She started to make plans. Cherry couldn’tnotmake plans. Everything in her life was on a timeline. (Women are born with clocks in their hips and calendars in their bellies, and Cherry’s brain never stopped ticking.)
It was a shock—the first time she said out loud, “Maybe we should start thinking about getting pregnant,” and she realized that Tomhadn’tbeen making plans.
His face dropped. “I thought you didn’t want to.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure. I thought youdidwant to.”
“I wasn’t sure, either.”
“If we’re going to,” she said, “we should do it soon.”
“Yeah...”
The next time she brought it up, Tom’s face clouded over. He got quiet. His knee bounced.
Cherry pushed him to explain himself.
He said it had gotten harder to imagine making a choice that would change their lives that much. And harder to imagine taking on that much responsibility.
“So...” she said. “No kids?” She felt empty saying it. Like the horizon ahead of her was the flat line of an old TV turning off.
“I’m not saying that,” Tom said. “I just don’t want to mess up a decision this big.”
That wasexactlywhat he’d said when they’d found their house. They’d had six hours to make a bid, and Tom had been so angry about the deadline that he didn’t even want to talk about it. Hecouldn’t, really.
Cherry had been the one to pull the trigger. If she hadn’t, they’d never have gotten out of their apartment.
But she couldn’t justpull the triggeron a baby.
She wouldn’t.
There was another way to tell this story: that Cherry said no; then she said nothing; then she said she wanted to wait; and then, when Tom was at his most overwhelmed, she pushed it onto his plate.
Her timing could have been better.
Tom had only seemed interested in giant dogs—dogs who could guard the underworld or welcome the Darling kids home from Neverland.
“Every dog you show me looks like a mythical creature,” Cherry said.
They were sitting on the couch, and he was showing her a picture of a Saint Bernard. “I like big dogs,” he said. “They seem more alive to me.” He laughed. “Is that a terrible thing to say?”
Cherry laughed, too. And kissed his shoulder. “Maybe. Honny told me that when she had Maddox”—Honny’s second kid—“the doctor came in one night to check on the baby, and he was just standing there smiling down at him. And he told Honny that doctors like fat babiesbest, because they know they’re going to be okay. Like, they have a firmer hold on life.”
“There you go,” Tom said.
And Cherry didn’t say,“Let me give you a fat baby.”
Instead she called a NewfiePyr breeder in Missouri and put down an eight-hundred-dollar deposit.
All the way there, Tom worried that they’d made a mistake. And all the way home, heglowed. He was so happy.
He was pretty sure Stevie Nicks was the cutest dog he’d ever seen. And Cherry couldn’t argue with him—Stevie was very cute.
She was smart, too.
Tom had her house-trained in a few weeks. He taught her to ring a bell by the door. It was adorable.
He used to send Cherry photos of the puppy while she was at work. (Tom had quit his job by then.)
