“Sounds painful.”
“It is.”
Clara touched the other one, squeezed gently. “They’re incredible.” she said. She pulled away. “I can’t believe you’re a mom. A mom! I mean, I can’t even believe you’re here. It’s been so long.”
“We almost weren’t,” said Jess. “Here, I mean. The drive took forever.” She paused. “He’s old, Clara.”
“Nick.” Not a question.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“It didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t?”
“You’re going to like him. I promise.”
And Jess thought about Ferber, their landlord’s nephew, whom Clara had been with at the end of their final year at school. Clara regarded all men as curiosities, which made it hard to be selective. And it didn’t help that all of them wanted to sleep with her.
“I didn’t take it seriously at first, because he was so much older and I was trying to learn to be on my own,” Clara said. “Honestly, I thought I was finished with relationships, but he turned out to be persistent, and we kept ending up together. I couldn’t shake him. And then I realized I didn’t even want to.”
“You met him in a pub.”
Clara heard her derision and brushed it off. “It was a nice pub. It was his place. It was doing well for a while but it’s hard to make a go of it. The culture’s changing. It eats your life. He wasn’t sorry to let it go. He sold it and ended up with a profit, enough that we can start something here.”
“So you’re staying?” Jess hadn’t dared to entertain this possibility. She didn’t want to be disappointed, but she also didn’t know what it would mean to have Clara close again.
Clara said, “I want to be home. To make my own home. It’s time.”
“You want to have kids. He told me that, Nick,” Jess said, wanting to show she wasn’t as out of the loop as Clara thought.
“He wants it too. He has a son.”
“The same age as me.” Not an inessential detail.
“They’re estranged,” Clara explained. “He’s made mistakes. But who hasn’t? We like the idea of a fresh start, a new leaf.”
“It’s just hard, having a baby,” said Jess. “I really had no idea what I was in for.” She hadn’t properly admitted this to anybody, and she could say so now only because of the darkness.
But Clara wasn’t really listening. “I know,” she said, but she didn’t. Clara had no idea. “I can’t wait,” she said. “I want it all. I honestly can’t believe we did it.”
“Did what?”
“Found our people. These men. Our men.” It was so neat and tidy, and it had a kind of symmetry, the way Clara was putting it, but was it really the same? Clara was still flying by the seat of her pants, whereas Jess had been practical and wise, making all the sensible choices, and everything hadstillcome so close to disaster once Bella arrived. And she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Babies up the stakes—it’s unimaginable until you get there. Clara needed to be careful.
Jess said, “Nick seems nice.” And he did, but it was a weak baseline.
“He’s fifty-two years old, and more self-possessed than any guy I’ve been with before,” Clara said. “By then you’ve figured out what’s what, right? You’ve gone after all the things everybody says you need to go after and discovered it’s all a bit hollow.”
“It’s notallhollow.”
“I mean that by then a person knows where he’s going.”
“He’s been married before.”
“Just twice.”
Jess thought,Just?
