“I don’t want to be thevictim,” Lillian said, and dropped his hand. “I think, honestly, we should spin this as a decision we made together. Like we came to the conclusion that this was best for you, and then I end up taking over the division on my own, which is good for my career. So it looks like I sort of maneuvered you out for your own good.”
“Sure,” Carver said, glad to hear her problem-solving.
“And what about everything else? What about our embryos?”
“Right. Be honest, did you ever actually want to use those?”
“Well, maybe,” Lillian said. She was quiet for a moment. “Honestly, I didn’t ever really get the point. I kept waiting to get it, and never getting it. So I guess… no.”
Carver chuckled and shook his head at his own gullibility. “Okay.”
“We could donate them to science. Like, stem cell research.”
“That feels ghoulish considering we didn’t use any, like we just made them for that. Can’t we just have them destroyed?”
“Are you pro-life suddenly? Don’t be a bumpkin, Carver, what if they lead to a breakthrough in cancer research or something?”
He chuckled again, this time at the irony. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Yeah. Whatever, right?”
“Good, so that’s settled,” Lillian said. They walked in silence for a while, traipsing across the muddy sand, whipped continually by the breeze. “I am still just having a hard time understanding why you’d be willing to give so many things up.”
Carver worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. This was extremely difficult to explain even to himself, so how was he supposed to explain it to Lillian? She couldn’t feel what he was feeling. “I kind of feel like I woke up from a dream,” he said, “and now I have to go about my day and my life according to the logic of reality. I can’t keep living according to the dream’s logic, it just isn’t possible. I’m not the person I was when we got here on Thursday, as absurd as that may sound.”
Lillian appeared to ponder this, her golden hair blowing around her face. “I think I can understand that,” she said, to his relief. “Is it just because of the sex with Scott, or because you found out you’re a bastard?”
“Both, I think.”
“Whoisyour dad, by the way?”
“Uh… he was a friend of my parents, actually. My dad was in his firm’s international project finance division in the eighties, and when Chip was a kid they were sending him out for like a month at a time to go deal with foreign regulators and shit, so he wasn’t home much. And my mom ended up having an affair with this friend of theirs.”
“Right, and?” Lillian said, almost impatiently. “What was the friend like?”
“He’s dead, actually. Died at thirty-three.”
Lillian made a low whistle. “What happened?”
“Cancer.”
“Cancer,” she repeated. “Huh. What did he do for work?”
“He was a doctor. He was training to be a cardiothoracic surgeon when he died.”
“What did he look like?”
Carver stopped and took out his phone to show her the photo of Isaac. She bent over the screen, squinting, tucking her hair behind her ear. After a moment, she said, “Jewish?”
“You can be a very unsettling person,” he told her.
Lillian rolled her eyes. “Carver, IlikeJewish people, you know that.”
“Yeah, he was Jewish.”
“I knew it. He’s better-looking than Doug. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Doug, but he doesn’t have a lot of charisma. This one, I can tell he has charisma. I see why your mom cheated.”
“Okay.” Carver tucked his phone back into his pocket. “Let’s not get into the sexual aspect, please.”
They started walking again, and Lillian mused, “Cardiothoracic surgeon in Manhattan? He’d have to be extremely intelligent.”
