte Patrícia? That’s a nice name.”

“I love it,” I confessed.

“And I love you.”

I stared at him, half expecting him to say he was joking. When I saw that he was smiling, my chest flooded with warmth. “Wow.”

“I get it if that freaks you out,” he teased. Then he grew serious. “Really, Libby. I know it’s early, but that’s what I’m feeling, and I don’t really believe in holding good stuff back.”

“I’m not freaked out,” I said, and it was true. “That was lovely. Thank you.”