“Do what?” I tremble and put my head down.
It’s suddenly quiet before she speaks again. “They haunted me every day, you know.”
She breathes in, the sound raspy from crying. She can’t speak. I am ready to let go. I am ready to hang up.
“Her eyes. She has her eyes.”
CHAPTER 55
WREN
1980s
The bathroom floor was cold as Wren pushed her legs out and sat. She wished she was in any bathroom but the one in her basement apartment, with the dirty tiles that, no matter how much she scrubbed, never looked clean. The scratched mirror with a crack that split diagonally. She couldn’t look in that mirror. She didn’t want to see her face like that anymore.
She didn’t want to live like that anymore.
This was her key to the exit door.
She clutched the plastic stick in her hands and rested her head on the vanity cabinet. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Stella’s face. The shock and happiness that filled every crevice.
“You don’t understand what this means to me . . . to us,” she had whispered through tears. And then, realizing what was going to have to happen—what she had asked of the young woman in front of her—she sobered.
“We tried everything. Everything.” Her eyes hooded over. “We aren’t like most married couples—we don’t look like most married couples. And with adoption”—she shook her head—“with adoption, if you aren’t anyone’s first choice, then you are no one’s choice.”
They decided to wait until after Christmas. As if it were inappropriate to proceed during the holidays. As if it really mattered when it happened.
Wren followed their precise instructions two days after New Year’s. She knocked on the hotel room door at the requested time. It was a nice hotel, nicer than any she had ever stayed in before. Stella answered. She could barely look her in the face.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
She could see him in the corner, sitting in an armchair.
“Patrick? Did you want me to—”
“I think it’s best.” His voice suddenly shot out, curt. He turned his head and looked out the window. “I think it’s best if you leave the room.”
“Yes,” Stella replied.
She stuck her hand out. A white envelope. “This is the first half. As we agreed.” She brushed past Wren, their shoulders bouncing off each other.
She paused, not turning around. “When I saw you out the window of the coffee shop . . .” She began to close the door. “I saw what our child could look like.” Her voice broke as it shut.
Wren kept her head turned, afraid to look forward.
He was waiting for her on the bed.
“You’re one of my students,” he said.
She said nothing.
“You aren’t really a student . . . are you.”
“I want to help you,” she said, meeting his eyes.
He took his jacket off and laid it carefully next to him. “I love my wife very much. I’d do anything for my wife. But this—”
“This is what she wants.”
She wasn’t sure where her voice came from. Forceful. Insistent.
As she lay there and she felt him flood her insides, she imagined Stella outside the room, her hand placed on the door as if she could still be the one, still be the woman who could carry his child.
They repeated this once more that week. She assured them her cycle was never off.
And now here she was, holding the answer for all of them. She stood up and flipped the stick over. Two pink lines boasted their darkness at her.
CHAPTER 56
ISLA
The Night of the Interview
It’s not what people forget. It’s what they pretend to forget.
Of course, she remembers everything.
I told you she is good at it. She is good at convincing us all.
