“You didn’t hurt anyone,” Hope says. “It was not your fault that woman died.”
“I know,” Caro says, “but I made it harder for her.” She’s crying, the others realize. “I didn’t manage her pain well. She was thrashing around. I’m not sure what I did wrong, and that’s the thing that terrifies me. I keep going over and over andoverit, and I’m not sure what I could have donedifferently.” She clears her throat. “Hope, you weren’t the only one keeping a secret from the rest of us. I didn’t tell either of you mine.” She looks straight ahead at the screen. “Dan and I have been trying to have kids, and it’s not going to work. None of my egg retrievals were successful.” And now she closes her eyes. “It’s made me feel and do the worst things. I lied to Dan. I told him that the retrieval had worked.” Tears stream down her face. “How could I tell him that he’s not going to be a dad? He wasbornto be a dad. But then how could Ilieto him about it?”
“Oh, Caro,” Ash says. No one speaks for a minute. Caro wipes her eyes furiously with the back of one hand.
“I was going totry,” Caro said fiercely. “I started some drafts of letters on their postcards. To Dan. To our fertility specialist to tell her we were done.”
“Who mailed those, anyway?” Ash asks. “It had to be Ty, right?”
“But why would he want to bring people we lovedthere?” Caro asks. “It would make what he was trying to do so much harder. To gather people who might be additional suspects, maybe, if things went wrong?”
“Page mailed them,” Hope says. Caro and Ash tilt their heads in shock, mirror images. “I asked her to go into my trailer and mail one for me after I left. Apparently that gave her ideas, and she decided to mail yours, too. She didn’t love that I was doing all of this—thatwewere doing all of this—on our own. She felt like the people in our lives should know where we were.”
“Oh, Page,” Ash says. “She’s been through too much.”
“She made kind of a mess with them, though,” Hope says. “Do you still want to talk to her?”
“Of course,” Ash says, and Caro adds, “Absolutely.”
“Great,” Hope says. “I’ll text her and see if she can call us now.”
Once she’s finished sending the text, Hope looks up. Her eyes are bright, the line across her throat barely visible anymore. “So, Caro,” she says. “That’s all that’s holding you back? The eggs?”
“Hope,”Ash says.
“Well, they’re kind of an important part,” Caro says, trying to laugh.
Hope’s expression is serious now. “I’m sorry, Caro,” she says. “I’m bad at this. Really bad. And I know it won’t be the same as if your own retrievals had worked. But, and this is only if you and Dan want, I can help you. I froze atonof eggs in my twenties, and they’re apparently amazing. You’re welcome to help yourself if you want any of them.”
“Hope.”Caro looks stunned.
“I’m serious,” Hope says. “Think about it.” She’s trying to keep her tone breezy, but they can hear the emotion behind it. “It would be nice to know I helped you guys, since having kids might not be in the cards for me.”
“Don’t say that,” Ash says fiercely. “You never know.”
Hope shrugs. “I still don’t have anyone to raise a family with.”
“You have us,” Caro says.
Hope smiles at that. Her voice is raw when she asks, “What about you, Ash? How are things?”
“I’m okay,” Ash says. “Wade moved out last week.” They know this—they’ve been texting and sending messages on Marco Polo—but she feels like she should say it again. Because this is monumental. This is the end of an era that she thought would be heronlyera, in so many ways. “And I was keeping a secret from you guys the whole time, too. I never talked about how bad things with Wade were getting.”
“Oh, honey, you didn’t have to,” Hope says.
“We knew,” Caro agrees.
“One of my issues—and of course it’s not themainissue—with Wade is that he’s namedWade,” Hope says. “What is this, 1960? Is he a surfer?”
Ash is laughing through her tears.
“I mean, that’s more on his parents than it is on him,” Caro says.
“You’re right,” Hope says. “It’s a terrible name. And he’s terrible. So they must be terrible.”
“But seriously, Ash.” Caro’s dark eyes are warm with sympathy. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m doing terrible.” Ash squares her shoulders. Her summer frecklesare out in full force from the busy season at Three Sisters. “And I’m also okay.”
