All the air leaves her lungs. She hasn’t seen her father in person in years, but this, this is... this is like nothing she hasever known. A heat builds behind her eyes as she scans the photos on her account. Her family, the four of them, in front of theJohn Harvardstatue on what looks to be Ilena’s college graduation, her mom and dad wearing “Mr.” and “Mrs.” tiaras celebrating some milestone anniversary, and Ilena and her sister, hugging in wool hats and ice skates on Frog Pond in Boston Common.
There are also photos of Ilena and Mallory, of Aubrey, of Ilena and Felix, a few interspersed of her and Felix and James. In them, Felix looks exactly the way she feels: in love with someone who isn’t their spouse.
An ache deep in her chest makes it hard to breathe. The one person—the only person—she wants to share all of this with won’t understand why. She searches his name and finds him in the same place she found him twenty-one years ago: at MIT.
Jonah Gelding, associate professor, physics department.
“Excuse me!” Ilena drops her phone into her purse and waves both hands above her head. “Can someone get me out of this goddamn thing?”
Ilena catches her breath outside the physics building, searching for someone to let her in. She doesn’t have a student or faculty ID or an entry card, but she has the next best thing. She taps her stomach and waits. Once inside, thanks to a student more concerned with chivalry than security, she heads for the directory.
Jonah Gelding.
She traces a finger over the letters. A professor. All those nights sitting cross-legged on his bed, quizzing him before the MCATs, vivid in her mind. Maybe he had someone else here, listening to his dissertation.
She wanders down the maze of hallways until she reacheshis office door. Her hand rises to smooth her hair, thinking he hasn’t seen her with hair this long in years, which she immediately realizes is silly. She doesn’t know if this Jonah has ever seen her. She stretches her neck to get a glimpse of him.
She steadies her breath and knocks.
“Office hours are over. Ergo, I’m still here, so enter.” He closes the filing cabinet and faces her. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were a student.”
Her heartbeat pounds her temples, and she’s swept up by a profound sense of loss. “Not for a long time.”
“Wait, don’t tell me.” He presses a finger to his lips. “Mallory Latham!”
Ilena draws back. “Uh, no, it’s—”
“Ilena Cohen. Just having a goof.” He grins and that sense of loss ebbs, for just a moment, replaced with longing, desire. “I’ve been following you. Not literally. Online. Though technically that could still veer into stalker category.”
She hovers in the doorway.
“I assure you it doesn’t.” He rushes to his guest chair to remove stacks of books and papers and a second cardigan, as he’s already wearing one, completely the professor cliché. “Please, sit. Your first, right?”
She manages a nod.
“All over the news, you two, and AIM. I like to impress my friends by saying ‘I knew them when.’ After that first MIT-Harvard mixer, I knew you two would take over the world.”
“What happened?” The words tumble out, but what she really wants to ask is if they met here, why aren’t they together? Were they ever? And suddenly she fully understands what Aubrey’s been going through. The loss, the deep sense of loneliness, the need to know what’s right and what’s wrong and what role she played in all of it.
“Well,” he says, “you two took over the world, that’s what.”
His eyes meet hers and she can’t understand how they can see her now but not have seen everything she’s seen, not know everything she knows, the compass rose clock, and Plum Island, and the bottle of the year, and the day he asked her for a divorce and she said yes.
She’d called his bluff. And he’d let her.
The life drains out of her, and she presses her elbows to her thighs, cradling her head in her hands.
“Do you need an ambulance?” She feels him at her side. “Is it the baby? Are you—”
“I’m fine. She’s fine.”
“You’re having a girl? I always wanted a girl.”
He never told her that.
Ilena blinks away the moisture in her eyes, embarrassed in a way she hasn’t been around Jonah since she was eighteen years old. He smiles warily, nervously running his hand through his hair, still wavy but with less gray. Perhaps because he’s a professor and not a doctor. Perhaps because he’s not married to her.
He rests against his desk, eyeing Ilena carefully, as if he expects the baby to slide out onto the tile floor.
