The Break(71)

“Hi,” I manage to say. He stops in front of me. Only a few feet separate us now.

“Whattya have for me?” he asks casually, and he looks at me like he’s ready for this, for whatever this is going to be, like he’s been waiting for me. Sometimes actors are like this—so charismatic you melt within moments of them coming into the office—but not usually the writers. They’re broodier and almost always less socially adept. Some of them won’t even come in for meetings—they just want to do it over the phone. So it’s hard for me to figure out whether this is just what he’s always like with women, or if it has anything to do with me. Maybe I’m trying to figure out what I’m always trying to figure out: Am I special enough to be an actress? To be someone Gabe wants to be around? I wouldn’t ever even need to kiss him. I just want to be near him.

“I have a script,” I blurt. The lobby seems suddenly darker, as if a bulb burned out. Or maybe my eyes aren’t adjusting right from the sun. Or maybe I’m about to faint because this man is now standing so close to me I can see the lines etching his olive skin, the faint stubble on his jaw. “From Louisa,” I say. Why can’t I say anything interesting?

“I’d have you up to my place for a cup of coffee, but my wife is writing,” he says. Still smiling, but it dims a little.

My wife.

Rowan O’Sullivan is probably writing her next mystery novel. Probably keeping him on his toes with her brilliant mind. Probably the perfect match for him.

But would he be looking at me like this if that were true?

“I love your building,” I say. I don’t love your doorman, I think, because I can still feel the man’s eyes on me.

“Do you?” he asks.

I nod.

“Hey then,” he says. “How about I give you a tour of the billiards room and the secret staircase. There’s a garden out back, too, and we can go over the notes on my script together. I mean, if you have time,” he adds.

My heart hums. I read Gabe’s script at Louisa’s and made my own mental notes on both his story and the feedback and notes so far. That he might want to hear what I have to say about the script . . .

“Okay,” I say quickly, a jolt of energy running through me.

He reaches out a hand, and I almost give him mine. But then I realize he wants me to hand over the script. I do.

“Let’s go, June,” he says.

I can feel the doorman’s eyes boring into my back as I follow Gabe toward leaded glass windows and a black iron door.





FORTY-ONE


Rowan. Friday evening. November 11th.


I’m rocking Lila inside Sylvie’s office, swaying to the clock, feeling Sylvie’s eyes on me. I look at Lila’s little socked feet and run my fingers over her toes.

“I remember him,” I say again, still only looking at Lila. I need Sylvie, but I need Lila more, and Sylvie’s so quiet, innately sensing it.

“I remember a little boy,” I say, finally meeting Sylvie’s eyes. “Lila’s brother. Her twin. We named him Gray, and they tried to let me hold him, and they tried to tell me he didn’t make it, but I already knew that because I was his mother. I knew it first, before anyone else. I think I knew it the moment I started bleeding on my walk that day, and I think I knew it all the way to the hospital in that ambulance. I definitely knew it when they were slicing into me. I could feel him gone.”

I look back down to Lila. “And then,” I say, “I didn’t know it at all. The things that have been fuzzy in my memory: the sonogram appointments, the birth, all those things have been me trying to forget him, to lock him away. Because remembering him is so painful I’m not sure I . . .”

My voice trails off, not because it’s too hard to say the words but because I think the words are only for Gabe, Lila, Gray, and me. The truth is that I loved Gray; I still do, I always will, and so does Gabe, and he’s out there mourning our son without me, and I need to go to him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask Sylvie.

Sylvie’s eyes are kind now, there’s less agitation in her frame. I never had anything to compare it to because I only ever knew her as a woman with an impossible case: me. But now something’s broken open, and she seems easier with me. “From my understanding,” she says carefully, “from what the doctors told me, they kept trying to tell you in the hospital that Gray didn’t make it, but you couldn’t take it in. You panicked; you dissociated. You were not well. You weren’t ready to accept what had happened, and the doctors feared that continually retraumatizing you with the story of what happened to Gray would get in the way of the healthy bond you were trying to create with Lila. A decision was made to allow you to leave the hospital with Lila in the only way you seemed to be able to: as Lila’s mother, not as a mother who had lost her baby. With proper help, your doctor and I believed you would remember in your own time, safely. And you have, Rowan.”

I put Lila on my shoulder and pat her gently.

“I need to get back to my family,” I say to Sylvie. “Gabe lost his son, too, and I haven’t been able to be there for him, to help him with how awful he must feel, or with anything. I’ve only blamed him, mostly in my mind, for not being attentive and loving enough for me or being everything I need, or for being distracted. Meanwhile I haven’t done anything for him or anyone else during the past few weeks except forget Gray and scare everyone I love.”