It did not occur to him that it might have an impact on him that he could not yet see. That faking contentment came at a cost, and waiting to leave her meant putting both their lives on hold.
—
On a crisp day in early April, Aspen suggested a trip to the theater with a couple of new friends. Jones wasn’t a theater person—hefound theater people either intimidatingly cool (floaty, posh, lots of jewelry) or enthusiastically uncool (loud, overfriendly, constantly changing hair color) and neither variety ever seemed to take to him. But lately Aspen was picking up new friends all the time and wanted to do different things, reallymake the most of London, and he saw this as a good sign. In the early stages of her grief, she’d not wanted to go anywhere at all.
It was a matinee, as they would both be working in the evening, something he was already dreading—work, like all elements of his life, had become increasingly stressful and unenjoyable.
The roads were thick with traffic on their walk from the tube, and the air smelled distinctively like London: warm car fumes, petrichor. Jones found himself longing for fresh air and a little space—London was losing its charm of late.
“So they won’t talk in the Shakespeare kind of way?” he said to Aspen.
Her red hair was piled on top of her head, exposing the sweeping line of her neck above her collarless jacket. She looked breathtakingly beautiful. Why did he notfeelit the way he should? It was as if she were a work of art he didn’t understand—the fault lay in him, he knew, but how could he correct it?
“They will,” Aspen said distractedly, searching through her handbag. “But they’ll be dressed in modern clothes.”
“Oh,” Jones said. That wasn’t going to help much.
“If you don’t want to come, I can just go with Marc and Stefano,” Aspen said.
“No, no,” Jones said hastily. “I’m looking forward to it.”
He’d just get himself a drink and zone out. In these sorts of situations Jones had an ability to think about absolutely nothing if he had to—a kind of meditative state, but without any of the resulting zen. More like…an off switch. He had been relying on it a lot lately.
They made their way through the crowds on the pavement with the ease of consummate Londoners—parting midconversation for two influencers with selfie sticks, turning sideways to make room for the vendor selling caramelized nuts from a cart. But one particular car horn cut through the usual hubbub: an Uber driver was hooting repeatedly.
“What’s…oh,” Aspen said, standing on tiptoes.
A crowd was gathering around a gray sedan in the bus lane, stuck behind a string of number 26 buses. Aspen slipped into the bustle so fast she lost Jones for a moment, and by the time he’d pushed through, she was on her knees beside the car’s open door, and there was blood all over her cream collarless jacket.
His heart stopped. A woman was screaming from inside the car, a guttural roar.
“She can’t have a baby here,” someone in the crowd said. “She’lldie.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aspen snapped, shrugging off her jacket, always keeping her grip on the woman’s leg, just switching hands. “I’m a midwife. She’s perfectly safe. She’s doing brilliantly. If you don’t have anything helpful to say, give me your coat.”
“My coat?” the man said, dumbfounded. “What for?”
“To catch the baby in,” Aspen said, with satisfaction.
The man backed out of the crowd. Aspen glanced around, searching for Jones. The woman was kneeling on all fours on the back seat, her long skirt covering her from the onlookers, her face invisible inside the vehicle.
“I’m here,” Jones said, pushing through to stand at Aspen’s side. “What can I do?”
He’d already taken off his coat and handed it to her.
“Can you go around and talk to her? Tell me if she seems woozy? She’s in transition. Her pulse is good, but I’ve not had time to check more than that.” She cursed. “I wish I had my bag with me. Gloria,you said, right? Gloria, you’re doinggreat. I’m just sending a colleague around to talk to you through the other door, OK? She’s got nobody with her but the Uber driver, who’s on the phone to the ambulance,” Aspen added in a mutter to Jones. “Try to act midwifely.”
Jones looked up toward the driver’s seat, where he saw the blank, panicked face of a young man in driving gloves with a phone pressed to his cheek. This man had gone through fearing for his upholstery and was now visibly concerned that someone might perish in his back seat.
“On it,” Jones said, already moving around the car.
The woman didn’t lift her head when he opened the other passenger door. She was half-hidden behind a tangle of sweat-soaked hair, and her shoulders shook with sobs.
“This is not how it was supposed to happen,” she said, voice hoarse. “There’s a birth plan in my bag. My sister’s meeting me at the hospital.”
Jones covered her hand with his on the car seat.
“Please,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
