What's Mine and Yours(23)

“Now we wait,” he said.

Jade nodded. She didn’t want to look, to see if two lines materialized. She stared at the doctor. He must have been a pretty younger man once, before his gray hair, the little lines encircling his lips. She had known somehow that she could trust him, even if they had only shared small talk on these night shifts together. She believed, for whatever reason, that he’d keep her secret.

“Where are you from, Dr. Henriquez?”

“Miami,” he said, then, “But you mean before. Peru. My parents were both doctors. They sent me here to study.”

He didn’t say that they were rich, but Jade could figure out that much. He nodded, as if he could read her thoughts.

“I’ve been luckier than I deserve in life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in medicine, it’s that life isn’t fair. Nature isn’t fair, and we only make it worse.”

“How much longer?”

“A few minutes.”

“Are you married?”

“My wife left me during residency. She hated North Carolina, and I was never home. Once she was gone, I had no reason not to stay. I like it here.”

“It’s fine.”

“Honestly, it’s not so bad being alone, under these circumstances. It’s hard when you feel you’re constantly letting someone down just by doing what you have to do.” He drummed his fingers on the desk.

“I know what you mean,” Jade said.

When Gee was born, Jade cried and cried. She could barely look at him; there had been so much blood. Before he was born, he had been mostly theoretical to her. First, he was a blastocyst, and she tracked the development of his cells. She had wanted to study molecular biology in college, and pregnancy had been like a science experiment that she couldn’t halt, unfolding in her own body. Then he was a squealing purple thing they handed to her. He smelled medicinal, raw, and she had wanted someone to take him away.

She had never had a baby by a man she loved. Maybe it would be different.

“I’m sorry, Jade,” Dr. Henriquez said. She leaned over his desk to examine the strip. A single pink line, the control line. She wasn’t pregnant. Her legs buckled, and she sank to the ground. Dr. Henriquez went to her, held her by the shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said again. How could she explain that it was relief that brought her to her knees? It was better this way, a mercy. She had chosen Gee when she was a girl, and she didn’t know any better. She wouldn’t make the same choice now.

Her voice rose from within her, unbidden. “Ray,” she said. She waited for him to speak, to return. To forgive her. “Ray,” she said again. She heard nothing, so she conjured up his voice for herself. How short our time would be. It was no comfort, false. Why would he come to her now? She was selfish, and she knew it. It was a terrible thing to choose your own life, to be willing to live it.





5



July 1998


The Piedmont, North Carolina

Lacey May pretended she was still asleep, belly down, her arms covering her face. She flicked her eyes open to check the time. Thirty-four minutes until Robbie’s bus got in. She felt her heart beat in her ears. He was closer and closer.

The front door clanged shut, and she heard Hank stomping toward her. She let out the long sigh of someone who was still out cold. Soon he was kneeling beside her, whispering a litany of pet names. This was the phase they were still in, even after more than a year: waking each other with kisses, fetching glasses of water in the night, murmuring sweetheart and baby at every chance. They were still trying to make it real, neither wanting to catch the other in a lie.

“Baby,” he said. “Sweetheart. I got the car all loaded up. You ready?”

Lacey May mumbled unintelligibly, and he shook her by the shoulders until she gave up the ruse.

“We can’t leave yet. The girls have got to eat and get ready.”

“We’re going to the beach. They can go dirty. They can eat in the car.”

Hank had on his swim trunks already; he had shaved, combed his hair back with water. It was no accident he had planned the trip for the precise day Robbie was set to be released. Lacey May glanced at the clock. Twenty-seven minutes.

She gave Hank a kiss to take the edge off, pressed his hand flush against her chest. It wasn’t long before he was massaging her breast. “Baby,” he said. “Sweetheart.”

It wasn’t bad, after all, this part of life with Hank. He was eager for instructions, zealous, and she could do so much for herself with a turn of her hips, the right picture in her head. What she had assumed was magic with Robbie had proven to be something cruder, more animal, a predictable spark that any two bodies could make together.

Lacey May kissed him, held his face in the crook of her neck. She kept her head up, one eye turned toward the clock.



She convinced Hank to make pancakes, and the girls sat at the kitchen table in their bathing suits. Margarita was the only one eating, licking syrup from her fingers, reciting all the things she’d do at the beach—bury herself in the sand, find a popsicle stand, join in a game of volleyball. She was telling them the story of the day, as if it had already happened, and she could assure them it would all be fine. Diane was somber, slipping her bacon to Jenkins under the table. Noelle’s eyes were fixed on the street, and she looked like a little lady, older than twelve, in her sundress. She had worn yellow, Robbie’s favorite color.