LITMIR.BIZ

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I could climb a flight of stairs and walk a block and think about a future. If I wore a perpetual smile, that was why. I was alive and grateful for every second I’d been given. Now I was living that future. There were days, though, when it felt as though my life was no more in my control than it had been when I was sick. “Everyone feels that way,” my best friend, Joy, told me. “Totally normal.” I’d had so little experience with “normal” that I could only hope she was right.

      Mollie walked through the double doors into the waiting room. She wasn’t smiling and I suddenly felt afraid for Alissa. This time, I was the one to get to my feet. “Is everything okay?” I asked. I loved Alissa. She was so real. So down to earth. She was five years younger than me, but I felt as though we were kindred spirits—in ways only I truly understood.

      “She’s very close,” Mollie said, “but she wants you with her.” She looked at me. “You want to go in?”

      “Me?” From the start, the plan had been for Mollie to be in the delivery room with her daughter. “She wants you, honey.” Mollie sounded tired.

      Dale stood up and put his hand on the small of my back. “You okay with that?” he asked quietly. He was always protective of me. Sometimes I appreciated it. Other times it reminded me of my father, cutting me off from the world.

      “Sure,” I said. I was no stranger to hospitals, though a delivery room was unfamiliar territory. I hoped someday to have a career in medicine, though Dale said I’d never have to work if I didn’t want to. My only hesitation in being with Alissa was stepping into a role that had so clearly belonged to Mollie.

      “I’ll show you where,” Mollie said, and she led me through the waiting room and the double doors and into a hallway. She pointed toward a doorway. “Just hold her hand. Be there for her. She’s tired of me.” She gave me a smile that let me know she was a little bit hurt that Alissa wanted me with her rather than her mother.

      I heard Alissa the second I opened the door. She was halfway sitting up, panting hard, a look of intense concentration on her face, and I guessed she was in the middle of a contraction. “Robin!” she managed to say when she could catch her breath. Her face was red and sweaty, her forehead lined with pain.

      “I’m here, Ali,” I said. One of the nurses motioned toward a stool at the side of the bed and I sat down and took Alissa’s hand in both of mine. I wasn’t sure what to say. How are you feeling? seemed like a ridiculous question to ask. It was pretty clear how she was feeling, so I just repeated myself. “I’m here,” I said again. Someone handed me a damp, cool washcloth and I pressed it to her forehead. Tendrils of her auburn hair were plastered to her face and her brown eyes were bloodshot.

      “I couldn’t take one more minute of my mother.” She spoke through clenched teeth, then let out a long, loud groan. I watched the monitors on the other side of the bed. The baby’s heartbeat was so fast. Was it supposed to be that fast?

      “I think she’s okay with it,” I lied.

      “I hate her right now. I hate them. All of my stupid family. Except you.”

      “Shh,” I said, pulling the stool closer to her. I wondered if delivery room nurses had to keep things they heard confidential. I bet they heard all kinds of gossip in here. The last thing Dale needed was for the world to know all was not well with Beaufort’s first family.

      “Will should be with me,” Alissa whispered. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. Not like this.”

      I was surprised. Will Stevenson was completely out of the picture and I’d thought she was finally okay with that. He’d created a mess the Hendricks family had needed to clean up, but now wasn’t the time to get into a big discussion with her about it. I’d never even met Will. Alissa had kept that relationship even from me, and I had to admit I was hurt when I found out about it. I’d thought we were closer than that. But she’d done me a favor. I didn’t want to feel as though I was keeping secrets from Dale—at least, no more than the secrets I was already keeping.

      She had another contraction and nearly broke my fingers as she squeezed them. The baby’s heartbeat slowed way down on the monitor and I glanced nervously at the nurses, trying to gauge if something was wrong, but no one except me seemed concerned.

      “This baby’s going to wreck my life!” Alissa nearly shouted when the contraction had ended.

      “Shh,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her say that and it worried me. If Alissa had had her way, she’d be putting this baby up for adoption, but that would never have been acceptable to her parents. “You’re going to love her,” I said, as if I knew about these things. “Everything’s going to work out fine. You’ll see.”

      An hour later, baby Hannah was born and I watched my future sister-in-law change from a screaming, fighting, panting warrior to a docile and beaten-down seventeen-year-old. The doctor rested the tiny infant on her belly, but Alissa didn’t touch her or look at her. Instead, she turned her head away, and I saw two of the nurses exchange a glance. I wanted to touch that baby myself. How could Alissa not want to?

      One of the nurses took Hannah to the side of the room to clean her up and I leaned my lips close to Alissa’s ear. “She’s beautiful, Ali,” I said. “Wait till you get a good look at her.” But Alissa wouldn’t even look at me, and as I wiped her face with the washcloth, I wasn’t sure if it was perspiration or tears I was cleaning away.

      The nurse brought the baby back to the side of the bed. “Are you ready to hold her?” she asked Alissa, who gave the slightest shake of her head. I bit my lip.

      “How about you, auntie?” the nurse asked me. “Would you like to hold her?”

      I looked up at the nurse. “Yes,” I said, draping the washcloth on the metal bar of the bed. I reached out my arms, and the nurse settled Hannah, light as feathers, into them. I looked down at the tiny perfect face and felt the strangest emotion come over me. It slipped into my body and locked my throat up tight. I’d rarely related Alissa’s pregnancy to my own. That denial had been easy, since I’d blocked so much of my own experience from my mind. The baby I’d had didn’t exist for me. But suddenly, holding this beautiful little angel in my arms, I thought, This is the part I missed. This was the part I’d never realized I was missing and that no one must ever know that I missed. And as I pressed my lips to the baby’s warm temple, I cried the first tears ever for the empty place in my heart.

       4 Erin

       Raleigh

      MICHAEL SET ONE OF THE BOXES ON THE granite counter of my new, small kitchen. Through the window over the sink, I could see the sun disappear behind dust-colored clouds. The sky would be opening up soon with a late-summer storm. I was glad we’d gotten all the boxes in before the rain started.

      “This is the last one,” Michael said, brushing his hands together as if the box had been dirty. He walked into the attached dining area and looked out the window with a sigh. “You’re way out in the boonies here,” he said.

      I knew what he was seeing through that window: the sprawling Brier Creek Shopping Center. Acres and acres of every big box store and chain restaurant you could imagine. Hardly the boonies.

      “It’s not that far,” I said, although it was a good fifteen miles from our house in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood.

      “You don’t know anyone out here,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

      “I know you don’t,” I said. “That’s okay. It’s what I want, Michael. What I need right now. Thanks for just … for tolerating it.”

      He looked out the window again. The gray light played on his ashy brown hair, the same color mine would be if I didn’t lighten it. The color my roots were. I was really late for a touch-up, but I didn’t care.

      “Let me be the one to live here,” he said suddenly.

      “You?”

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