Max’s shoulder is touching mine. I can feel the heat of his skin through his dress shirt. “I know.”
I wipe at my eyes. “First I lost my son. Then I lost you. Now I stand to lose the embryos, and most likely my career.” I shake my head. “There won’t be anything left.”
“Zoe—”
“Take them,” I say. “Take the embryos. Just . . . promise me that it ends, here. That you’ll keep your lawyers from bringing Lucy into court.”
He bows his head. I don’t know if he’s praying, or crying, or both. “You have my word,” Max says.
“Okay.” I rub my hands over my knees and stand up. “Okay,” I repeat, and I walk briskly back to my car, even though I hear Max calling my name.
I ignore him. I get into the car and back out of the driveway and park near the mailbox. Even though I can’t see them from here, I imagine Max going into the foyer and telling Reid and Liddy. I picture them embracing.
All the stars fall out of the sky and rain on the roof of my car. It feels like a sword between my ribs, the loss of these children I will never know.
Vanessa is waiting for me, but I don’t drive home right away. Instead I take aimless left and right turns until I find myself in a field somewhere on the back side of T. F. Green Airport, beyond where the courier planes sleep at night. I lie on the hood of the car in the dark with my back against the sloped windshield and stare up as the jets scream down to the runway, so close it seems I can touch their bellies. The noise is absolutely deafening; I can’t hear myself think or cry, which is perfect.
So it makes no sense that I go into the trunk for my guitar. It’s the same one I used at the school to teach Lucy. I was going to let her borrow it, for a while.
I wonder what she said. If this allegation was the distance between who she was and who her parents needed her to be. If I had been completely off the mark and had interpreted her comments the wrong way. Maybe she wasn’t questioning her sexuality; maybe that was simply on my mind, because of the trial, and I painted my own thoughts over the blank canvas that Lucy actually was.
I take the guitar out of its case and crawl back onto the hood of the car. My fingers settle over the neck, stroking frets as lazily as they’d move across an old lover, and my right hand goes to strum. But there is something bright, fluttering, caught between the strings; I fish it out carefully so that it won’t fall into the sound hole.
It is the chord progression for “A Horse with No Name.” In my handwriting. I’d given it to Lucy the day we were learning the song.
But on the back, in green marker, five parallel lines have been drawn. A musical staff. On the top bar, two slanted lines break through, like train tracks.
I do not know when Lucy left me this message, but that’s what it is. Of all the musical symbols she might have drawn, Lucy’s chosen a caesura.
It’s a break in the music.
A brief, silent pause when time isn’t counted.
And at some point, when the conductor decides, the tune resumes.
MAX
In court the next morning, Angela Moretti’s face is pinched shut as tight as a lobster claw. “My client is withdrawing her objection, Your Honor,” she says. “We ask that the embryos not be destroyed per the contract and that they be released to Max Baxter’s custody.”
There is clapping in the courtroom. Ben grins at me. I feel like throwing up.
I’ve felt this way since last night. It started when Zoe bolted out of the driveway. And then when I walked back into the house, blinking because the lights were so suddenly bright, and told Liddy and Reid that Zoe was going to give in.
Reid lifted Liddy in his arms and danced her around the foyer. “Do you know what this means?” he asked, grinning. “Do you?”
And suddenly I did. It meant that I would have to sit by quietly and watch Liddy getting bigger and bigger with my baby inside her. I’d have to hang out in the waiting room while Reid took part in the delivery. I’d have to watch Reid and Liddy fall in love with their baby, while I was the third wheel.
But she looked so goddamned happy. She wasn’t pregnant, and there was already a glow to her cheeks and a shine to her hair. “This calls for something special,” Reid said, and he left me standing alone with her.
I took a step forward, and then another. “Is this really what you want?” I whispered. When Reid came back, we moved apart. “Congratulations, Sis,” I said, and I kissed her cheek.
He was holding an open bottle of champagne, still foaming, and two glasses. In his pocket he’d tucked a bottle of root beer. Clearly, that was for me. “Drink up,” he said to Liddy. “From here on in, it’s going to be soy shakes and folic acid.” He handed me my root beer and said, “I say we toast. To the beautiful mother to be!”
I drank to her. How couldn’t I?
“To Wade!” Reid said, hoisting his glass again. “To Lucy!”
Confused, I glanced at him. “Who’s Lucy?”
