LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d curled them tight inside my shoes, ready to push off the rocks into the water.

       She swam toward me, working hard against the current that was trying to pull her out to sea.

       “You almost gave me a heart attack.” I threw her the towel, relief making my legs shaky. Another one of my sister’s wild adventures and we were still alive. There were days when I felt like her mother, not her sister. “We need to get home before someone sees you with wet hair.”

       “No one will see us.” She emerged from the water, her clothes dripping and clinging to her skinny arms and legs. “Dad is away and Mom is in the studio.”

       “What do we say when she asks what we did today?”

       “She won’t ask.” My sister rubbed her head with the towel and tossed her hair back. She looked exhilarated and excited the way she always did when we did something we weren’t supposed to. “But if she does, we’ll tell her we went for a scenic bike ride.”

       This was part of our pact. We always made sure there were no flaws in our story.

       Whatever happened, she knew I’d protect her.

       She was my sister.

CHAPTER THREE

       Jenna

       Yearning: an intense or overpowering longing

       NOT PREGNANT.

      Were there two more depressing words in the English language?

      In the small bathroom of their two-bedroom cottage on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Jenna dropped the remains of the pregnancy test onto the bathroom floor and resisted the temptation to grind it under her heel.

      She wanted to swear, but she tried never to do that even in the privacy of her own bathroom in case one day it slipped out in front of her class of impressionable six-year-olds. Imagine that.

      Mrs. Sullivan said fuck, Mommy. FUCK. It was her word of the day. First we had to spell it, and then we had to use it in a sentence.

      No, swearing was out of the question and she refused to cry. She already had to contend with freckles. She didn’t want blotches, too.

      “Jenna?” Greg’s voice came through the door. “Are you okay, honey?”

      “I’m good. I’ll be out in a moment.”

      She stared at herself in the mirror, daring her eyes to spill even a single drop of the tears that gathered there.

       She was not okay.

      Her body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. What it was supposed to do was get pregnant on the first attempt, or at least the second, nurture a baby carefully for nine months and then deliver it with no crisis or drama.

      All those times she’d peed on the stick in the grip of panic, hoping and praying that it wouldn’t be positive. The first time she’d had sex with Greg, both of them fumbling and inept on the beach, she’d been more terrified than turned on. Please don’t let me get pregnant.

      Now she badly wanted it to be positive and it wasn’t happening.

      They’d been having sex all winter, although to be fair there wasn’t much else to do on the Vineyard once the temperature dropped. Sex was a reasonable alternative to burning fossil fuels. Maybe she should teach it in class. Hey, kids, there is solar energy, geothermal energy, wind energy and sex. Ask your parents about that one.

      She was burning more calories in her bedroom than she ever had on a treadmill.

      She was thirty-two.

      By thirty-two, her mother already had Lauren.

      Jenna’s sister, Lauren, had been pregnant at eighteen. She’d barely said “I do” to Ed before announcing she was expecting. It seemed to Jenna that her sister had gotten pregnant by simply brushing against him.

      And yes, that made her envious. She loved her sister, but she’d discovered that love wasn’t enough to keep those uncomfortable feelings at bay.

      She’d wanted to be a teacher since her sixth birthday when her mother had bought her a chalkboard, and she’d forced her sister to play school.

      Everyone knew it was only a matter of time until she had her own family.

      At first she’d been relaxed about it, but as each month passed she was growing more and more desperate.

      She’d tried everything to maximize her chances, from taking her temperature every day to making Greg wear loose boxer shorts. They’d had sex in every conceivable position and a few inconceivable positions, which had caused one broken lamp and Greg to mutter that he felt like a circus performer. Nothing had worked.

      The injustice made her heart hurt, but worse was the sense of total emptiness. It embarrassed her a little because she knew she was lucky. She had so much. She had Greg, for goodness’ sake. Greg Sullivan, who was loved by every single person on the island including Jenna. Greg, who had graduated top of his year and had excelled at everything he’d ever tried.

      She’d loved him since she was five years old and he’d pulled her out of the ditch where she’d fallen in an ungainly heap. He was her hero. They’d sat next to each other in senior year and run the school newspaper together. People talked about them as if they were one person. They were Jenna-and-Greg.

      Until recently, being with Greg was all she’d ever wanted.

      Suddenly it didn’t seem like enough.

      The worst thing was that she couldn’t talk about it with anyone, which had led to some almost awkward moments because she didn’t find keeping things to herself easy. Chatty, her school reports had said, much to her mother’s irritation. You’re there to learn, Jenna.

      She might be chatty, but even Jenna drew the line at talking about her sex life while browsing the aisles at the local store.

       Hi, Mary, good to see you. By the way, how many times did you and Pete have sex before you got pregnant?

       Hi, Kelly, I’d love to stop and chat but I’m ovulating and I need to rush home and get naked with Greg. See you soon!

      “Jenna?” He rattled the handle. “I know you’re not okay, so open the door and we can talk.”

      What was there to talk about?

      She was desperate for a baby and talking wasn’t going to fix that.

      She opened the door. She was Jolly Jenna. The girl who always smiled. The girl who had always tried to accept things she couldn’t change. She had freckles on her nose, hair that curled no matter what she did to it and a body that refused to make babies.

      Greg stood there, wearing what she thought of as his listening face. “Negative?”

      She nodded and pressed her face against his chest. He smelled good. Like lemons and fresh air. “Don’t say anything.” Greg was a therapist. He’d always been good with people, but right now there was nothing he could say that would make her feel better and she was afraid sympathy might tip her over the edge.

      She felt his arms come round her.

      “How about ‘I love you.’”

      “That always works.” She loved the way he hugged. Tightly, holding her close, as if he meant it. As if nothing was ever going to come between them.

      “We’re young and we haven’t been trying that long, Jenna.”

      “Seventeen months, one week and two days. Don’t you think it’s time we talked to a doctor?”

      “We

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