She looked up at Avery from beneath wet, black eyelashes clinging together in thick spikes. Her face was completely open, unarmed. The thought of hurting her with the truth—that Avery had never made up her mind; Chiti had planned, and she had simply gone along with it—was unbearable.
“Have you?” Avery asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
Chiti let out a little sigh.
“No,” she said. “I’ll never change my mind about this.”
Chiti was like Nicky, undeniably maternal. But Avery wasn’t sure, she wasn’t sure of anything. Maybe only one of you had to know, she thought. Maybe it was okay not to be certain, if one of you was? Was it enough to do it for Chiti and not for the child? Would that make her a bad mother? She was already proving to be a bad wife. Surely she should do anything for Chiti, the only person she loved as much as her sisters?
“Okay,” she said.
Chiti’s eyes shot to hers.
“Okay, as in you’re ready?”
“Okay, as in I don’t think I’ll ever feel ready, but let’s do it. What do you think?”
Chiti held her with her steady, defenseless gaze.
“Darling, I’m almost forty. I want to have a baby and I want it to be yours. I’d have one today if we could.”
In spite of the doubt, in spite of the guilt, in spite of everything, Avery smiled.
“Maybe we should start practicing then.”
They walked together from the bathroom to the bedroom. Chiti unclasped her bun and let her hair fall in a swishing black wave over her shoulders. She laid herself on the bed, still swaddled in the towel, and looked up at Avery, tentatively, hopefully.
“We’ve not done this in a little while,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
Very gently, as though removing the dressing from a wound, Avery unwrapped her. The faint smell of soap wafted off her damp skin. Chiti put her hands to Avery’s chest and held her still above her.
“You want me?”
The question could have been seductive, but in Chiti’s mouth it was earnest. Avery had not initiated sex in so long, who could blame her for asking? Avery did want her, but what she felt most deeply was her own sense of being wanting, the shadow side of that word. As a wife, as a sister, as a woman, she was wanting.
In place of an answer, Avery laid her cheek on Chiti’s chest and nestled her hand between her legs. There was that familiar warmth. She stroked her in small, tight circles, first this way, then that, round and round, until she could feel the wetness come. She sank one finger inside of her, then two, filling Chiti up until there was no room for anything else. Chiti let out a single, fluttering sigh.
“Let’s make a baby,” said Avery, her face buried in Chiti’s neck, in a place she could not be seen. “Let me give you a baby.”
—
Afterward, Avery lay awake in the dark staring out the window. They tended to keep the curtains open, both preferring to wake early with the morning light. Just faintly, she could trace the outline of a half-moon hidden behind a fleece of clouds. Beside her, Avery could feel Chiti’s body relax into sleep, her breath hot and steady. Chiti had always slept the deep sleep of the innocent, sliding from wakefulness to slumber as easily as slipping her body from a dock into a lake. But Avery remained wide-eyed. The insomnia that had lifted soon after she met Chiti had returned. Back then, she used to dread the nights, but now she found the quiet, undisturbed hours a relief. It was better than dreaming that Nicky was alive, waking up each morning to remember again. She gazed out of the window at the dark flower beds and blooming magnolia tree silhouetted against a deep navy sky. She knew that part of her was still out there, standing alone at the bottom of the garden huffing smoke into the night air, out of sight and out of reach.
Chapter Four Lucky
Lucky arrived outside the house in Hampstead and wondered, not for the first time, how Avery had wound up living somewhere so fancy. She lived in a home ten times the size of their family apartment, and she only had to share it with Chiti. Maybe it was because she was the firstborn, so she remembered what it felt like to be alone before her domain was gradually infringed upon by each new addition to their family, but Avery had always seemed to crave more space than the rest of them. Well, thought Lucky as she lugged her duffel bags up the steep stone steps, she got it.
A ring of the golden doorbell, a rustle, a murmur, a yelp, and there was Chiti. She flung the door open wearing an embroidered apron, her long hair flying around her shoulders.
“Lucky’s here!” she cried, pulling her into an embrace.
“Hi, Chiti,” said Lucky softly into her hair.
She smelled of citrus and flowers and bread. Lucky had not known how much she had missed her, missed family, until this moment.
“Come in, come in.” Chiti ushered her into the hallway. “Now please tell me you have not become a vegetarian.”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” said Lucky, dragging her scuffed bags behind her. “If you tell the French you don’t eat meat, they just offer you chicken.”
“Good, because I’ve been marinating this lamb leg all day and it is predicted by me to be divine.”
Chiti gestured for her to leave her stuff at the foot of the stairs and beckoned Lucky into the kitchen. Everything about this house reflected good taste. The floor of the entranceway was covered in black and white tiles in an intricate herringbone pattern; the hallway walls were a bright blood red, a bold choice that would have looked out of place in any home but this. Lucky followed until she was expelled into the cool blue kitchen with its French doors flung open to the garden beyond, everything gleaming and beautiful and bright.
“Now,” said Chiti, wiping her hands on her apron. “Do you want some time to wash up and take a shower?”
Lucky shook her head. Now that she was in the warm presence of someone who actually knew her, she found herself unwilling to leave it so soon.
“Great. Then you can chop those cucumbers for the salad.”
Chiti was good at this, giving people small tasks to do so they felt included in the creation of something. It meant, no matter how minor your contribution, you could share some pride in the result. After Lucky washed her hands, Chiti handed her a knife and she began to chop. She glanced tentatively up at Chiti.
“Am I cutting these thin enough?”
Chiti peered over.
“That is exactly perfect,” she said.
