I nodded. I didn’t know anything about having babies, except what I’d read or seen on TV. Lots of groaning and sweat and bodily fluids. Like sex without the good parts.
“Again!” Rose demanded.
I helped her up the ladder.
“It wasn’t in our birth plan,” Daanis said when I rounded the slide again, still in that tense voice. “My mom says I should let nature take its course. But Zack is worried I’ll go into labor and we won’t have time to get to the hospital.”
I’d never been pregnant. But I knew all about plans not working out. I understood how anxious, how helpless, it couldmake you feel when shit happened beyond your control. “It’s your baby,” I said. “Your body. You should do what you want.”
“It’s Zack’s baby, too. Besides, he’s right. My obstetrician says second babies can come earlier. Faster. I don’t want to have this baby on the ferry.” She gave me a small, strained smile. “Or worse, the flight ambulance.”
She’d made her decision, I realized. Which meant she didn’t need me to second-guess her choices. She needed my support.
Rose, bored with the slide, toddled in the direction of the swings.
“I can stay with Rose,” I said.
“Thanks, pal.” Daanis started to pick her up. “Mom’s already offered to watch her.”
“Let me.” I swung Rose into the bucket.
I hadn’t helped at all when Rose was born, because of Covid. I wanted to do better this time. I needed to do better.
“It would be wonderful if you could be our backup. But…when do you leave?”
My stomach sank. I’d been avoiding looking at the calendar, but it was getting harder and harder to stay in the moment with the return to school looming. Beverly Powell could talk all she wanted about administrative support, but I didn’t see me lining up another teaching gig before the school year started. I still received the school e-newsletter—at least I hadn’t been deleted from the mailing list—but I’d heard nothing from Sarah. No requests for an apology, no demands that I resign. But also no reassurances. Sooner or later, I had to decide: return to Ravenscrest and clean out my library, or give up my job and move out of my apartment.
“Middle of August.”
“So soon?”
Classes on Mackinac started after Labor Day, when the tourists were mostly gone. But the Chicago school year began two weeks earlier.
I winced. “I know that’s awfully close to your due date. I wish I could stay longer.” But skipping out on the required teacher workdays—or worse, taking time off once classes started—would take away any choice I had. I’d be fired.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine,” Daanis said.
Because she didn’t really need me. Not the way she once did. A lump moved into my throat.
“What about Joe?” she asked.
“He’ll be fine.” He didn’t need me, either.
“Will you still see him? After you go back?”
I swallowed. Because this wasn’t a status update. This was a question from my best friend. “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.” We hadn’t talked about a lot of things. “I guess we might. I’ll be home for Christmas, right? And maybe if he has another job in Chicago…”
“So, you’re not setting a date yet.”
“A date?”
“For the wedding.”
I felt myself redden. “Ha ha. I just got out of a two-year relationship. So I don’t…It’s too soon, right?”
“Have you heard from him at all?” Daanis asked.
“Joe?”
