I closed doors in Nashville for a man who hurt someone I cared about.
I lied to Lucy for weeks while she recovered because I thought the outcome mattered more than the method.
I’m morally flexible. I always have been.
The difference now is what I want.
For most of my life, I wanted control.
Now I want her.
Lucy Vidal Bennett.
With her diner shifts and her garden dirt and the way she cooks cassoulet like it’s a declaration of love.
I want mornings with her.
Kitchens with her.
I want to spend the rest of my life asking what she wants and listening to the answer.
And I will use every tool at my disposal to keep her.
Lucy squeezes my hand. “I love you, Fox.”
My chest expands like it’s opening after a long winter.
31
BABY, BABY
LUCY
Isit down on the edge of the tub and look at the test.
Then, I look out the window, which shows a square of Nashville sky, the hard bright blue of a spring day.
I put my hand on my stomach.
It’s too early for anything to be there yet. I know that. It’s barely a fact, and still, my hand goes there the way it went there before, the same instinct, the same automatic gesture of a woman acknowledging something that is happening in the private room of herself.
I let out a long exhale.
And what I feel—and I take careful inventory, because I want to know, I want to be honest with myself about what this is—it’s not entirely fear. There issomefear, a responsible amount, the kind that saysyou know what this can cost,andyou remember what happened,andbe careful with this.
I acknowledge it. I give it its due.
But underneath it, larger and quieter and more certain:
Joy.
Real joy, the kind that doesn’t ask permission, the kind that arrives before you can decide how to feel, the kind your body knows before your brain has signed off on it.
I have to tell Fox.
But the fear, small as it may be, makes me not tell him.
I take two days to carry it by myself, to let it be mine before it becomes ours, to walk around with this private, enormous truth and get used to the weight of it.
