Emily’s eyes dropped to her lap, her shoulders curving. A guilty posture, if Layla had ever seen one, aYes, Doctor, I’ve smoked a few cigarettesposture. If Layla had any hope of Michael or Griffin misunderstanding this mess, it evaporated at the sight of Emily now: Ithadbeen something she said.
Layla watched another fat tear drop onto Emily’s clasped hands.
“It’s just—the thing with you and Jamie,” she finally said, and Layla’s stomach turned over.
I didn’t say anything about Jamie, she wanted to scream, so certain she would swear on it.
“I know you didn’t say anything specific about it,” Emily continued, as though she could read Layla’s mind. “I know you wouldn’t. You never do.”
There was something in Emily’s voice for that last bit. Nothing quite like the ironic scorn of herI’m sure he’s thrilled, but nothing particularly complimentary, either.
Layla opened her mouth to reply, stalled between the familiar, bland withholding—It wasn’t any one specific thing—and an automatic, generic apology, but Emily spoke first.
“But remember when Rosie was asking you about your job?”
It took a second to register the question, since Layla was stillstung by thatYou never do, but once she did, fresh confusion rose within her.
Shedidremember Rosie asking about her job, because when Rosie asked about her job, Layla felt like someone had lifted a weighted, itchy shawl from her shoulders. It was soeasyto talk about her locum tenens work, so natural to sell it in the same way the recruiter had sold it to her. She remembered rattling off the names of all her placements so far, and playing up her enthusiasm for the next one—six weeks in Chico, California, a part of the country where she’d never spent any time.
“Yes,” Layla said, and it came out inflected. A question.
“She asked why you became a hospitalist.”
“Right,” Layla replied slowly, even more baffled now. Another thing that had been easy to talk about. She loved inpatient work, loved coordinating with other physicians and PAs and nurses and techs. She was proud of her specialty, for all it was lesser-known by the world outside of the medical profession.
“You said youweregoing to be a surgeon,” Emily said. “A general surgeon, you said.”
Layla rifled through her memories of this part of the conversation: only a couple of sips of champagne in, a curl of rich chocolate mousse on her spoon. She’d made a casual gesture with it as she answered Rosie’s question.The original plan was general surgery for residency, but I wanted to stay in Boston for med school, and I knew it would be easier to get an internal medicine residency there.
That was…a very normal answer. Also, a true one. What was the problem?
Bewilderment must’ve shown on her face, because Emily clucked her tongue, exasperated.
“You changed your residency plan forJamie,” she practically yelled. “So you could stay in Boston with Jamie!”
For what felt like a long moment, Layla couldn’t say a word. She simply stared. For the last couple of hours, ever since Griffin had come to her door, she had lived in anxious anticipation, readying herself for some huge, catastrophic—forgotten—revelation to come crashing down on her.
But this?
This wasnothing.
She was so relieved she almost laughed.
See?she wanted to shout to Griffin.I told you; Ididn’tsay anything!
Instead, she softened her voice again and said, “Em, no. It wasn’t like that at all; it was much more complicated than—”
But she didn’t bother finishing, because Emily stood from the bed suddenly, throwing herself into pacing back and forth in front of the two beds, wringing her hands, her eyes swollen and her cheeks splotchy, her neck flushed.
Any relief Layla felt about her own culpability for this dissipated in the face of Emily’s obvious distress. She had never seen this version of Emily: wild-eyed and restless and unpredictable. Like a downed wire on a rainy, windblown street, spraying off sparks intermittently.
“Emily,” she tried, still soft, but her former sister-in-law barely seemed to hear her.
“I’m moving toGermanyfor him,” Emily said, the wordGermanylike it was a big, shocking arc of those electric sparks, and this time, when she paced back Layla’s way, Layla stopped her—reaching out a hand and touching Emily’s forearm.
“Emily,” she said again, firmly now, a realWe’re going to talk about those cigarettestone. “What’s really going on here?”
For a beat, Emily simply looked down at Layla’s hand on her arm, her chin quivering, her shoulders slumping again.
