LITMIR.BIZ

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fist to tighten around my uterus. I didn’t know if I could go through it again.

      I felt sick to my stomach by the time we got to the car. Neither of us said a word until we’d pulled out of the parking lot into the street.

      “I’m sorry,” I said then.

      He didn’t take his eyes from the road. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

      I hesitated. “It’s something I don’t like to remember. And abortion’s not supposed to have anything to do with fertility, but … I think I was afraid it … that it did have something to do with it. I mean, I got pregnant then, and now, as an adult, I have so much trouble conceiving, so I’ve always had this niggling fear that it was somehow related. Now it looks like it is.” My voice broke. I’d already felt responsible for our not having a child, worried that Adam blamed me, subconsciously or not. Now he had a concrete reason to do so. “I’m sorry, Adam,” I said again.

      “Please stop apologizing, Maya.” The muscles in his jaw contracted. “I’m just pissed off you didn’t tell me. We’ve been trying to have a baby for three years—without much luck—and now I discover that you’ve kept a pretty damn significant piece of the puzzle from me.”

      “I know.” I started to apologize again, but caught myself. “I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from you,” I said. “It’s something I’ve tried to forget. I …” My voice trailed off, and I turned my head to look blindly through the window. There was no excuse I could give him that was good enough.

      He didn’t ask me how old I’d been when I had the abortion or who the baby’s father was, and I was relieved. I didn’t want to think about it. The damage done back then had harmed far more than my fertility.

      Was Adam now wondering if there were other things I’d kept from him? Other secrets? Worse secrets?

      If so, he would be right.

      7

      Rebecca

      “YOU WANT TO STAY OVER?” REBECCA ASKED BRENT AS they pulled into the driveway of the massive Victorian she shared with Dorothea.

      “What do you think?” He’d already put the car in Park and was opening his door. She was fine either way, as long as he gave her some space. Two days after returning from San Diego, Rebecca still hadn’t recovered from the conference. Too much food and not enough exercise.

      “I swear,” she said as they walked toward the outside stairs that zigzagged up the side of the building to her second-story apartment, “four days of meeting and greeting, giving speeches and soaking up gorgeous scenery is more draining than a month in the field.”

      “You got that right,” he said.

      The lights on the first floor were burning. Every one of them, it seemed.

      “Dot’s still up,” she said as they started climbing the stairs. “We should say hi.”

      They stopped at the first landing and Rebecca knocked on the door that led to Dorothea’s kitchen. When there was no answer, she opened the door—Dot never locked anything—and poked her head inside.

      “You up, Dot?” she called.

      “Dining room,” Dorothea said.

      They walked through the kitchen. The room was turquoise with violet cabinetry, bright yellow hardware, and white appliances. All Louisa’s work. Dorothea had given her partner free rein, and although she’d complained about the color combinations while Louisa was alive, she’d done nothing to change them now that Louisa was gone and Rebecca was glad. If she ever cared enough to decorate her own spare apartment, she would use Louisa’s energetic palette.

      Louisa had been neat almost to the point of being finicky, but her artist’s eye craved color, the bolder the better. She would roll over in her grave—had she been buried instead of donating her body to Duke—if she could see her dining room now, Rebecca thought as she and Brent skirted the boxes and stacks of journals and papers that littered the floor.

      Dorothea looked up from her seat at the head of the table, where she was typing on one of the two laptop computers in the room. “What time is it?” she asked. Long strands of gray hair were coming loose from her braid, but she looked pretty in the glow from the computer screen. Dorothea was sixty-seven now, and every once in a while Rebecca caught a glimpse of the knockout she must have been when she was younger.

      Brent walked to the head of the table and leaned over to kiss Dorothea’s cheek, a shock of blond hair falling over his forehead.

      “Whatcha up to?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest as he peered down at the screen.

      “Watching tropical storms forming,” she said.

      Rebecca pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table and drew the second computer toward her. “Anything that looks like trouble?” she asked, getting online.

      Dorothea moved the cursor around a bit, gnawing her lower lip as she studied the screen. “Hard to say right now. A few things … maybe. Maybe not.”

      The dining room had been Louisa’s red room. The walls were painted a robust, deep red and one of her paintings—a huge stunning rectangular canvas covered with apricots—brought the room to life. The dining room used to be Rebecca’s favorite room in the house, but Dorothea now had so much stuff littered all over the table and the sideboard that the room had lost its charm. It sometimes worried her to see how Dorothea had let things go after Louisa died. Dorothea still had all her faculties. She was as brilliant and committed as ever, but the lack of caring about her surroundings, which served her very well in a disaster zone, didn’t work all that well in North Carolina. She never wanted company, with the exception of Rebecca and Brent and a few other DIDA regulars, because cleaning the house was, at this point, impossible. When Rebecca took over directing DIDA, she was going to have a mess on her hands.

      “Next thing that comes up, we’ll get that brother-in-law of yours in the field,” Dorothea said to Rebecca. “I know he’s champin’ at the bit.”

      Rebecca clicked the page for the National Hurricane Center. “As long as it’s not for more than two weeks,” she reminded Dorothea. She doubted Adam could take off more than that. No volunteers were required to donate more than two weeks a year with DIDA, but Dorothea had a tendency to forget that little detail.

      “We just came from their house.” Brent hovered over Dorothea’s shoulder, studying the screen.

      “How’s Maya doing?” Dorothea asked. “Recovering okay?”

      “She seemed pretty good,” Brent said, which only went to show how unintuitive he was.

      “She’s miserable, actually,” Rebecca said.

      Brent frowned at her. “She seemed okay to me.”

      “I know her better than you,” she said. Maya could wear a smile broad enough to span the Grand Canyon and Rebecca would still be able to see the lie in it. “They’re both miserable.”

      “Well,” Brent said, “they’re going out to dinner with us Saturday night. We’re going to that new Brazilian place. Want to come?”

      Dorothea shook her head. “Too much to do here,” she said. She was no good at delegating. Rebecca would do a better job of spreading the work around. “Supposed to be a good restaurant, though,” Dorothea added.

      Rebecca couldn’t believe Maya had agreed to the Brazilian restaurant. Maya avoided that part of Durham. A sketchy area, to be sure, but when Brent mentioned it, Adam had lit up.

      “Yeah!” he’d said. “I’ve wanted to try that place!”

      Seeing the sudden life in Adam’s eyes made Rebecca realize exactly how glum he’d been since their arrival. Maya must have noticed as well, because she nodded her okay. Trying to please him, Rebecca thought. Trying to make it up to

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