The Break(56)

Lila’s finally nodding off. I go to the top drawer of my bureau, my fingers against the beaded antique knob. I want to find those sonogram pictures from the prenatal appointments I was telling Sylvie about. Maybe they’ll trigger a memory of Gabe and me in those early days, so hopeful about our baby.

I open the drawer and see it’s empty, or at least empty of the clutter that usually fills it. There’s only my diary tucked in the back corner on top of two notebooks, which makes no sense because the drawer is usually overflowing with whatever I deem important in the moment: notes, handwritten cards from friends or from my agent or editor, knickknacks my mom gave me, and certainly all my sonogram pictures. Where did all my stuff go?

I yank out the diary and flip through the pages. It’s a new one, and I’d barely written anything in it. The rest are stored in a box at the top of my closet. Maybe I should go back and read the early entries from my pregnancy. This one only has two, and I’m immediately uncomfortable as I start reading. The entry dated two weeks before Lila’s birth says:

I really don’t feel well. Something just isn’t right. I’m so winded, first of all, which the OB says is normal, and he didn’t look concerned at all. But then there’s the dizziness and how often I’m contracting. I can feel my stomach tighten like a fist, and sometimes it goes on for what feels like minutes. My friends say they’re just Braxton Hicks, but my OB is sending me in for a nonstress test. I go tomorrow.

And then I’d written something the next afternoon, which reads:

Good news! After a very eventful morning, we’re all doing fine. Doctor monitored me for an hour and I’m definitely contracting. So I was admitted to the hospital and received my first dose of betamethasone. I go back tomorrow for the second. They give it to anyone who could deliver early, because it helps develop a baby’s lungs so they can avoid the NICU, if possible.

I put the diary back and take out the notebooks. One is filled with book ideas and notes written in pencil, my favorite way to write. The next is blank. I flip through it anyway and find Lila’s birth certificate. I open it up and suck in a breath. How can this be right?

Lila Grace O’Sullivan.

We always said we’d use Gray for a baby—we were decided on that before I went in to give birth. Why did Gabe make a last-minute change? Or could it be a clerical mistake? Maybe someone misheard him?

Lila’s fast asleep now against me. I take the birth certificate and head out to the living room. Gabe’s still on the phone, still talking in a hushed voice.

“I have to go,” he says when he sees me. He disconnects the call.

“Gabe,” I say, waving around the piece of paper. “The birth certificate, it says—”

“Where did you find that?” Gabe asks, all accusing, like I’ve gone and snooped in the writing pages he’s so secretive about. “I’ve been looking everywhere for that,” he says.

I roll my eyes. “In my top drawer,” I snap. “Why is Lila’s middle name Grace on this? Did you do that?”

Gabe flushes red. He’s mad. “Rowan,” he says, and then there’s something more on his face—he’s not only mad, it’s more complicated than that. “We need to talk about June,” he says. “There’s something I need to tell you.”





THIRTY


June. Three months ago. August 3rd.


I’m in my cubicle at WTA the next morning, staring at the cloth wall where I’ve tacked some photos of Jed, my dad, and my mom—like we’re some happy family—all individual shots because I didn’t like the ones of the four of us. I barely had any to choose from anyway, because who prints out photos anymore? They live on our phones, destined for nothing.

My eyes bounce over the faces in my family. I can’t focus on anything, not the slope of Jed’s nose or the guitar in my dad’s hands or the warmth in my mom’s eyes as she looks over her garden (that’s why I chose that photo of her, of course). I try writing everything down in a journal I keep in my desk drawer that I mostly use to write notes for myself on my screenplays, but the journal is for my eyes only, so I figure why not try to parse what I’m still feeling after last night. It doesn’t work. I’m barely here when Louisa comes in, a sleep-deprived shell of myself, a shadow.

“You’re early,” she says. And then she holds out a GF croissant from the bakery we love. She always buys me stuff there.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I say.



“Oh,” she says. “Something bothering you?”

Yes. Something’s bothering me. I exhale. I wish I could tell her, but I can’t.

“I guess it was just last night,” I say, and I try to smile. “The excitement of it all.” It’s not a lie. It’s as close to the truth as I can get without telling Louisa what passed between Gabe and me, how wrong it was. I replayed it all night in my bed, sweating into my sheets. I swear it was there for him, too. During the second half of the reading, I could feel it pulsing in the air between us even stronger—I could feel it in all the things he said. I could feel that it wasn’t nothing.

“June?” Louisa says gently. “Come sit with me.”

I follow her. I think about how I was hoping Gabe’s personality would suck, and how it was the opposite of that. He felt so virile to me, a man at the top of his game, on top of the entire world, even. Virile. That’s not a word I’ve ever used before. It’s the kind of word I’ve read in character descriptions in my scripts for work; it’s the kind of word Rowan O’Sullivan probably uses when she writes her novels.