Handle with Care

Hardball: one of the stages of sugar syrup in the preparation of candy, which occurs at 250 to 266 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nougat, marshmallows, rock candy, gummies-these are all cooked to the hardball stage, when the sugar concentration is very high and syrup will form thick ropes when dripped from a spoon. (Be careful. Sugar burns long after it comes into contact with your skin; it’s easy to forget that something so sweet can leave a scar.) To test your solution, drop a bit of it into cold water. It’s ready if it forms a hard ball that doesn’t flatten when fished out but whose shape can still be changed with significant pressure.

Which, of course, leads to the more colloquial definition of hardball: ruthless, aggressive, competitive behavior; the kind that’s designed to mold someone else’s thinking to match your own.

2½ cups sugar

½ cup light corn syrup

½ cup water

Pinch of salt

3 large egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup chopped pecans

½ cup dried cherries, blueberries, or cranberries

I’ve always found it interesting that a candy with a name such as Divinity requires so much brutality to create.

In a 2-quart saucepan, mix the sugar, corn syrup, water, and salt. Using a candy thermometer, heat to the hardball stage, stirring only until the sugar is dissolved. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. When the syrup reaches 260 degrees F, add it gradually to the egg whites while beating at high speed in a mixer. Continue to beat until the candy takes shape-about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla, nuts, and dried fruit. Quickly drop the candy from a teaspoon onto waxed paper, finishing each piece with a swirl, and let it cool to room temperature.

Hardball, beating, beating again. Maybe this candy should have been called Submission.

Charlotte

January 2008

It had started as a stain in the outline of a stingray on the ceiling in the dining room-a watermark, an indication that there was something wrong with the pipes in the upstairs bathroom. But the watermark spread, until it no longer looked like a stingray but a whole tide, and half the ceiling seemed to have been steeped in tea leaves. The plumber fussed around under the sinks and beneath the front panel of the tub for about an hour before he reappeared in the kitchen, where I was boiling down spaghetti sauce. “Acid,” he announced.

“No…just marinara.”

“In the pipes,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve been flushing down there, but it’s eroding them.”

“The only stuff we’ve been flushing is what everyone else flushes. It’s not like the girls are doing chemistry experiments in the shower.”

The plumber shrugged. “I can replace the pipes, but unless you fix the problem, it’s just going to happen again.”

It was costing me $350 just for this visit, by my calculation-we couldn’t afford it, much less a second visit. “Fine.”

It would be another thirty dollars for paint to cover the ceiling, and that was if we did it ourselves. And yet here we were eating pasta for the third time this week, because it was cheaper than meat, because you had needed new shoes, because we were effectively broke.

It was nearly six o’clock-the time Sean usually walked through the door. It had been almost three months since his disastrous deposition, not that you would have known it had ever happened, from our conver sations. We talked about what the police chief had said to a local newspaper about an act of vandalism at the high school, about whether Sean should take the detectives’ exam. We talked about Amelia, who had yesterday gone on a word strike and insisted on pantomiming. We talked about how you had walked all the way around the block today without me having to run back and get your chair because your legs were giving out.

We did not talk about this lawsuit.

I had grown up in a family where, if you didn’t discuss a crisis, it didn’t exist. My mother had breast cancer for months before I realized it, and by then it was too late. My father lost three jobs during my childhood, but it wasn’t a topic of conversation-one day he’d just put on a suit again and head to a new office, as if there had been no interruption in the routine. The only place we were supposed to turn with our fears and worries was the confessional; the only comfort we needed was from God.

I had sworn that, when I had my own family, all the cards would be on the table. We wouldn’t have hidden agendas and secrets and rose-colored glasses that kept us from seeing all the knots and snarls of an ordinary family’s affairs. I had forgotten one critical element, though: people who didn’t talk about their problems got to pretend they didn’t have any. People who discussed what was wrong, on the other hand, fought and ached and felt miserable.

“Girls,” I shouted. “Dinner!”

I heard the distant thunder of both your feet moving down the hallway upstairs. You were tentative-one foot on a step joined by another-whereas Amelia nearly skidded into the kitchen. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “Spaghetti again?”

To be fair, it wasn’t like I’d just opened a box of Prince. I’d made the dough, rolled it, cut it into strands. “No, this time it’s fettuccine,” I said, unfazed. “You can set the table.”

Amelia stuck her head in the fridge. “News flash, we don’t have any juice.”

“We’re drinking water this week. It’s better for us.”

“And conveniently cheaper. Tell you what. Take twenty bucks out of my college fund and splurge on chicken cutlets.”

“Hmm, what is that sound?” I said, looking around with my brow furrowed. “Oh, right. The sound of me not laughing.”

At that, Amelia cracked a smile. “Tomorrow, we’d better get some protein.”

“Remind me to buy a little tofu.”

“Gross.” She set a stack of dishes on the table. “Remind me to kill myself before dinner then.”

You came into the kitchen and scooted into your high chair. We didn’t call it a high chair-you were nearly six, and you were quick to point out that you were a big girl-but you couldn’t reach the table without some sort of booster; you were just too tiny. “To cook a billion pounds of pasta, you’d need enough water to fill up seventy-five thousand swimming pools,” you said.

Amelia slouched into the chair beside you. “To eat a billion pounds of pasta, you only have to be born into the O’Keefe family.”

“Maybe if you all keep complaining, I’ll make something gourmet tomorrow night…like squid. Or haggis. Or calves’ brains. That’s protein, Amelia-”

“A long time ago there was this guy, Sawney Beane, in Scotland, who ate people,” you said. “Like, a thousand of them.”

“Well, luckily, we’re not that desperate.”

“But if we were,” you said, your eyes lighting up, “I’d be boneless.”

“Okay, enough.” I dumped a serving of steaming pasta on your plate. “Bon appétit.”

I glanced up at the clock; it was 6:10. “What about Dad?” Amelia said, reading my thoughts.

“We’ll wait for him. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”

But five minutes later, Sean had not arrived. You were fidgeting in your seat, and Amelia was picking at the congealed mass of pasta on her plate. “The only thing more disgusting than pasta is ice-cold pasta,” she muttered.

“Eat,” I said, and you and your sister dove into your dinners like hawks.

I stared down at my meal, not hungry anymore. After a few minutes, you girls carried your plates to the sink. The plumber came back downstairs to say he was finished and left me a bill on the kitchen counter. The phone rang twice and was picked up by one of you.

At seven thirty, I called Sean’s cell, and it immediately rolled over into the voice mail.

At eight, I scraped the cold contents of my plate into the trash.

At eight thirty, I tucked you into bed.

At eight forty-five, I called the nonemergency line for dispatch. “This is Charlotte O’Keefe,” I said. “Do you know if Sean took on another shift tonight?”

“He left around five forty-five,” the dispatcher said.

“Oh, right, of course,” I replied lightly, as if I’d known that all along, because I didn’t want her to think I was the kind of wife who had no idea where her husband might be.

At 11:06, I was sitting in the dark on a couch in the family room, wondering if it could still arguably be called a family room if one’s family was splintering apart, when the front door of the house opened gingerly. Sean tiptoed into the hallway, and I switched on the lamp beside me. “Wow,” I said. “Traffic must have been a bitch.”

He froze. “You’re up.”

“We waited for you for dinner. Your plate’s still on the table, if you’re in the mood for fossilized fettuccine.”

“I went to O’Boys after my shift with some of the guys. I was going to call…”

I finished his sentence for him. “But you didn’t want to talk to me.”

He came closer, then, so that I could smell his aftershave. Licorice, and the faintest bit of smoke. You could blindfold me and I would be able to pick Sean out from a crowd with my other senses. But identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through-the man you fell in love with years ago might look the same and speak the same and smell the same yet be completely different.

I supposed Sean could say that about me, too.

He sat down on a chair across from me. “What do you want me to tell you, Charlotte? You want me to lie and say I look forward to coming home at night?”

“No.” I swallowed. “I want…I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

“Then stop,” he said quietly. “Just walk away from what you’ve started.”

Choices are funny things-ask a native tribe that’s eaten grubs and roots forever if they’re unhappy, and they’ll shrug. But give them filet mignon and truffle sauce and then ask them to go back to living off the land, and they will always be thinking of that gourmet meal. If you don’t know there’s an alternative, you can’t miss it. Marin Gates had offered me a brass ring that I never, in my wildest dreams, would have considered-but now that she had, how could I not try to grab it? With every future break, with every dollar we moved further into debt, I would be thinking about how I should have reached out.

Sean shook his head. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’m thinking of Willow’s future…”

“Well, I’m thinking about here and now. She doesn’t give a shit about money. She cares about whether her parents love her. But that’s not the message she’s going to hear when you get up in that damn courtroom.”

“Then you tell me, Sean, what’s the answer? Are we just supposed to sit around and hope Willow stops breaking? Or that you-” I broke off abruptly.

“That I what? Get a better job? Win the fucking lottery? Why don’t you just say it, Charlotte? You think I can’t support all of you.”

“I never said that-”

“You didn’t have to. It came through loud and clear,” he said. “You know, you used to say that you felt like I’d rescued you and Amelia. But I guess in the long run, I let you down.”

“This isn’t about you. It’s about our family.”

“Which you’re ripping apart. My God, Charlotte, what do you think people see when they look at you now?”

“A mother,” I said.

“A martyr,” Sean corrected. “No one’s ever as good as you when it comes to taking care of Willow. You don’t trust anyone else to get it right. Don’t you see how fucked up that is?”

I felt a tightening at the back of my throat. “Well, excuse me for not being perfect.”

“No,” Sean said. “You just expect that of the rest of us.” With a sigh, he walked to the fireplace hearth, where a pillow and a quilt were neatly stacked. “If you don’t mind, you’re sitting on my bed.”

I managed to hold in my sob until I was upstairs. I lay down on Sean’s side of the mattress, trying to find the spot where he used to sleep. I turned my face in to the pillow, which still smelled of his shampoo. Although I had changed the sheets since he’d moved to the couch, I hadn’t washed his pillowcase, on purpose-and now I wondered why. So I could pretend he was still here? So that I’d have something of him if he never came back?

On our wedding day, Sean told me that he’d step in front of a bullet to save me. I knew he’d wanted me to confess the same thing, but I couldn’t. Amelia needed me to take care of her. On the other hand, if that bullet had been heading straight for Amelia, I wouldn’t have thought twice before diving forward.

Did that make me a very good mother, or a very bad wife?

But this wasn’t a bullet, and it hadn’t been fired at us. It was an on-coming train, and the cost of saving my daughter was throwing myself onto the tracks. There was only one catch: my best friend was tied to me.

It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else’s. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party-a third party who knew you, who trusted you implicitly.

It had seemed so simple: a lawsuit that acknowledged how hard it was for us, and that would make things so much better. But in my haste to see the silver lining, I missed the storm clouds: the fact that accusing Piper and convincing Sean would sever those relationships. And now, it was too late. Even if I called Marin and told her to stop everything, it wouldn’t make Piper forgive me. It wouldn’t keep Sean from judging me.

You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it’s a catch-22: all of those things you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you’ve lost yourself.

For a moment I imagined tiptoeing down the stairs and kneeling in front of Sean and telling him I was sorry. I imagined asking him to start over. Then I looked up to find that the door had opened a crack, and your little white triangle of a face was poking through. “Mommy,” you said, coming closer with your awkward gait and climbing onto the bed, “did you have a nightmare?”

Your body tucked into mine, back to front. “Yeah, Wills. I did.”

“Do you need me to stay here with you?”

I wrapped my arms around you, a parenthesis. “Forever,” I said.

Christmas had been too warm this year, green instead of white, Mother Nature’s confirmation that life wasn’t as it should have been. After two weeks of temperatures in the forties, winter returned with a vengeance. That night, snow fell. We woke up with our throats dry and the heat humming from the radiators. Outside, the air smelled of chimney smoke.

Sean was already gone by the time I came downstairs at seven. He’d left behind a neatly folded stack of bedding in the laundry room and an empty coffee mug in the sink. You came downstairs rubbing your eyes. “My feet are cold,” you said.

“Then put on slippers. Where’s Amelia?”

“Still asleep.”

It was Saturday; there was no reason to wake her up early. I watched you rubbing your hip, probably not even aware of what you were doing. You needed exercise to strengthen the muscles around your pelvis, although it still hurt you to do it after your femur fractures. “Tell you what. If you go get the paper, we can make waffles for breakfast.”

I watched your mind work through the calculations-the mailbox was a quarter of a mile down the driveway; it was freezing out. “With ice cream?”

“Strawberries,” I bargained.

“Okay.”

You went into the mudroom to pull your coat over your pajamas, and I helped you strap on your braces before stuffing your feet into low boots that could accommodate them. “Be careful on the driveway.” You zipped up your jacket. “Willow? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, be careful,” you parroted, and you opened up the front door and headed outside.

I stood at the doorway and watched for a few moments, until you turned around on the driveway, planted your hands on your hips, and said, “I’m not going to fall! Stop watching!”

So I stepped back and closed the door-but through the window, I tracked you for a few more moments anyway. In the kitchen, I began to pull ingredients from the fridge and I plugged in the waffle iron. I took out the plastic batter bowl you liked so much, because it was light enough for you to lift and pour.

I headed to the front porch again, to wait for you. But when I stepped outside, you were gone. I had a clear view from the driveway to the mailbox, and you were nowhere in it. Frantic, I stuffed my feet into a pair of boots and ran down the driveway. About halfway, I saw footsteps pressed into the snow that still blanketed the stiff grass, heading toward the skating pond.

“Willow!” I yelled. “Willow!”

Goddamn Sean, for not backing a load of fill into the pond like I’d asked him to.

Suddenly, there you were, at the edge of the reeds that fringed the thin ice.

You had one foot balanced on the surface. “Willow,” I said softly, so that I didn’t startle you, but when you turned around, your boot slipped and you pitched forward with your hands outstretched to break your fall.

I had seen it coming. I had seen it, and so I was already moving as you turned to face me. I stepped onto ice, which was still too new and thin to support any weight, and felt the lettuce edge shatter underneath my foot. My boot filled with frigid water, but I was able to wrap my arms around you, to keep you from falling.

I was soaked to midthigh, and your body was slung over my forearm like a sack of cake flour, the breath knocked out of you. I staggered backward, pulling my foot from the muck and the weeds that lined the bottom of the pond, and sat down hard to cushion your fall. “Are you all right?” I gasped. “Is anything broken?”

You did a quick internal assessment and shook your head.

“What were you thinking? You know better-”

“Amelia gets to walk on the ice,” you said, your voice small.

“First, you’re not Amelia. And second, this ice isn’t strong enough.”

You twisted around. “Like me.”

I turned you gently, so that you were sitting on my lap, with your legs on either side of mine. A spider, that’s what kids called it when they did it on swing sets, although you’d never been allowed. Too easily, a leg could snag on a chain, or get twisted with a friend’s limbs.

“It’s not like you,” I said firmly. “Willow, you are the strongest person I know.”

“But you still wish I didn’t have to use a wheelchair. Or go to the hospital all the time.”

Sean had insisted that you were well aware of what was going on around you; I had naïvely assumed that, after the talk we’d had months ago, if you did have doubts about my words, they’d be assuaged by my actions. But I had been worried about the things you’d hear me say-not the messages you might still read between the lines. “Remember how I told you that I’d have to say things that I don’t mean? That’s all it is, Willow.” I hesitated. “Imagine you’re at school and your friend asks you if you like her sneakers, and you don’t-you think they’re incredibly ugly. You wouldn’t tell her you hate them, would you? Because it would make her sad.”

“That’s lying.”

“I know. And it’s wrong, most of the time, unless you’re trying not to hurt someone’s feelings.”

You stared at me. “But you’re hurting my feelings.”

The knife in my stomach twisted. “I don’t mean to.”

“So,” you said, thinking hard, “it’s like when Amelia plays Opposite Day?”

Amelia had invented that when she was about your age. Confrontational even then, she’d refuse to do her homework and then burst out laughing when we yelled at her, saying it was Opposite Day and she’d already finished it all. Or she’d terrorize you, calling you Glass Ass, and when you came to us in tears, Amelia would insist that on Opposite Day, this meant you were a princess. I’d never been able to tell if Amelia had invented Opposite Day because she was imaginative or because she was subversive.

But maybe this was a way to unravel the tangled thicket that was wrongful birth, to spin a lie, like Rumpelstiltskin, into something golden. “Exactly,” I said. “Just like Opposite Day.”

You smiled at me so sweetly that I could feel the frost melting around us. “Okay then,” you said. “I wish you’d never been born, too.”

When Sean and I were first dating, I would leave treats in his mailbox. Sugar cookies cut in the shapes of his initials, a roll of babka, sticky buns with candied pecans, almond roca. I took literally the term sweet heart. I imagined him reaching in for his bills and catalogs and coming up instead with a jelly roll, a honey cake, a building block of fudge. “Will you still love me when I put on thirty pounds?” Sean would ask, and I’d laugh at him. “What makes you think I love you?” I’d say.

I did, of course. But it was always easier for me to show love than to say it. The word reminded me of pralines: small, precious, almost unbearably sweet. I would light up in his presence; I felt like a sun in the constellation of his embrace. But trying to put what I felt for him into words diminished it somehow, like pinning a butterfly under glass, or videotaping a comet. Each night he’d wrap his arms around me and tip into my ear that sentence, bubbles that burst on contact: I love you. And then he’d wait. He’d wait, and even though I knew he did not want to pressure me before I was ready to make my confession, I would feel in that silence his disappointment.

One day, when I came out of work still dusting flour off my hands so that I could rush to pick up Amelia from school, I found a small index card wedged under my windshield wiper. I LOVE YOU, it read.

I tucked it into my glove compartment, and that afternoon, I made truffles and left them in Sean’s mailbox.

The next day, when I left work, there was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper taped on my windshield: I LOVE YOU.

I called Sean. “I’m going to win,” I said.

“I think we both are,” he replied.

I’d baked a lavender panna cotta and left it on top of his MasterCard bill.

He countered with poster board. You could read the message all the way from the front window of the restaurant, which made me the object of plenty of ribbing from the maître d’ and the head chef.

“What’s your problem?” Piper said to me. “Just tell him how you feel, already.” But Piper didn’t understand, and I couldn’t explain to her. When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation. Those three words were what everyone used; simple syllables couldn’t contain something as rare as what I felt for Sean. I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted. So I cooked tiramisu and left it wedged between a package from Amazon.com and a flyer for a painting company.

This time, Sean phoned me. “Opening someone else’s mailbox is a felony, you know,” he said.

“So arrest me,” I answered.

That day, I left work-trailed by the rest of the staff, who had come to view our courtship as a spectator sport-and found my car completely wrapped in butcher paper. Painted in letters as tall as me was Sean’s message: I’M ON A DIET.

Sure enough, I baked him poppy scones, and they were still in the mailbox the next day when I went to leave off ginger cookies. And the next day, with those two items untouched, I couldn’t even fit the strawberry tart. I carried it up to his house instead, and rang the doorbell. His blond hair was backlit; his white tee stretched across his chest. “How come you’re not eating what I made for you?” I asked.

He gave me a lazy smile. “How come you won’t say it back?”

“Can’t you tell?”

Sean crossed his arms. “Tell what?”

“That I love you?”

He opened the screen door, grabbed me, and kissed me hard. “It’s about time,” he said, with a grin. “I’m freaking starving.”

You and I didn’t just cook waffles that morning. We made cinnamon bread and oatmeal cookies and blondies. I let you lick the spoon, the spatula, the bowl. Around eleven, Amelia loped into the kitchen, freshly showered. “What army’s coming for lunch?” she asked, but then she took a corn muffin, broke it open, and breathed in the steam. “Can I help?”

We made a raspberry velvet cake and a plum tarte Tatin, apple turnovers and pinwheel cookies and macaroons. We baked until there was hardly anything left in my pantry, until I had forgotten what you’d said to me at the pond, until we had run out of brown sugar, until we did not notice your father being gone the whole day, until we could not eat another bite.

“Now what?” Amelia asked, when every inch of counter space was covered with something we’d made.

It had been so long that, once I started, I hadn’t been able to stop. And I suppose a part of me still functioned cooking for a restaurant crowd and not an individual family-much less one that was absent one member. “We could give it to our neighbors,” you suggested.

“No way,” Amelia said. “Let them buy it.”

“We’re not running a bakery,” I pointed out.

“Why not? It could be like a vegetable stand, at the end of the driveway. Willow and me, we can make a big sign that says Sweets by Charlotte, and you can wrap everything in Saran Wrap…”

“We could cover up a shoe box,” you said, “and put a slit in the top for the money, and charge ten dollars each.”

“Ten dollars?” Amelia said. “Try a buck, peabrain.”

“Mom! She called me peabrain…”

I was imagining whitewashed walls, a glass display case, wrought-iron tables with marble tops. I was picturing rows of pistachio muffins in an industrial stove, meringues that melted in your mouth, the angel-wing ring of the cash register. “Syllabub,” I interrupted, and both you girls turned to me. “That’s what the name on the sign should be.”

That night, by the time Sean came home, I was fast asleep, and he was gone by the time I woke up, too. The only way I even knew he’d stopped in was a used mug sitting lonely in the bowl of the sink.

My stomach knotted; I pretended it was hunger, not regret. In the kitchen I made a piece of toast and took out a crisp white coffee filter for the machine.

When Sean and I were first married, he would make coffee for me every morning. He didn’t drink coffee himself, but he was up early for his shift and would program the Krups machine so that a fresh pot would be waiting by the time I got out of the shower. I would come downstairs to find a mug waiting, with two spoonfuls of sugar already inside. Sometimes, it would be sitting on a note: SEE YOU LATER or I MISS YOU ALREADY.

This morning the kitchen was cold, the coffeemaker silent and empty.

I measured out the water and the coffee grounds, pushed a button so that the liquid would stream into the carafe. I reached for a mug in the cabinet and then, on second thought, took the one Sean had used out of the sink. I rinsed it clean and poured myself a cup of coffee. It tasted too strong, bitter. I wondered if Sean’s lips had touched the mug in the same place as mine.

I had always been suspicious of women who described the dissolution of their marriages as something that happened overnight. How could you not know? I’d thought. How could you miss all those signs? Well, let me tell you how: you were so busy putting out a fire directly in front of you that you were completely oblivious to the inferno raging at your back. I could not remember the last time Sean and I had laughed about something together. I could not remember the last time I’d gone and kissed him, just because. I had been so focused on protecting you that I’d left myself completely vulnerable.

Sometimes you and Amelia played board games, and when you rolled the dice, they got stuck in a crease of the couch or rolled onto the floor. Do-over, you’d say, and it was that easy to get a second chance. That’s what I wanted now: a do-over. Except, if I was being honest with myself, I wouldn’t know where to start.

I dumped the coffee into the sink and watched it swirl down the drain.

I didn’t need caffeine. And I didn’t need someone to make me coffee in the morning, either. Leaving the kitchen, I grabbed a jacket (Sean’s, it smelled like him) and headed outside to get the newspaper.

The green box that held the local paper was empty; Sean must have taken it on the way out to wherever he’d gone. Frustrated, I turned and noticed the wheelbarrow full of baked goods that we had set out yesterday at the end of the driveway.

The wheelbarrow was empty, except for the shoe box Amelia had fashioned into an honor-system cash register, and the cardboard sign you’d painted with glitter to read SYLLABUB.

I grabbed the shoe box and ran back to the house, into your bedroom. “Girls,” I said, “look!”

You both rolled over, still cocooned in sleep. “God,” Amelia groaned, glancing at the clock.

I sat down on your bed and opened the shoe box. “Where did you get all the money?” you asked, and that was enough to make Amelia sit up in bed.

“What money?” she asked.

“From the stuff we baked,” I said.

“Give me that.” Amelia grabbed the box and started organizing the money into piles. There were bills and coins, in all denominations. “There’s like a hundred dollars here!”

You crawled out of your bed and onto Amelia’s. “We’re rich,” you said, and you took a fistful of dollars and tossed them overhead.

“What are we going to do with it?” Amelia asked.

“I think we should buy a monkey,” you said.

“Monkeys cost way more than a hundred dollars,” Amelia scoffed. “I think we should get a TV for our bedroom.”

And I thought we should pay down the debt on our MasterCard, but I doubted you girls would agree.

“We already have a TV downstairs,” you said.

“Well, we don’t need a stupid monkey!”

“Girls,” I interrupted. “There’s only one way to get what we all want. We bake enough to make more money.” I looked at each of you in turn. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

You and Amelia rushed to the adjacent bathroom, and then I heard running water and the methodic scrub of your toothbrushes. I pulled up the sheets on your bed and tucked in the blankets. On Amelia’s bed, I did the same thing, but this time when I smoothed the quilt under the mattress, my fingers swept free dozens of candy wrappers, the plastic bag from a loaf of bread, crumbling packets of graham crackers. Teenagers, I thought, sweeping them all into the trash can.

In the bathroom, I could hear you two arguing about who had left the cap off the toothpaste. I reached into the shoe box and tossed another handful of cash into the air, listening instead to the hail of silver coins, the song of possibility.

Sean

I probably shouldn’t have taken the newspaper. That’s what I thought to myself as I sat in a booth at a diner two towns over from Bankton, nursing my glass of orange juice and waiting for the short-order cook to fry up my eggs. After all, it was the first thing Charlotte did every morning: sip a cup of coffee as she perused the headlines. Sometimes she’d even read the letters to the editor out loud, especially the ones that sounded as if they’d been written by nutcases one step away from a Ruby Ridge standoff. When I sneaked out at six a.m., pausing before I grabbed the paper, I realized that this was going to piss her off. And, okay, maybe that was enough incentive for me to drive off with it. But now that I’d unfolded it and scanned the front page, I categorically knew I should have left it where it was, in its box.

Because right there, above the fold, was a story about me and my family.

LOCAL COP FILES WRONGFUL BIRTH SUIT

Willow O’Keefe is-in many ways-a normal five-year-old girl. She goes to full-day kindergarten at Bankton Elementary School, where she studies reading and math and music. She plays with her peers during recess. She buys lunch in the school cafeteria. But in one respect, Willow is not like other five-year-olds. Sometimes Willow uses a wheelchair, sometimes a walker, and sometimes, leg braces. That’s because, during the course of her short life, she’s suffered over sixty-two broken bones, due to a disease called osteogenesis imperfecta, a condition that Willow’s had since birth and that-her parents allege-should have been diagnosed by the obstetrician early enough to allow for an abortion. Although the O’Keefes love their daughter dearly, her medical bills have spiraled past routine insurance coverage, and now her parents-Lieutenant Sean O’Keefe of the Bankton Police Department and Charlotte O’Keefe-are among a growing number of patients suing their obstetrician-gynecologists for not providing them with information about fetal abnormalities that, they say, would have led them to terminate the pregnancies.

More than half of the states in America recognize wrongful birth lawsuits, and many of these cases settle out of court for less money than a jury might award because medical malpractice insurance companies don’t want a child like Willow presented to a jury. But lawsuits like this often open a can of worms in terms of ethical complications: what do such lawsuits suggest about the value society places on disabled people? Who can judge parents, who see their disabled children suffering daily? Who-if anyone-has the right to choose what sorts of disabilities should determine abortion? And what is the effect on a child like Willow, who is old enough to hear her parents’ testimony?

Lou St. Pierre, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Association of People with Disabilities, says he understands why parents like the O’Keefes choose to file a lawsuit. “It can help with the incredible financial burden that a severely disabled child puts on a family,” says St. Pierre, who was born with spina bifida and is wheelchair-bound. “But the caveat is the message that’s being sent to that child: that disabled people can’t live rich, full lives; that if you aren’t perfect, you shouldn’t be here.”

Most recently, in 2006, a $3.2 million settlement in a 2004 wrongful birth case was overturned by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

There was even a picture of the four of us-one that had been taken for a Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Cop circular put out by the Bankton PD two years ago. Amelia didn’t have her braces yet.

Your arm was in a cast.

I threw the paper across the booth so that it landed in the far seat. Fucking journalists. What did they do, wait at the courthouse to see what was coming up on the docket? Anyone who read this article-and who wouldn’t? It was the local paper-would think I was in this for the cash.

I wasn’t, and just to prove it, I took out my wallet and left twenty bucks on the table for a two-dollar meal I hadn’t even been served.

Fifteen minutes later, after a quick stop at the precinct to look up Marin Gates’s address, I showed up at her house. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. There were gnome garden statues, and the mailbox was a pig whose snout opened. The clapboards were painted purple. It looked like the kind of place Hansel and Gretel would live, not a no-nonsense attorney.

When I rang the bell, Marin answered the door. She was wearing a Beatles Revolver T-shirt and sweatpants that said UNH down the leg. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“You should have called.” She looked around, trying to find Charlotte.

“I’m here alone,” I said.

Marin folded her arms across her chest. “I’m unlisted. How did you find out where I live?”

I shrugged. “I’m a cop.”

“That’s an invasion of privacy-”

“Good. You can sue me when you finish suing Piper Reece.” I held up the morning paper. “Did you read this crap?”

“Yes. There’s very little we can do about the press, except keep saying ‘No comment.’”

“I’m out,” I said.

“Sorry?”

“I quit. I want out of this lawsuit.” Simply saying those words made me feel like I’d passed the weight of the world to some other sucker. “I’ll sign anything you want me to, I just want to make it official.”

Marin hesitated. “Come inside so we can talk,” she said.

If I’d been surprised by the outside of her house, I was stunned by the interior. There was one entire wall covered with Hummel figurines on shelves, and the other walls were spotted with needlepoint. Doilies bloomed like algae on the surface of the sofa. “Nice place,” I lied.

She just stared at me, impassive. “I rent it fully furnished,” she explained. “The woman who owns the house lives in Fort Lauderdale.”

On the dining room table was a stack of files, and a legal pad. All around the floor were crumpled pieces of paper; whatever it was she was writing wasn’t coming smoothly.

“Look, Lieutenant O’Keefe, I know you and I haven’t gotten off to the best start, and I know the deposition was…challenging for you. But we’ll take another stab at that, and things are going to be different once we’re in court. I really do feel confident that the damages the jury will be willing to award-”

“I don’t want your blood money,” I said. “She can have it all.”

“I think I see the problem here,” Marin answered. “But this isn’t about you and your wife. This is about Willow. And if you really want to give her the kind of life she deserves, you need to win a lawsuit like this. If you pull out now, it just gives the defense one more hook to hang their hat on-”

Too late, she realized that this might actually be something I’d want.

“My daughter,” I said tightly, “reads at a sixth-grade level. She’s going to see that newspaper article, and a dozen others like it, I’m guessing. She’s going to hear her mother tell the whole wide world she wasn’t wanted. You tell me, Ms. Gates. Is it better that I sit in that courtroom actively undermining your chance of winning your case or that I step aside so there’s somewhere for Willow to turn when she needs to know that someone loves her, no matter what she’s like?”

“Are you so sure you’ll be doing the right thing for your daughter?”

“Are you?” I asked. “I’m not leaving here until you give me paperwork to sign.”

“You can’t expect me to draft something on a Sunday morning when I’m not at the office-”

“Twenty minutes. I’ll meet you there.” I had just opened the door to walk outside when I was stopped by Marin’s voice.

“Your wife,” she asked. “What does she think about you doing this?”

I turned slowly. “She doesn’t think about me,” I said.

I didn’t see Charlotte that night, or the next morning. I assumed it would take that long for Marin to tell my wife that I’d dropped out of the lawsuit. However, even a guy who’s strong in his convictions understands self-preservation; there was no way I was headed home to talk to your mother until I had a few fortifying drinks under my belt-and, being a cop, had left enough time to let the alcohol pass safely through my system before I drove.

Maybe then I’d be lucky enough to find her asleep.

“Tommy,” I said, motioning to the bartender, and I pushed my empty beer glass toward him. I had come to O’Boys with some of the patrol officers after our shift, but they’d all left to go home to their wives and kids for supper by now. It was too late for a predinner drink and too early for the nighttime party crowd; other than Tommy and me, the only person in the bar was an old man who started drinking at three and stopped when his daughter came to pick him up at last call.

The bell over the door jingled, and a woman walked in. She peeled off a tight leopard-print coat only to reveal an even tighter hot pink dress. It was outfits like this that always fucked up rape cases for the prosecution.

“Cold out there,” she said, sliding onto a stool beside me. I stared resolutely down at my empty beer glass. Try wearing some clothes, I thought.

Tommy passed me a fresh beer and turned to the woman. “What can I get you?”

“A dirty martini,” she said, and then she turned to me and smiled. “You ever have one of those?”

I took a sip of beer. “I don’t like olives.”

“I like to suck the pimientos out,” she admitted. She unclipped her hair-blond, curly-so that it fell like a river to the middle of her back. “Beer tastes like Kitty Litter, if you ask me.”

I laughed at that. “When was the last time you tasted Kitty Litter?”

She arched her brows. “Haven’t you ever just looked at something and known how it’s going to taste?”

She did say something, didn’t she? Not someone?

I’ve never cheated on Charlotte. I’ve never even thought about cheating on Charlotte. God knows, I come across enough young women in my career to have the opportunity, if I wanted to take advantage. To be honest, Charlotte was all I’d ever wanted-even after eight years. But the woman I’d married-the one who had promised to buy vanilla ice cream for me in her wedding vows, even though it was a poor substitute for chocolate-was not the same one I saw these days in our house. That woman was single-minded and distant, so focused on what she might get that she couldn’t even see what she had.

“My name’s Sean,” I said, facing the woman.

“Taffy Lloyd,” she said, and she took a sip of her martini. “Like the candy. The Taffy part, not the Lloyd.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t I know you?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d remember meeting you before-”

“No, I know it. I never forget a face-” She broke off, snapping her fingers. “You were in the newspaper,” she said. “You’ve got a little girl who’s really sick, right? How’s she doing?”

I lifted my beer, wondering if she could hear my heart pounding as loud as I could. She recognized me from that article? If this woman did, how many others would? “She’s doing all right,” I said tersely, finishing my beer in another long swallow. “In fact, I’ve got to get home to her.” The hell with driving; I’d walk.

I started to get up from my stool but was stopped by her voice. “I heard you’re not suing anymore.”

Slowly, I turned. “That wasn’t in the newspaper.”

Suddenly, she didn’t look ditzy at all. Her eyes were a piercing blue, and they were fixed on mine. “Why did you want out?”

Was she a reporter? Was this a trap? I felt my guard rising, too late. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for Willow,” I muttered, shrugging into my jacket, cursing when my sleeve got tangled.

Taffy Lloyd set a business card down on the bar in front of me. “What’s best for Willow,” she said, “is for this lawsuit not to happen.” With a nod, she swung her leopard coat over her shoulder and walked out the door, leaving behind most of her martini.

I picked up the card and traced my finger over the raised black lettering:

Taffy Lloyd, Legal Investigator

Booker, Hood & Coates

I drove. I drove routes I took in my police cruiser, great figure eights that looped closer and closer to the center of Bankton. I watched falling stars and drove where I thought they’d landed. I drove until I could barely keep my eyes open, until it was after midnight.

I let myself into the house on a whisper and, in the dark, fumbled my way into the laundry room to get the sheets and pillowcase for the couch. Suddenly, I was exhausted, so tired I couldn’t even stand. I sank down on the sofa and buried my face in my hands.

What I couldn’t understand was how this had gone so far, so fast. One minute I was storming out of the lawyer’s office; the next, Charlotte had set up another appointment. I couldn’t forbid her to do that-but to be honest, I had never figured she’d carry through with a lawsuit. Charlotte wasn’t the type to take a risk. But that’s where I’d messed up: This wasn’t about Charlotte, in her mind. This was about you.

“Daddy?”

I looked up to find you standing in front of me, your bare feet white as a ghost’s. “What are you doing up?” I said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I got thirsty.”

I walked into the kitchen, with you padding along behind me. You were favoring your right leg-although another father might simply have wondered if his daughter was still half asleep, I was thinking of microfractures and hip displacements. I poured you a glass of water from the tap and leaned against the counter as you drank it. “Okay,” I said, hoisting you into my arms, because I couldn’t bear to watch you navigate the stairs. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

Your arms laced around my neck. “Daddy, how come you don’t sleep in your bed anymore?”

I paused, halfway up the steps. “I like the couch. It’s more comfortable.”

I crept into your bedroom, careful not to disturb Amelia, who was softly snoring in the bed beside yours. I tucked you under the covers. “I bet if I wasn’t like this,” you said, “if my bones weren’t all messed up-you’d still be sleeping upstairs.”

In the dark, I could see the shine of your eyes, the apple curve of your cheek. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. “Go to sleep,” I said. “It’s too late to talk about this.”

Suddenly, just like that, as if someone had spliced a future frame into a movie, I could see who you would become when you grew up. That stubborn resolve, the quiet acceptance of someone resigned to fighting an uphill battle-well, the person you resembled most at that moment was your mother.

Instead of going downstairs, I slipped into the master bedroom. Charlotte was sleeping on her right side, facing the empty side of the bed. I sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress, trying not to move it as I stretched out on top of the covers. I rolled onto my side, so that I was mirroring Charlotte.

Being here, in my own bed, with my own wife, felt inevitable and uncomfortable at the same time-like getting to the end of a jigsaw puzzle and forcing the last piece into place, even though the edges don’t match up the way they ought to. I stared at Charlotte’s hand, curled into a fist against the covers, as if she was still ready to come up swinging even when she was unconscious. When I touched the edge of her wrist, her fingers opened like a rose. When I glanced up, I found her staring at me. “Am I dreaming?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I said, and her hand closed around mine.

I watched Charlotte as she drifted back to sleep, trying to pinpoint the divide between when she was here with me and when she was spirited away, but it happened too quickly for me to measure. Gently I slipped my hand from hers. I hoped, for a moment when she woke up, she’d remember that I’d been here. I hoped that it would make up for what I was about to do.

There was a guy in the department whose wife had had breast cancer a few years ago. In solidarity, a bunch of us had shaved our heads when she went through chemo; we all did what we could to support George through his personal hell. And then his wife recovered, and everyone celebrated, and a week later, she told him she wanted a divorce. At the time, I thought it was the most callous thing a woman could possibly do: ditch the guy who’s stood beside you through thick and thin. But now, I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.

I didn’t like being here-it was like having a bad flashback. Reaching out for a napkin underneath a pitcher in the center of the massive polished table, I mopped at my forehead. What I really wanted to do was admit that this was a mistake and run. Jump out the window, maybe.

But before I could act on that sane thought, the door opened. In walked a man with prematurely silver hair-had I not noticed that the first time around?-followed by a blond woman wearing stylish glasses and a suit buttoned nearly to the throat. My jaw dropped; Taffy Lloyd cleaned up remarkably well. I nodded silently at her, and then at Guy Booker-the lawyer who’d made a fool out of me in this very office months ago. “I came to ask you what I can do,” I said.

Booker looked at his investigator. “I’m not sure I understand what that means, Lieutenant O’Keefe…”

“It means,” I said, “I’m on your side now.”

Marin

What do you say to the mother you’ve never met?

Since Maisie had contacted me saying she had a valid address for my birth mother, I had drafted hundreds of letters. That was the way it worked: even though Maisie apparently had located my birth mother, I wasn’t allowed to contact her directly. Instead, I was supposed to write a letter to my mother and mail it to Maisie, who would play middleman. She’d contact my mother and say she had a very important personal matter to discuss and would leave a phone number. Presumably, when my birth mother heard this, she would know what the personal matter was and would call in. Once Maisie verified that the woman was indeed my birth mother, she’d either read aloud or mail the letter I’d written.

Maisie had sent me a list of guidelines, which were supposed to help me write the letter:

This is your introduction to the birth parent for whom you have been searching. This person is virtually a stranger to you, so your letter will serve as a first impression. In order to not overwhelm your birth parent, it is recommended that your letter be no more than two pages. As long as your handwriting is legible, it is more appreciated to receive a handwritten letter, since that gives a sense of your personality to the recipient.

You should decide whether you want this first contact to be nonidentifying. If you want to use your name, please understand this makes it possible for the other party to locate you. You may want to wait until you get to know the other party before releasing your address or phone number.

The letter should contain general information about you-age, education, occupation, talents or hobbies, marital status, and whether or not you have children. Including photographs of yourself and your family is much preferred. You may wish to explain why you are searching for your birth parent at this time.

If your background includes any difficult information, this is not the time to share it. Negative adoption information-such as having been placed with an abusive family-is not appropriate. It’s better to share this information later, once a relationship has developed. Many birth parents report feelings of guilt over the decision to give a child up for adoption and fear that their decision, which was made for your benefit, might not have turned out as well as they’d wished. If negative information is shared at the outset, that information may overshadow all positive aspects of developing a rapport with you in the future.

If you feel grateful to your birth parent for the decision she made, you may briefly share this. If you desire information about family medical history, you may mention this. You may want to consider waiting to ask about the birth father. This may be a painful subject at first.

To reassure the birth parent that you want a mutually beneficial relationship, you may include a statement that you’d like to phone or meet but will respect her need for time to determine her comfort level regarding this.

I had read Maisie’s guidelines so often I could practically recite them verbatim. It seemed to me that the really instructive information was missing. How much do you share to illustrate what you’re really like but not to turn someone off? If I told her I was a Democrat, for instance, and she turned out to be a Republican, would she throw my letter in the trash? Should I mention how I’d marched to raise funds for AIDS research and that I advocated same-sex marriage? And this didn’t even take into account the decision I had to make when it came to putting my letter down in black and white. I wanted to send a card-it felt like I was trying harder, as opposed to just a scribbled missive on a legal pad. But the cards I had spotlighted images as different as Picasso, Mary Engelbreit, and Mapplethorpe. The Picasso seemed too common; the Engelbreit, too Mary Sunshine; but Mapplethorpe-well, what if she hated him on principle? Get over it, Marin, I told myself. There aren’t any naked bodies on the card; it’s a damn flower.

Now all I had to do was come up with the content to go inside.

Briony pushed open the door to my office, and I hastily stuffed my notes into a folder. Maybe it wasn’t entirely PC to use my work time to feed my personal obsession, but the more involved I became with the O’Keefe case, the harder it was to put my birth mother out of my mind. Silly as it sounded, approaching her made me feel like I was saving my soul. If I had to represent a woman who wished she’d gotten rid of her child, then the least I could do was find my own mother and praise her for thinking differently.

The secretary tossed a manila envelope onto my desk. “Delivery from the devil,” she said, and I glanced down to see the return address: Booker, Hood & Coates.

I ripped it open and read the amended list of interrogatories.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I murmured, and stood up to get my coat. It was time to make a house call to Charlotte O’Keefe.

A girl with blue hair answered the door, and I stared at her for a full five seconds before I recognized Charlotte’s older daughter, Amelia. “Whatever you’re selling,” she said, “we don’t need it.”

“Amelia, right?” I forced a smile. “I’m Marin Gates. Your mom’s lawyer.”

She scrutinized me. “Whatever. She’s not here right now. She left me to babysit.”

From inside the house: “I’m not a baby!”

Amelia flicked her eyes toward me again. “What I meant to say is that she left me to invalidsit.”

Suddenly your face poked around the doorframe. “Hi,” you said, and you smiled. You were missing a tooth in front.

I thought: The jury will love you.

Then I hated myself for thinking that.

“Did you want to leave a message?” Amelia asked.

Well, I couldn’t very well tell her that her father had become a defense witness. “I was hoping to talk to your mother in person.”

Amelia shrugged. “We’re not supposed to let in strangers.”

“She’s not a stranger,” you said, and you reached out and pulled me over the threshold.

I didn’t have a lot of experience with kids, and at the rate I was going, I might never, but there was something about your hand in mine, soft as a rabbit’s foot and maybe just as lucky. I let myself be led to the couch in the living room and looked around at the machine-made Oriental rug, the dusty face of the television, the battered cardboard boxes of games stacked high on the fireplace hearth. Monopoly was in full swing from the looks of it; there was a board in play set on the coffee table in front of the couch. “You can take over for me,” Amelia said, her arms folded. “I’m more of a communist than a capitalist anyway.”

She vanished up the stairs, leaving me staring down at the game board. “Did you know which street gets landed on the most?” you asked.

“Um.” I sat down. “Shouldn’t they all be equal?”

“Not when you figure in the Get Out of Jail cards and stuff like that. It’s Illinois.”

I glanced down. You had built three hotels on Illinois Avenue.

And Amelia had left me with sixty dollars.

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“I read. And I like to know things no one else does.”

I bet there was a great deal you knew that none of us did, or ever would. It was a little disconcerting to be sitting with an almost-six-year-old whose vocabulary probably rivaled mine. “So tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

“Dr. Seuss invented the word nerd.”

I laughed out loud. “Really?”

You nodded. “In If I Ran the Zoo. Which isn’t as good as Green Eggs and Ham. Which is for babies, anyway,” you said. “I like Harper Lee better.”

“Harper Lee?” I repeated.

“Yeah. Haven’t you ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

“Sure. I just can’t believe you have.” This was the first conversa tion I’d really had with the little girl who was the eye in the storm of this lawsuit, and I realized something remarkable: I liked you. I liked you a lot. You were genuine and funny and smart, and maybe your bones broke every now and then. I liked you for dismissing your condition as the least important part of you-nearly as much as I disliked your mother for highlighting it.

“So, anyway, it was Amelia’s turn. Which means you get to roll,” you said.

I glanced down at the board. “You know what? I hate Monopoly.” I did, truly. I had bad flashbacks from my childhood of a cousin who embezzled when he was the banker, of games that lasted four nights in a row.

“You want to play something else?”

Turning to the hearth again, and its toy detritus, I spied a dollhouse. It was a miniature of your home, with its black shutters and bright red door; there were even flowering shrubs for landscaping and long woven tongues of carpet. “Wow,” I said, touching the shingles reverently. “This is amazing.”

“My dad made it.”

I lifted the house up on its platform and settled it on top of the Monopoly board. “I used to have a dollhouse.”

It had been my favorite toy. I remembered tufted red velvet chairs in the miniature living room, and an old-time piano that played music when I turned its crank. A claw-footed tub, and candy-striped wallpaper. It looked completely Victorian, nothing like the modern house where I had grown up; yet I used to pretend, as I organized the beds and sofas and kitchen furniture, that this was an alternate universe, the home where I might have lived if I hadn’t been given away.

“Look at this,” you said, and you showed me how the little porcelain toilet seat lifted up. I wondered if dollhouse men forgot to put it back down, too.

In the refrigerator were little wooden steaks and milk bottles, and a tiny carton of eggs lined up like seed pearls. I raised the hinge of a woven basket to find two splinters of knitting needles and a ball of yarn.

“This is where the sisters live,” you said, and you set mattresses onto the twin brass bed frames in one upstairs room. “And this is where their mom sleeps.” Next door, on the big bed, you placed two pillows and a crazy quilt the size of my palm. Then you took another blanket and pillow, and made up a bed on the pink satin couch in the parlor. “And this,” you said, “is for the daddy.”

Oh my God, I thought. How they’ve screwed you up.

Suddenly the front door opened and Charlotte entered, a winter chill caught in the folds of her coat. She was carrying groceries in recyclable green bags draped over her arms. “Oh, that’s your car,” she said, dumping the food onto the floor. “Amelia!” she called upstairs. “I’m home!”

“Yay,” Amelia’s voice drifted down, devoid of enthusiasm.

Maybe it wasn’t just you they were destroying.

Charlotte leaned down and kissed your forehead. “How you doing, sweet pea? You’re playing with the dollhouse. I haven’t seen you take that out in ages…”

“We have to talk,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Okay.” Charlotte bent to gather some of the grocery bags; I did the same and followed her into the kitchen. She began to unpack: orange juice, milk, broccoli. Macaroni and cheese, dishwashing detergent, Ziploc bags.

Bounty. Joy. Life: brands that were a recipe for existence.

“Guy Booker’s added a witness for the defense,” I said. “Your husband.”

Charlotte was holding a jar of pickles one moment, and the next, it had shattered all over the floor. “What did you say?”

“Sean’s testifying against you,” I said flatly.

“He can’t do that, can he?”

“Well, once he asked to be released from the lawsuit-”

“He did what?”

The smell of vinegar rose; brine pooled on the tile floor. “Charlotte,” I said, stunned. “He told me he talked to you first.”

“He hasn’t talked to me in weeks. How could he? How could he do this to us?”

You came into the kitchen then. “Did something break?”

Charlotte got down on her hands and knees and began to gather the pieces of glass. “Stay out of the kitchen, Willow.” I reached for the new roll of paper toweling just as Charlotte let out a sharp cry; a shard of glass had pierced her finger.

It was bleeding. Your eyes went wide, and I hustled you toward the living room again. “Go get your mom a Band-Aid,” I said.

By the time I got back to the kitchen, Charlotte was clutching her bloody hand against her shirt. “Marin,” she said, staring up at me. “What am I supposed to do?”

It was probably a new experience for you, going to the hospital when you weren’t the one who was hurt. But it became clear very quickly that your mother’s cut had gone too deep, that a Band-Aid alone wasn’t going to be the answer. I drove her to the ER, with you and Amelia sitting in the back of the car, your feet propped up on cardboard boxes full of legal folders. I waited while a doctor sewed two stitches into the tip of Charlotte’s ring finger, as you sat beside her and held her good hand tight. I offered to stop at the pharmacy to fill the prescription for Tylenol plus codeine, but Charlotte said they still had plenty of painkillers at home left from your last break.

“I’m fine,” she told me. “Really.” I almost believed her, too, and then I remembered the way she’d clutched your hand during the stitches, and what she still planned to say to a jury in a matter of weeks about you.

I went back to the office, although the day was shot to hell. I took Maisie’s guidelines for writing a letter to one’s birth mother out of my top desk drawer and read through them one last time.

Families were never what you wanted them to be. We all wanted what we couldn’t have: the perfect child, the doting husband, the mother who’d let us go. We lived in our grown-up dollhouses completely unaware that, at any moment, a hand might come in and change around everything we’d become accustomed to.

Hello, I scrawled.

I’ve probably written this letter a thousand times in my head, always reworking it to make sure it’s just right. It took me thirty-one years to start my search, although I’ve always wondered where I came from. I think I had to figure out first why I wanted to search-and I finally know the answer. I owe my birth parents a very big thank-you. And almost equally important, I feel like you’re owed the right to know that I’m alive, well, and happy.

I work for a law firm in Nashua. I attended college at UNH and then went to law school at the University of Maine. I volunteer monthly to give legal advice to those who can’t afford it. I’m not married, but I hope that one day I will be. I like to kayak, read, and eat anything that’s chocolate.

For many years I was reluctant to search for you, because I didn’t want to intrude or ruin anyone’s life. Then I had a health scare and realized I did not know enough about where I’d come from. To that end, I’d like to meet you and say thank you in person-for giving me the opportunity to become the woman I am now-but I will also respect your wishes if you aren’t ready to meet me now, or never will be.

I’ve written and rewritten this, read and reread it. It’s not perfect, and neither am I. But I’m finally brave, and I’d like to think that maybe I inherited that from you.

Sincerely, Marin Gates

Sean

The guys who were repaving this stretch of Route 4 had spent the last forty minutes debating who was hotter, Jessica Alba or Pamela Anderson. “Jessica’s one hundred percent real,” said one guy, who was wearing fingerless gloves and missing two-thirds of the teeth in his mouth. “No implants.”

“Like you know,” said the foreman of the road crew.

From down near the line of traffic, another worker held a Slow sign that might have been a warning for the cars and might equally have been a self-description. “Pam’s a thirty-six triple D-twenty-two-thirty-four,” he said. “You know who else got measurements like that? A freakin’ Barbie doll.”

I leaned against the hood of my cruiser, bundled up in my winter gear, trying to pretend I was stone-deaf. Construction details were my least favorite part of being a cop, and a necessary evil. Without my blues flashing, the odds of some idiot striking one of the workers increased dramatically. Another guy approached, his breath punctuating the air in white balloons. “Wouldn’t toss either of them out of bed,” he said. “Would be even better if they were both there at once.”

Here’s the funny thing: ask any of these guys, and they’d tell you I was a tough guy. That my badge and my Glock were enough to raise me a notch in their esteem. They’d do what I told them to do, and they expected drivers to do what I told them to do, too. What they didn’t know was that I was the worst kind of coward. At work, maybe, I could bark orders or collar criminals or throw my weight around; at home, I had taken to stealing out before anyone woke up; I had defected from Charlotte’s lawsuit without even having the guts to tell her I was going to do it.

I’d spent enough time lying awake at night attempting to convince myself that this was courageous-that I was trying to find a middle ground where you would know you were loved and wanted-but the truth was, I got something out of this, too. I became a hero again, instead of a guy who couldn’t manage to take care of his own family.

“Want to cast your vote, Sean?” the foreman asked.

“Wouldn’t want to steal any of your fun,” I said diplomatically.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re married. Not allowed to let that eye wander, not even onto Google…”

Ignoring him, I took a few steps forward as a car sped up through the intersection instead of slowing down. All I’d have to do was point at the driver and he’d take his foot off the gas. It was that simple: the fear that I’d actually write him a ticket would be enough to make him think twice about what he was doing. But this driver didn’t slow down, and as the car screamed to a stop in the center of the intersection, I realized two things simultaneously: (1) it was a woman driving, not a man; and (2) it was my wife’s car.

Charlotte got out of the van and slammed the door shut behind her. “You son of a bitch,” she said, striding over until she was close enough to start hitting me.

I grabbed her arms, acutely aware that she had stopped not only traffic but the work of the construction detail. I could feel their eyes on me. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I had to do it.”

“Did you think it could stay a secret until the trial?” Charlotte cried. “Maybe then everyone could have watched me when I found out my husband was a liar.”

“Which one of us is the liar?” I said, incredulous. “Excuse me if I’m not willing to whore myself for money.”

A bright flush rose on Charlotte’s cheeks. “Excuse me if I’m not willing to let my daughter suffer because we’re broke.”

In that instant, I noticed a few things: that the right taillight on Charlotte’s van had burned out. That she had a bandage wrapped around one finger on her left hand. That it had started to snow again. “Where are the girls?” I asked, trying to peer into the dark windows of the van.

“You have no right to ask that,” she said. “You gave up that right when you went to the lawyer’s office.”

“Where are the girls, Charlotte?” I demanded.

“Home.” She stepped away from me, her eyes bright with tears. “Somewhere I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Wheeling around, she walked back to the car. Before she could open the door, though, I blocked her. “How can’t you see it?” I whispered. “Until you started all this, there was nothing wrong with our family. Nothing. We had a decent house-”

“With a roof that leaks-”

“I have a steady job-”

“That pays nothing-”

“And our children had a great life,” I finished.

“What would you know about that?” Charlotte said. “You’re not the one who’s with Willow when we walk past the playground at her school and she watches kids doing things she’s never going to do-easy things, like jumping off the swings or playing kickball. She threw out the DVD of The Wizard of Oz, did you know that? It was in the kitchen trash because some horrible little kid at school called her a Munchkin.”

Just like that, I wanted to punch the little shit’s lights out-never mind that he was six years old. “She didn’t tell me.”

“Because she didn’t want you to fight her battles for her,” Charlotte said.

“Then why,” I asked, “are you doing it?”

Charlotte hesitated, and I realized I’d struck a nerve. “You can fool yourself, Sean, but you can’t fool me. Go ahead and make me out to be the bitch, the villain. Pretend you’re some white knight, if it works for you. It looks good on the surface, and you can tell yourself that you know her favorite color and the name of her favorite stuffed animal and what kind of jelly she likes on her peanut butter sandwiches. But that’s not what makes her who she is. Do you know what she talks about on the way home from school? Or what she’s most proud of? What she worries about? Do you know why she burst into tears last night and why, a week ago, she hid under her bed for an hour? Face it, Sean. You think you’re her conquering hero, but you don’t really know anything about Willow’s life.”

I flinched. “I know it’s worth living.”

She shoved me out of the way and got into the car, slamming the door and peeling away. I heard the furious honks of cars that had been stockpiled behind Charlotte’s van and turned around to find the construction foreman still staring at me. “Tell you what,” he said, “you can have Jessica and Pam.”

That night I drove to Massachusetts. I didn’t have any destination in mind, but I pulled off at random exits and swung through neighborhoods that were buttoned up tight for the night. I turned off my headlights and trolled the streets like a shark in the deep of the ocean. There is so much you can tell about a family from the place they live: plastic toys give you the ages of their kids; a string of Christmas lights flag their religious affiliation; the kinds of cars in the driveway call out soccer mom or teenage driver or NASCAR fan. But even at the houses that were nondescript, I had no problem imagining the people inside. I would close my eyes and picture a father at the dinner table, making his daughters laugh. A mother who cleared the plates, but not before she touched the man’s shoulder in passing. I’d see a bookshelf full of bedtime stories, a stone paperweight crudely painted to look like a ladybug pinning down the day’s mail, a fresh stack of clean laundry. I’d hear the Patriots game on a Sunday afternoon, and Amelia’s iTunes playing through a speaker shaped like a donut, and your bare feet shuffling down the hallway.

I must have gone to fifty different houses like this. Occasionally, I’d find a light on-usually upstairs, usually a teenager’s head silhouetted against the blue cast of a computer screen. Or a couple that had fallen asleep with the television still crackling. A bathroom light, to keep monsters away from a child. It didn’t matter if I was in a white neighborhood or a black one, if the community was wealthy or dirt-poor-houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else’s.

The last neighborhood I visited that night was the one that drew my truck magnetically, my heart’s polar north. I parked at the base of my own driveway, headlights switched off, so that I would not give my presence away.

The truth was, Charlotte was right. The more times I picked up shifts to pay for your incidentals, the less time I spent with you. Once, I’d held you in my arms while you slept, and I’d watched dreams screening across your face; now, I loved you in theory if not in practice. I was too busy protecting and serving the rest of Bankton to focus on protecting and serving you; that had fallen to Charlotte instead. It was a treadmill, and I’d been knocked off it by this lawsuit, only to find that you were impossibly, undeniably, growing up.

That would change, I vowed. Carrying through with the step I’d taken when I went to Booker, Hood & Coates meant that I would actively spend more time with you. I’d get to fall for you all over again.

Just then, the wind whipped through the open window of the truck, wrinkling the wrappers of the baked goods and reminding me why I’d come back here tonight. Stacked in a wheelbarrow were the cookies and cakes and pastries that you and Amelia and Charlotte had been baking for the past few days.

I’d loaded them all-easily thirty wrapped packets, each one tagged with a green string and a construction paper heart-into my truck. You’d cut those out yourself; I could tell. Sweets from Syllabub, they read. I’d imagined your mother’s hands stroking pastry dough, the look on your face as you carefully cracked an egg, Amelia frustrating her way through an apron’s knot. I came here a couple times a week. I’d eat the first three or four; the rest I’d leave on the steps at the nearest homeless shelter.

I reached into my wallet and took out all my money, the cashed sum of the extra shifts I’d taken on at work to keep from having to go home. This I stuffed, bill by bill, into the shoe box, payment in kind for Charlotte. Before I could stop myself, I tore the paper heart off one packet of cookies. With a pencil, I wrote a customer’s message across the blank back: I love them.

Tomorrow, you’d read it. All three of you would be giddy, would assume the anonymous writer had been talking about the food, and not the bakers.

Amelia

On the way home from Boston one weekend, my mother reinvented herself as the new Martha Freaking Stewart. To that end, we had to detour totally out of the way to Norwich, Vermont, to King Arthur Flour, so that we could buy a crapload of industrial baking pans and specialty flours. You were already cranky about spending the morning at Children’s Hospital having new braces fitted-they were hot and stiff and left marks and bruises where the plastic rubbed into your skin, which the brace specialists tried to fix with a heat gun, but it never seemed to work. You wanted to go home and take them off, but instead, my mother bribed us with a trip to a restaurant-a reward neither one of us could turn down.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but it was, to us. We didn’t eat out very much. My mom always said that she could cook better than most chefs anyway, which was true, but that really just made us sound less like losers than the truth: we couldn’t afford it. It was the same reason that I didn’t tell my parents when my jeans were becoming highwaters, why I never bought lunch although the French fries in the caf looked so incredibly delicious; it was the same reason why that Disney World Trip to Hell was so much of a disappointment. I was too embarrassed to hear my parents tell me that we were too broke to afford what I needed or wanted; if I didn’t ask for anything, I didn’t have to hear them say no.

There was a part of me that was angry my mother was using the baking money to buy all those pans and tins when she could have been buying me a Juicy Couture cashmere hoodie that would make other girls in school look at me with envy, instead of like I was something stuck to the bottoms of their shoes. But no, it was critical that we have Mexican vanilla extract and dried Bing cherries from Michigan. We had to have silicone muffin pans and a shortbread form and edgeless cookie sheets. You were totally oblivious to the fact that every penny we spent on turbinado sugar and cake flour was one less cent spent on us, but then again, what did I expect: you still believed there was a Santa Claus, too.

So I have to admit it surprised me a little when you let me choose the restaurant where we’d eat lunch. “Amelia never gets to pick,” you said, and even though I hated myself for this, I felt like I was going to cry.

To make up for that, and because everyone expected me to be a jerk and why disappoint, I said, “McDonald’s.”

“Eww,” you said. “They make four hundred Quarter Pounders out of one cow.”

“Get back to me when you’re a vegetarian, hypocrite,” I answered.

“Amelia, stop. We’re not going to McDonald’s.”

So instead of picking a nice Italian place we probably all would have enjoyed, I made her stop at a totally skanky diner instead.

It looked like the kind of place that had bugs in the kitchen. “Well,” my mother said, looking around. “This is an interesting choice.”

“It’s nostalgic,” I said, and I glared at her. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, as long as botulism isn’t one of your long-lost memories.” After glancing at a Seat Yourself sign, she walked toward an empty booth.

“I want to sit at the counter,” you said.

My mother and I both looked at the rickety stools, the long drop down. “No,” we said simultaneously.

I dragged a high chair over to the table so that you could reach it. A harried waitress tossed menus at us, with a pack of crayons for you. “Be back in a minute for your order.”

My mother guided your legs through the high chair, which was an ordeal, because with braces your legs didn’t move that easily. Right away you flipped over your place mat and began to draw on the blank side. “So,” my mother said. “What should we bake when we get home?”

“Donuts,” you suggested. You were pretty psyched about the pan we’d bought, which looked like sixteen alien eyes.

“Amelia, what about you?”

I buried my face in my arms. “Hash brownies.”

The waitress reappeared with a pad in hand. “Well, aren’t you just cute enough to spread on a cracker and eat,” she said, grinning down at you. “And a mighty fine artist, too!”

I caught your gaze and rolled my eyes. You poked two crayons up your nose and stuck out your tongue. “I’ll have coffee,” Mom said. “And the turkey club.”

“There’s more than one hundred chemicals in a cup of coffee,” you announced, and the waitress nearly fell over.

Because we didn’t go out much, I’d forgotten how strangers reacted to you. You were only as tall as a three-year-old, but you spoke and read and drew like someone much older than your real age-almost six. It was sort of freaky, until people got to know you. “Isn’t she just a talkative little thing!” the waitress said, recovering.

“I’ll have the grilled cheese, please,” you replied. “And a Coke.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Make it two,” I said, when what I really wanted was one of everything on the menu. The waitress was staring at you as you drew a picture that was about normal for a six-year-old but practically Renoir for the toddler she assumed you to be. She looked like she was going to say something to you, so I turned to my mother. “Are you sure you want turkey? That’s, like, food poisoning waiting to happen…”

“Amelia!”

She was mad, but it got the waitress to stop ogling you and leave.

“She’s an idiot,” I said as soon as the waitress was gone.

“She doesn’t know that-” My mother broke off abruptly.

“What?” you accused. “That there’s something wrong with me?”

“I would never say that.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “Not unless the jury’s present.”

“So help me, Amelia, if your attitude doesn’t-”

I was saved by the waitress, who reappeared holding our drinks, in glasses that probably were see-through plastic in a former life but now just looked filmy. Your Coke was in a sippy cup.

Automatically, my mother reached out and began to unscrew the top. You took a drink, then picked up your crayon and began writing across the top of your picture: Me, Amelia, Mommy, Daddy.

“Oh, my God,” the waitress said. “I have a three-year-old at home and let me tell you, I can barely get her potty trained. But your daughter’s already writing? And drinking out of a regular cup. Honey, I don’t know what you’re doing right, but I want to get me some of that.”

“I’m not three,” you said.

“Oh.” The waitress winked. “Three and a half, right? Those months count when they’re babies-”

“I’m not a baby!”

“Willow.” Mom put a hand on your arm, but you threw it off, knocking over the cup and sending Coke all over the place.

“I’m not!”

Mom grabbed a stack of napkins and started mopping. “I’m sorry,” she said to the waitress.

“Now that”-the waitress nodded-“looks more like three.”

A bell rang, and she left to go back in the kitchen.

“Willow, you know better,” my mother said. “You can’t get angry at someone because she didn’t know you have OI.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You are.”

My mother’s jaw dropped. Recovering, she grabbed her purse and jacket and stood up. “We’re leaving,” she announced, and she yanked you out of your chair. At the last minute she remembered the drinks and slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Then she carried you out to the car, with me trailing behind.

We went to McDonald’s on the way home after all, but instead of making me feel satisfied, it made me want to disappear underneath the tires, the pavement, all of it.

I had braces, too, but not the kind that kept my legs from bowing. Mine were the ordinary kind, the ones that had changed the whole shape of my head during the progression from palate expander to bands to wires. This much I had in common with you: the very second I got my braces, I began counting the days until they would be taken off. For those who’ve never had the displeasure, this is what braces feel like: you know those fake white vampire teeth you stick in your mouth at Halloween? Well, imagine that, and then imagine that they stay there for the next three years, with you drooling and cutting your gums on the uneven plastic bits, and that would be braces.

Which is why, one particular Monday in late January, I had the biggest, soppiest smile on my face. I didn’t care when Emma and her posse wrote the word WHORE on the blackboard behind me in math class, with an arrow that pointed down at my head. I didn’t care when you ate all the Cocoa Puffs so that I had to have Frosted Mini-Wheats as a snack after school. All that mattered was that at 4:30 p.m. I was getting my braces off, after thirty-four months, two weeks, and six days.

My mother was playing it incredibly cool-apparently she didn’t realize what a big deal this was. I’d checked; it was right on her calendar, like it had been for the past five months. I started to panic, though, when it was four o’clock and she set a cheesecake into the oven. I mean, how could she drive me into town to the orthodontist and not have to worry if her knife slipped out clean in an hour when she tested it?

My father, that had to be the answer. He hadn’t been around much, but then again, that wasn’t radical. Cops worked when they had to, not when they wanted to-or so he used to tell me. The difference was that, when he was home, you could cut the air between him and my mother with that same knife she was using to test her cheesecake.

Maybe this was all part of a calculated plan to throw me off. My father was going to show up in time to take me to the orthodontist; my mother would finish baking the cheesecake (which was my favorite anyway) and it would be part of a big ol’ dinner that included things like corn on the cob, caramel apples, and bubble gum-all forbidden foods that were written on the reminder magnet on our fridge with a fat X across it, and for once, I’d be the one everybody could not take their eyes off.

I sat at the kitchen table, scuffing my sneaker on the floor. “Amelia,” my mother sighed.

Squeak.

“Amelia. For God’s sake. You’re giving me a headache.”

It was 4:04. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Not that I know of…”

“Well, when’s Dad going to get here?”

She stared at me. “Honey,” she said, the word that’s a sweet, so that you know whatever’s coming next has to be awful. “I don’t know where your father is. He and I…we haven’t…”

“My appointment,” I burst out, before she could say anything else. “Who’s taking me to the orthodontist?”

For a moment, she was speechless. “You must be joking.”

“After three years? I don’t think so.” I stood up, poking my finger at the calendar on the wall. “I’m getting my braces off today.”

“You are not going to Rob Reece’s office,” my mother said.

Okay, that’s the detail I left out: the only orthodontist in Bankton-the one I’d been seeing all this time-happened to be married to the woman she was suing. Granted, due to all the drama, I’d missed a couple of appointments since September, but I had no intention of skipping this one. “Just because you’re on some crusade to ruin Piper’s life, I have to leave my braces on till I’m forty?”

My mother held her hand up to her head. “Not till you’re forty. Just until I find you another orthodontist. For God’s sake, Amelia, it slipped my mind. I’ve obviously had a lot going on lately.”

“Yeah, you and every other human on this planet, Mom,” I yelled. “Guess what? It’s not all about you and what you want and what makes everyone feel sorry for your miserable life with some miserable-”

She slapped me across the face.

My mother had never, ever hit me. Not even when I ran into traffic when I was two, not even when I poured nail polish remover on the dining room table and destroyed the finish. My cheek hurt, but not as much as my chest. My heart had turned into a ball of rubber bands, and they were snapping, one by one.

I wanted her to hurt as much as she’d hurt me, so I spat out the words that burned like acid in my throat. “Bet you wish I’d never been born, too,” I said, and I took off running.

By the time I got to Rob’s office (I’d never called him Dr. Reece), I was sweaty and red-faced. I don’t think I’d ever run five whole miles in my life, but that’s what I had just done. Guilt is a better fuel than you can imagine. I was practically the Energizer Bunny, and it had a lot less to do with getting closer to the orthodontist than it did with getting away from my mother. Panting, I walked up to the receptionist’s desk, where there was a nifty computer kiosk to sign in. But I had only just settled my fingers on the keyboard when I noticed the receptionist staring at me. And the dental hygienist. And in fact, every single person in the office.

“Amelia,” the receptionist says. “What are you doing here?”

“I have an appointment.”

“I think we all just assumed-”

“Assumed what?” I interrupted. “That just because my mother’s a jerk, I’m one, too?”

Suddenly Rob stepped into the reception area, snapping a pair of rubber gloves off his hands. He used to blow them up for Emma and me, and draw little faces on them. The fingers looked like the comb of a rooster and felt as soft as a baby’s skin.

“Amelia,” he said quietly. He wasn’t smiling, not one iota. “I guess you’re here about your braces.”

It felt like I had been walking in a forest for the past few months, a place where even the trees might reach out to grab you and nobody spoke English-and Rob had said the first rational, normal sentence I’d heard in a long time. He knew what I wanted. If it was so easy for him, why did nobody else seem to get it?

I followed him into the examination room, past the snarky receptionist and the dental hygienist whose eyes went so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. Ha, I thought, walking beside him proudly. Take that.

I expected Rob to say something like Look, let’s just get this over with and keep it strictly business, but instead, as he settled the paper bib over my shoulders, he said, “Are things okay for you, Amelia?”

God, why couldn’t Rob have been my father? Why couldn’t I have lived in the Reece household, and Emma could have been in mine, so I could hate her instead of the other way around?

“Compared to what? Armageddon?”

He was wearing a mask, but I pretended that, behind it, he cracked a smile. I’d always liked Rob. He was geeky and small, not at all like my father. At sleepovers Emma would tell me my father was movie-star handsome and I’d tell her it was gross that she even thought about him like that; and she’d say if her dad was ever in a movie, it would be Revenge of the Nerds. And maybe that was true, but he also didn’t mind taking us to movies that starred Amanda Bynes or Hilary Duff, and he let us play with brace wax and fashion it into little bears and ponies when we were bored.

“I’d forgotten how funny you can be,” Rob said. “Okay, open up…You may feel a little pressure.” He picked up a pair of pliers and began to break the bonds between the brackets and my teeth. It felt weird, like I was bionic. “Does that hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Emma doesn’t talk much about you these days.”

I couldn’t speak, because his hands were in my wide-open mouth. But here’s what I would have said: That’s because she’s become an überbitch, and she hates my guts.

“It’s obviously a very uncomfortable situation,” Rob said. “I have to admit I never thought your mother would let you come back to me for orthodontic care.”

She didn’t.

“You know, orthodontics is really just physics,” Rob said. “If you had brackets or bands on crooked teeth alone, it wouldn’t do anything. But when you apply force in different ways, things change.” He looked down at me, and I knew that he wasn’t talking about my teeth anymore. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Rob was cleaning the composite and cement off my teeth. I lifted my hand and put it to his wrist, so that he’d remove the electric toothbrush. My spit tasted tinny. “She’s ruined my life, too,” I said, and because of the saliva, it sounded like I was drowning.

Rob looked away. “You’ll have to wear a retainer, or else there could be some shifting. Let’s get some X-rays and impressions, so that we can make one up for you-” Then he frowned, touching a tool to the backs of my two front teeth. “The enamel’s worn down a lot here.”

Well, of course it was; I was making myself puke three times a day, not that you’d know it. I was just as fat as ever, because when I wasn’t puking, I was stuffing my disgusting face. I held my breath, wondering if this would be the moment someone realized what I’d been doing. I wondered if I’d actually been waiting for that all along.

“Have you been drinking a lot of soda?”

The excuse made me feel weak. I nodded quickly.

“Don’t,” Rob said. “They use Coke to clean up blood spills on highways, you know. Do you really want that in your body?”

It sounded like something you would have told me, from one of your trivia books. And that made my eyes fill with tears.

“Sorry,” Rob said, lifting his hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Me neither, I thought.

He finished polishing my teeth with the toothpaste that felt like sand and let me rinse. “That is one gorgeous occlusion,” he said, and he held up a mirror. “Smile, Amelia.”

I ran my tongue over my teeth, something I hadn’t been able to do in nearly three years. The teeth felt huge, slick, like they belonged in someone else’s mouth. I bared them-not a smile but more of a wolf’s grimace. The girl in the mirror had neat rows of teeth, like the string of pearls in my mother’s jewelry box that I’d stolen and hidden in one of my shoe boxes. I never wore them, but I liked the way they felt, so smooth and uniform, like a little army marching around your neck. The girl in the mirror could almost be pretty.

Which meant she couldn’t be me.

“Here’s something we give out to kids who’ve completed treatment,” Rob said, handing me a little plastic bag with his name printed on it. “Thanks,” I muttered, and I leapt out of the chair, yanking the bib off.

“Amelia-wait. Your retainer-” Rob said, but by then, I had already fled into the reception area and out the front door. Instead of heading downstairs and out of the building, though, I ran upstairs, where they wouldn’t think to come after me (Not that they would. I wasn’t really that important, was I?), and locked myself in the bathroom. I opened the goody bag. There were Twizzlers and gummy bears and popcorn, all foods I hadn’t eaten in so long I couldn’t even remember how they tasted. There was a T-shirt that read SHIFT HAPPENS, SO WEAR YOUR RETAINER.

The toilet bowl had a black seat. With one hand I held my hair back, with the other, I stuck my index finger down my throat. Here’s what Rob hadn’t noticed: the little scab on that finger, which came from digging into my front teeth every time I did this.

Afterward, my teeth felt fuzzy and dirty and familiar again. I rinsed my mouth out with water from the sink and then looked in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my eyes bright.

I did not look like someone whose life was falling apart. I did not look like a girl who had to make herself vomit to feel like she could do something right. I did not look like the kind of daughter who was hated by her mother, ignored by her father.

To be honest, I didn’t know who the hell I was anymore at all.

Piper

In four months, I had been reborn. Once, I’d used a paper tape ruler to determine fundal height, now I knew how to figure out a rough opening for windows using a measuring tape. Once, I had used a Doppler stethoscope to hear fetal heart tones; now I used a stud finder to locate the sweet spots behind a plaster wall. Once, I’d done quadruple screens, now I installed screen porches. I had applied myself to the task of learning as much about remodeling as I had about medicine, and as a result, I could have been board-certified as a contractor by now.

I had first remodeled the bathroom, then the dining room. I pulled up the carpets in the upstairs bedrooms to install parquet floors instead. I was planning to start faux-painting the kitchen this week. After a room was finished, it went back on my list to be renovated again, eventually.

There was, of course, a method to my madness. Part of it was feeling proficient at something again-something I hadn’t known how to do before so I couldn’t possibly mess up. And part of it was thinking that, if I changed every bit of my surroundings, I might be able to find a spot where I felt comfortable again.

My refuge of choice had become Aubuchon Hardware. No one I knew shopped at Aubuchon Hardware. Whereas I might run into former patients at the grocery store or the pharmacy, at Aubuchon I blissfully wandered the aisles in a state of complete anonymity. I went three or four times a week and gazed at the laser levels and the drill bits, the soldier rows of two-by-fours, the bloated tubes of PVC and their delicate cousins, copper piping. I sat on the floor with paint chips, whispering the names of the colors: Mulberry Wine, Riviera Azure, Cool Lava. They sounded like vacation photographs of places I’d always wanted to go.

Newburyport Blue was from Benjamin Moore’s Historical Colors collection. It was a dark, grayish blue, like the ocean when it rains. I’d actually been to Newburyport. One summer, Charlotte and I had rented a house on Plum Island for our families. You were still small enough to be toted, with all the gear, through the tall grass to the beach. In theory, it had seemed like the perfect vacation: the sand was soft enough to break your fall; Emma and Amelia could pretend to be mermaids, with seaweed hair that had washed up on the shore; and it was close enough for Sean and Rob to commute down on their days off. There was only one caveat we hadn’t anticipated: the water was so cold that even standing up to your ankles made you ache to the core of your privates. You kids spent your days splashing in tide pools, which were shallow enough to be heated by the sun, but Charlotte and I were too big for those.

Which is why one Sunday, when the guys had taken you kids to Mad Martha’s for breakfast, Charlotte and I decided to try boogie boarding, even if it resulted in severe hypothermia. We shimmied into our wet suits (“They’re supposed to be tight,” I told Charlotte when she moaned about the size of her hips) and carried the boards down to the water’s edge. I dipped my foot into the line of surf and gasped. “There’s no way,” I said, jumping backward.

Charlotte smirked at me. “Getting cold feet?”

“Very funny,” I said, but to my shock, she’d already begun high-stepping over the waves, frigid as they were, and swimming out to a point where she could ride one in.

“How bad is it?” I yelled.

“Like an epidural-I don’t have feeling below my waist,” she shouted back, and then suddenly the ocean heaved, flexing one long muscle that lifted Charlotte on her board and sent her screaming through the surf to land at my feet on the sand.

She stood up, pushing her hair out of her face. “Chicken,” she accused, and to prove her wrong, I held my breath and started wading into the water.

My God, it was cold. I paddled out on my board, bobbing beside Charlotte. “We’re going to die,” I said. “We’re going to die out here and someone’s going to find our bodies on the shore, like Emma found that tennis shoe yesterday-”

“Here we go,” Charlotte shouted, and I looked over my shoulder to see an enormous wall of water looming down on us. “Paddle,” Charlotte yelled, and I did what she told me to do.

But I hadn’t caught the wave. Instead, it crashed over me, knocking the breath from my lungs and tumbling me end over end underwater. My boogie board, roped to my wrist, smacked me on the head twice, and then I felt sand being ground into my hair and my face, my fingers clawing at broken shells, as the ocean floor rose at an angle beneath me. Suddenly, a hand grabbed the back of my wet suit and dragged me forward. “Stand up,” Charlotte said, using all her weight to move me far enough onto the sand to keep from getting pulled back by the tide.

I had swallowed a quart of salt water; my eyes were burning, and there was blood on my cheek and my palms. “Jesus Christ,” I said, coughing and wiping my nose.

Charlotte pounded me on the back. “Just breathe.”

“Harder…than it sounds.”

Slowly feeling returned to my fingers and my feet, and that was worse, because I’d been beaten up badly by the wave. “Thanks…for being my lifeguard.”

“The heck with that,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t want to have to pay for the second half of the rental house.”

I laughed out loud. Charlotte helped me to my feet, and we began to trudge up the beach, dragging the boards behind us like puppies on leashes. “What should we tell the guys?” I asked.

“That Kelly Slater signed us for the world championships.”

“Yeah, that’ll explain why my cheek is bleeding.”

“He was overcome by the beauty of my butt in this wet suit, and when he made a pass at me you had to beat him off,” Charlotte suggested.

The reeds were whispering secrets. To the left was a swath of sand where Amelia and Emma had been playing yesterday, writing their names with sticks. They wanted to see if the writing would still be there today, or if the tide would have washed it away.

Amelia and Emma, it read.

BFFAA. Best friends forever and always.

I linked my arm with Charlotte’s, and together we started the long climb to the house.

It struck me, now, as I sat on the floor of Aubuchon Hardware, with a flamenco fan of color chips in my hand, that I had never been back to Newburyport since then. Charlotte and I had talked about it, but she hadn’t wanted to commit to renting a house not knowing if you’d be in a cast that following summer. Maybe Emma and Rob and I would go down there next summer.

But I wouldn’t go, I knew that. I really didn’t want to, without Charlotte.

I took a quart of paint off the shelf and walked to the mixing station at the end of the aisle. “Newburyport Blue, please,” I said, although I did not have a particular wall in mind to paint it on yet. I’d keep it in the basement, just in case.

It was dark by the time I left Aubuchon Hardware, and when I got back home, Rob was washing plates and putting them into the dishwasher. He didn’t even look at me when I walked into the kitchen, which is why I knew he was furious. “Just say it,” I said.

He turned off the faucet and slammed the door of the dishwasher into place. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I…I lost track of time. I was at the hardware store.”

“Again? What could you possibly need there?”

I sank down into a chair. “I don’t know, Rob. It’s just the place that makes me feel good right now.”

“You know what would make me feel good?” he said. “A wife.”

“Wow, Rob, I didn’t think you’d ever go all Ricky Ricardo on me-”

“Did you forget something today?”

I stared at him. “Not that I know of.”

“Emma was waiting for you to drive her to the rink.”

I closed my eyes. Skating. The new session had started; I was supposed to sign her up for private lessons so that she could compete this spring-something her last coach finally felt she was ready for. It was first come, first served; this might have blown her chance for the season. “I’ll make it up to her-”

“You don’t have to, because she called, hysterical, and I left the office to get her down there in time.” He sat down across from me, tilting his head. “What do you do all day, Piper?”

I wanted to point out to him the new tile floor in the mudroom, the fixture I’d rewired over this very table. But instead I looked down at my hands. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I really don’t know.”

“You have to get your life back. If you don’t, she’s already won.”

“You don’t know what this is like-”

“I don’t? I’m not a doctor, too? I don’t carry malpractice insurance?”

“That’s not what I mean and you-”

“I saw Amelia today.”

I stared at him. “Amelia?”

“She came to the office to get her braces off.”

“There’s no way Charlotte would have-”

“Hell hath no fury like a teenager who wants her orthodontia removed,” Rob said. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure Charlotte had no idea she was there.”

I felt heat rise to my face. “Don’t you think people might wonder why you’re treating the daughter of the woman who’s suing us?”

“You,” he corrected. “She’s suing you.”

I reeled backward. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“And I can’t believe you’d expect me to throw Amelia out of the office.”

“Well, you know what, Rob? You should have. You’re my husband.”

Rob got to his feet. “And she’s a patient. And that’s my job. Something, unlike you, that I give a damn about.”

He stalked out of the kitchen, and I rubbed my temples. I felt like a plane in a holding pattern, making the turns with the airport in view and no clearance to land. In that moment, I resented Charlotte so much that it felt like a river stone in my belly, solid and cold. Rob was right-everything I was, everything I’d been-had been put on a shelf because of what Charlotte had done to me.

And in that instant I realized that Charlotte and I still had something in common: she felt exactly the same way about what I’d done to her.

The next morning, I was determined to change. I set my alarm, and instead of sleeping past the school bus pickup, I made Emma French toast and bacon for breakfast. I told a wary Rob to have a nice day. Instead of renovating the house, I cleaned it. I went grocery shopping-although I drove to a town thirty miles away, where I wouldn’t run into anyone familiar. I met Emma at school with her skating bag. “You’re taking me to the rink?” she said when she saw me.

“Is that a problem?”

“I guess not,” Emma said, and after a moment’s hesitation, she launched into a diatribe about how unfair it was for the teacher to give an algebra test when he knew he was going to be absent that day and couldn’t answer last-minute questions.

I’ve missed this, I thought. I’ve missed Emma. I reached across the seat and smoothed my hand over her hair.

“What’s up with that?”

“I just really love you. That’s all.”

Emma raised a brow. “Okay, now you’re skeeving me out. You aren’t going to tell me you have cancer or something, are you?”

“No, I just know I haven’t exactly been…present…lately. And I’m sorry.”

We were at a red light, and she faced me. “Charlotte’s a bitch,” she said, and I didn’t even tell her to watch her language. “Everybody knows the whole Willow thing isn’t your fault.”

“Everybody?”

“Well,” she said. “Me.”

That’s good enough, I realized.

A few minutes later, we arrived at the skating rink. Red-cheeked boys dribbled out of the main glass doors, their enormous hockey bags turtled onto their backs. It always had seemed so funny to me, the dichotomy between the coltish figure skaters and the lupine hockey players.

The minute I walked inside I realized what I’d forgotten-no, not forgotten, just blocked entirely from my mind: Amelia would be here, too.

She looked so different from the last time I’d seen her-dressed in black, with fingerless gloves and tattered jeans and combat boots-and that blue hair. And she was arguing heatedly with Charlotte. “I don’t care who hears,” she said. “I told you I don’t want to skate anymore.”

Emma grabbed my arm. “Just go,” she said under her breath.

But it was too late. We were a small town and this was a big story; the entire room, girls and their mothers, was waiting to see what would happen. And you, sitting on the bench beside Amelia’s bag, noticed me, too.

You had a cast on your right arm. How had you broken it this time? Four months ago, I would have known all the details.

Well, unlike Charlotte, I had no intention of airing my dirty laundry in public. I drew in my breath and pulled Emma closer, dragging her into the locker room. “Okay,” I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “So, you do this private lesson thing for how long? An hour?”

“Mom.”

“I may just run out and pick up the dry cleaning, instead of hanging around to watch-”

“Mom.” Emma reached for my hand, as if she were still little. “You weren’t the one who started this.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else. Here is what I had expected from my best friend: honesty. If she had spent the past six years of your life harboring the belief that I’d done something grievously wrong during her pregnancy, why didn’t she ever bring it up? Why didn’t she ever say, Hey, how come you didn’t…? Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything. But I did. Like, for starters, an explanation.

Emma finished lacing up her skates and hurried onto the ice. I waited a moment, then pushed out the locker room door and stood in front of the curved Plexiglas barrier. At one end of the rink was a tangle of beginners-a centipede of children in their snow pants and bicycle helmets, their legs widening triangles. When one went down, so did the others: dominoes. It wasn’t so long ago that this had been Emma, and yet here she was on the other end of the rink, executing a sit-spin as her teacher skated around her, calling out corrections.

I couldn’t see Amelia-or you or Charlotte for that matter-anywhere.

My pulse was almost back to normal by the time I reached my car. I slid into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine. When I heard a sharp rap on the window, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Charlotte stood there, a scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth, her eyes watering in the bite of the wind. I hesitated, then unrolled the window partway.

She looked as miserable as I felt. “I…I just had to tell you something,” she said, halting. “This was never about you and me.”

The effort of not speaking hurt; I was grinding my back teeth together.

“I was offered a chance to give Willow everything she’ll ever need.” Her breath formed a wreath around her face in the cold air. “I don’t blame you for hating me. But you can’t judge me, Piper. Because if Willow had been your child…I know you would have done the same thing.”

I let the words hang between us, caught on the guillotine of the window’s edge. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Charlotte,” I said coldly, and I pulled out of the parking spot and away from the rink without looking back.

Ten minutes later I burst into Rob’s office during a consultation. “Piper,” he said evenly, glancing down at the parents and preteen daughter, who were staring at my wild hair, my runny nose, the tears still streaking my face. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Um,” the mother said quickly. “Maybe we should just let you two talk.”

“Mrs. Spifield-”

“No, really,” she said, getting up and summoning the rest of the family. “We can give you a minute.”

They hurried out of the office, expecting me to self-destruct at any moment, and maybe they weren’t that far off the mark. “Are you happy?” Rob exploded. “You probably just cost me a new patient.”

“How about Piper, what happened? Tell me what I can do to help you?”

“Well, pardon me if the sympathy card’s been played so often that the face has worn straight off. Jesus, I’m trying to run a practice here.”

“I just ran into Charlotte at the skating rink.”

Rob blinked at me. “So?”

“Are you joking?”

“You live in the same town. A small town. It’s a miracle you haven’t crossed paths before. What did she do? Come after you with a sword? Call you out on the playground? Grow up, Piper.”

I felt like the bull must when he is let out of his pen. Freedom, relief…and then comes the picador, lancing him. “I’m going to leave,” I said softly. “I’m going to pick up Emma, and before you come home tonight, I hope you’ll think about the way you treated me.”

“The way I treated you?” Rob said. “I have been nothing but supportive. I have not said a word, even though you’ve abandoned your whole OB practice and turned into some female Ty Pennington. We get a lumber bill for two thousand dollars? No problem. You forget Emma’s chorus recital because you’re talking plumbing at Aubuchon Hardware? Forgiven. I mean, how ironic is it that you’ve become the do-it-yourself queen? Because you don’t want our help. You want to wallow in self-pity instead.”

“It’s not self-pity.” My cheeks were burning. Could the Spifields hear us arguing in the waiting room? Could the hygienists?

“I know what you want from me, Piper. I’m just not sure I can do it anymore.” Rob walked to the window, looking out onto the parking lot. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Steven,” he said after a moment.

When Rob was twelve, his older brother had committed suicide. Rob had been the one to find him, hanging from the rod in his closet. I knew all this; I’d known it since before we were married. It had taken me a while to convince Rob to have children, because he worried that his brother’s mental illness was printed in his genes. What I hadn’t known was that, these past few months, being with me had dragged Rob back to that time in his childhood.

“Back then no one knew the name for bipolar disorder, or how to take care of it. So for seventeen years my parents went through hell. My whole childhood was colored by how Steven was feeling: if it was a good day or a bad day. And,” he said, “it’s how I got so good at taking care of a person who is completely self-absorbed.”

I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I’d hurt Rob. Maybe that’s what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we’ve wounded the people we are trying to protect. “Ever since you got served, I’ve been thinking about it. What if my parents had known in advance?” Rob said. “What if they had been told, before Steven was born, that he was going to kill himself before his eighteenth birthday?”

I felt myself go very still.

“Would they have taken those seventeen years to get to know him? To have those good times that came between the crises? Or would they have spared themselves-and me-that emotional roller coaster?”

I imagined Rob, coming into his brother’s room to get him for dinner, and finding the older boy slumped to the side of the closet. The whole time I’d known my mother-in-law, I’d never seen a smile rise all the way to her eyes. Was this why?

“That’s not a fair comparison,” I said stiffly.

“Why not?”

“Bipolar illness can’t be diagnosed in utero. You’re missing the point.”

Rob raised his gaze to meet mine. “Am I?” he said.

Marin

February 2008

“Just be yourselves,” I coached. “We don’t want you to do anything special because of the camera. Pretend we’re not here.”

I gave a nervous little smile and glanced at the twenty-two moon faces staring up at me: Ms. Watkins’s kindergarten class. “Does anyone have any questions?”

A little boy raised his hand. “Do you know Simon Cowell?”

“No,” I said, grinning. “Anyone else?”

“Is Willow a movie star?”

I glanced at Charlotte, who was standing just behind me, with the videographer I’d hired to film A Day in the Life of Willow, to be aired for the jury. “No,” I said. “She’s still just your friend.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Me!” A classically pretty destined-to-be-cheerleader girl pumped her hand like a piston until I pointed to her. “If I pretend to be Willow’s friend today, will I be on Entertainment Tonight?”

The teacher stepped forward. “No, Sapphire. And you shouldn’t have to pretend to be anyone’s friend in here. We’re all friends, right?”

“Yes, Ms. Watkins,” the class intoned.

Sapphire? That girl’s name was really Sapphire? I’d looked at the masking tape above the wooden cubbies when we first came in-names like Flint and Frisco and Cassidy. Did no one name their kids Tommy or Elizabeth anymore?

I wondered, not for the first time, if my birth mother had picked out names for me. If she’d called me Sarah or Abigail, a secret be tween the two of us that was overturned, like fresh earth, when my adoptive parents came and started my life over.

You were using your wheelchair today, which meant kids had to move out of the way to accommodate you if you approached with your aide to work at the art table or use Cuisenaire rods. “This is so strange,” Charlotte said softly. “I never get to watch her during school. I feel like I’ve been admitted to the inner sanctum.”

I had hired the camera crew to film one entire day with you. Although you were verbal enough to hold your own as a witness during this trial, putting you on the stand would not have been humane. I couldn’t bring myself to have you in the courtroom when your mother was testifying out loud about wanting to terminate her pregnancy.

We’d shown up on your doorstep at six a.m., in time to watch Charlotte come into your room to rouse you and Amelia. “Oh, my God, this sucks,” Amelia had groaned when she opened her eyes and saw the videographer. “The whole world’s going to see my bed hair.”

She had jumped up and run to the bathroom, but with you, it took more time. Every transition was careful-from the bed to the walker, from the walker to the bathroom, from the bathroom back to the bedroom to get dressed. Because mornings were the most painful for you-the curse of sleeping on a healing fracture-Charlotte had given you pain medication thirty minutes before we arrived, then let it start working to ease the soreness in your arm while you dozed for a while before she helped you get out of bed. Charlotte picked out a sweatshirt that zippered up the front so that you wouldn’t have to raise your arms to slip it over your head-your latest cast had been removed only a week ago and your upper arm was still stiff. “Besides your arm, what hurts today?” Charlotte asked.

You seemed to do a mental inventory. “My hip,” you said.

“Like yesterday, or worse?”

“The same.”

“Do you want to walk?” Charlotte asked, but you shook your head.

“The walker makes my arm ache,” you said.

“Then I’ll get the chair.”

“No! I don’t want to use the chair-”

“Willow, you don’t have a choice. I’m not going to carry you around all day.”

“But I hate the chair-”

“Then you’ll just have to work hard so you get out of it faster, right?”

Charlotte explained, on camera, that you were caught between a rock and a hard place-the arm injury, an old wound, was still healing, but the hip pain was new. The adaptive equipment-a walker to help you stand with support-meant putting pressure on your arm, which you could do for only short periods of time, and which left instead only the dreaded folding manual wheelchair. You hadn’t been fitted for a new one since you were two; at age six, you were nearly twice that size and complained of back and muscle pain after a full day’s use-but insurance wouldn’t upgrade your chair until you were seven.

I had expected a flurry of morning activity, made even more overwhelming by all of your needs, but Charlotte moved methodically-letting Amelia run around trying to find lost homework while she brushed your hair and fixed it in two braids, cooked scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, and loaded you into the car along with the walker, the thirty-pound wheelchair, a standing table, and the braces-to use during physical therapy. You couldn’t take the bus-jarring over bumps could cause microfractures-so Charlotte drove you instead, dropping Amelia off at the middle school on the way.

I followed you in my own van. “What’s the big deal?” the cameraman asked when we were alone in the car. “She’s just small and disabled, so what?”

“She also can snap a bone if you hit the brakes,” I said. But there was a part of me that knew the cameraman was right. A jury watching Charlotte tie her daughter’s shoes and strap her into a car seat like an infant would think your life was no worse than any baby’s. What we needed was something more dramatic-a fall or, better yet, a fracture.

My God, what kind of person was I, wishing a six-year-old would get hurt?

At the school, Charlotte lugged the equipment out of the van and set it in a corner of the classroom. There was a quick powwow with the teacher and your aide, Charlotte explaining which injuries were bothering you today. Meanwhile, you sat in your chair near the cubbies as children funneled around you to hang up their jackets and take off their boots. Your shoelace had come untied, and although you tried to lean over to fix it, your foreshortened arms couldn’t quite span the distance. A little girl bent down to help you. “I just learned how to tie them,” she said, matter-of-fact, and she looped the laces and knotted them. As she bounced off, you watched her. “I know how to tie my own shoes,” you said, but your voice had an edge to it.

When it was time for snack, your aide had to lift you up to wash your hands, because the sink was too tall to accommodate your wheelchair. Five children jockeyed to sit next to you. But you got only about three minutes to eat because you were scheduled for physical therapy. That day alone, I’d learned, we’d be filming you at PT, OT, speech therapy, and visiting a prosthetic specialist. It made me wonder when or if you ever got to just be a kindergartner.

“How do you think it’s going so far?” Charlotte asked as we walked down the hall to the physical therapy room, trailing you and your wheelchair and your aide. “Do you think it will be enough for a jury?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “That’s my job.”

The physical therapy room was adjacent to the gymnasium. Inside, on the gleaming floor, a teacher was setting a line of kickballs down. There was a wall of glass, through which you could watch what was going on in the gym. It seemed cruel to me. Was it supposed to inspire a kid like you to work harder? Or just depress the hell out of you?

Twice a week, you had PT with Molly in school. Once a week, you were taken to her office. She was a skinny redhead with a surprisingly low voice. “How’s the hip?”

“It still hurts,” you told her.

“Like I’d rather die than walk, Molly, hurts? Or just ouch, it hurts?”

You laughed. “Ouch.”

“Good. Then show me your stuff.”

She lifted you out of your chair and set you upright on the floor. I held my breath-I hadn’t seen you moving without a walker-and you began to shuffle your feet in tiny hiccups. Your right foot lifted off the floor, your left one dragged, until you paused at the edge of a red mat. It was only an inch thick, but it took you ten whole seconds to lift your left leg enough to gain the clearance.

She bounced a large red ball to the middle of the mat. “You want to start with this today?”

“Yes,” you said, and your face lit up.

“Your wish is my command,” Molly said, and she sat you down on the ball. “Show me how far you can reach with your left hand.”

You reached across your body, putting an S curve into your spine. Even giving it all your effort, you could barely keep your shoulders from facing squarely forward. This put your eyes in line with the window, where your classmates were engaged in a raucous game of dodgeball. “I wish I could do that,” you said.

“Keep stretching, Wonder Woman, and you just might,” Molly replied.

But this wasn’t really true-even if you learned enough flexibility to dodge and weave, your bones wouldn’t withstand a firm hit.

“You’re not missing anything,” I said. “I hated dodgeball. I was always the one picked last.”

“I’m the one picked never,” you said.

That, I thought, will be a great sound bite.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. Charlotte glanced at the camera and then turned to the physical therapist, who had your belly bent over the ball and was rocking you back and forth. “Molly? How about using the ring?”

“I was going to hold off another week or two before I did any weight-bearing exercises-”

“Maybe we can work on the soft tissue? To improve her range?”

She settled you on the floor. The soles of your feet touched together, a yoga pose I could manage only on a good day. Reaching onto the wall, Molly untied what looked like a gymnastics ring, which was dangling from the ceiling. She adjusted the height until it hovered just over your head. “Right arm this time,” she said.

You shook your head. “I don’t want to.”

“Just give it a try. If it hurts too much, we’ll stop.”

You inched your arm higher, until your fingertips brushed the rubber ring. “Can we stop now?”

“Come on, Willow, I know you’re tougher than that,” Molly said. “Wrap your fingers around and give it a squeeze…”

To do that, you had to lift your arm even higher. Tears glazed your eyes, which made your sclera look electric. The cameraman zoomed in on your face, a close-up.

“Ow,” you said, starting to cry in earnest as your hand clutched the ring. “Please, Molly…can I stop?”

Suddenly Charlotte wasn’t sitting beside me anymore. She’d run to you, prized your fingers free. Tucking your arm close to your side, she cradled you. “It’s okay, baby,” she crooned. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry Molly made you try.”

At that, Molly’s head snapped around-but she kept her mouth shut when she saw the camera rolling.

Charlotte’s eyes were closed; she might have been crying, too. I felt like I was violating something private. So I reached over and put my hand on the long nose of the camera, gently forced it toward the floor.

The videographer cut the power.

Charlotte sat cross-legged with you curled in the bowl of her body. You looked embryonic, spent. I watched her stroke your hair and whisper to you as she stood, lifting you in her arms. Charlotte turned, so that she was facing us and you weren’t. “Did you get that on film?” she asked.

Once, I watched a news story about two couples whose newborns had been switched by accident at the hospital. They learned only years later, when one baby was found to have some god-awful hereditary disease that the parents didn’t have in their genetic makeup. The other family was tracked down and the mothers had to trade their sons. One mother-the one who was getting a healthy child back, as a matter of fact-was absolutely inconsolable. “He doesn’t feel right in my arms,” she kept sobbing. “He doesn’t smell like my boy.”

I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

But what if the child never knew the parent quite as well?

Like me, and my birth mother. Or you. Did you wonder why your mother had hired me? Why you were being followed around by a camera crew? Did you wonder, as we walked back to the classroom, whether your mother had brought you to tears on purpose, so that the jury would squirm?

Charlotte’s words kept ringing in my ears: I’m sorry Molly made you try. But Molly hadn’t. Charlotte had insisted on it. Had she been doing it because she truly cared about the range of motion in your right arm after your latest break? Or because she knew it would bring you to tears for the camera?

I was not a mother; I might never be. But I’d certainly had my share of friends who couldn’t stand their own mothers-either they were too absent or too smothering; they complained too much or they noticed too little. Part of growing up was distancing yourself from your mother.

It was different for me. I’d grown up with a tiny buffer of space between my adoptive mother and myself. Once, in chemistry, I’d learned that objects never really touch-because of ions repelling, there’s always an infinitesimal space, so that even when it feels like you’re holding hands or rubbing up against something on the atomic level, you’re not. That was how I felt these days about my adoptive family: to the naked eye, we looked like a seamless, happy group. But I knew that, no matter how hard I tried, I’d never close that microscopic gap.

Maybe this was normal. Maybe mothers-consciously or subconsciously-repelled their daughters in different ways. Some knew what they were doing-like my birth mother, handing me over to another family. And some, like Charlotte, didn’t. Her exploiting you on film for what she believed to be the greater good made me hate her, hate this case. I wanted to finish filming; I wanted to get as far away from her as possible before I did something that was forbidden in my line of work: tell her how I really felt about her and her lawsuit.

But just as I was trying to figure out a way to wrap this up early, I got what I’d been wishing for-a crisis. Not in the form of you falling down but, instead, equipment failure: while Charlotte was packing up your equipment after school, she saw that your wheelchair tire had gone dead flat.

“Willow,” she said, exasperated. “Didn’t you notice?”

“Do you have a spare?” I asked, wondering if there was a closet in the O’Keefe house that had extra parts for wheelchairs and braces, just as there was one full of splints, Ace bandages, slings, and doll plaster. “No,” Charlotte said. “But the bike store might.” She pulled out her cell phone and called Amelia. “I’m going to be a little late…No, she didn’t break. But her wheelchair did.”

The bike store didn’t have a size 22 wheel in stock, but they thought they might be able to order one in by the end of the week. “Which means,” Charlotte explained, “that either I can spend twice as much at a medical supply store in Boston or else Willow’s minus her chair for the rest of the week.”

An hour late, we pulled up to the middle school. Amelia was sitting on top of her backpack, glowering. “Just so you know,” she said, “I have three tests tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you study while you were waiting for us?” you asked.

“Did I ask you for your opinion?”

By four o’clock I was exhausted. Charlotte was on the computer, trying to find discount wheelchair manufacturers online. Amelia was writing flash cards with French vocabulary on them. You were upstairs in your room, sitting on the floor with a pink ceramic pig on your lap.

“Sorry about your chair,” I said.

You shrugged. “Stuff like that happens a lot. Last time, the bike store had to get hair out from the front wheels because they stopped turning.”

“That’s pretty disgusting,” I said.

“Yeah…I guess it is.”

I settled down beside you as the videographer moved inconspicuously to a corner of the room. “You seem to have a lot of friends at school.”

“Not really. Most of the kids, they say stupid things like how lucky I am to get to ride in a wheelchair when they have to walk all the way down to the gym or around the playground or whatever.”

“But you don’t think it’s lucky.”

“No, because it’s only fun at first. It’s not so fun if you do it your whole life.” She looked up at me. “Those kids today? They’re not my friends.”

“They all wanted to sit next to you at snack-”

“What they wanted was to be in the movie.” You shook the ceramic pig in your lap. It jingled. “Did you know real pigs think, like we do? And they can learn tricks like dogs, only faster.”

“That’s impressive. Are you saving up to buy one?”

“No,” you said. “I’m giving my allowance money to my mother, so she can buy the tire for my wheelchair and not have to worry about how much it costs.” You pulled the black plug from between the pig’s legs, and a trickle of dimes and nickels, with the occasional wadded dollar, tumbled out. “Last time I counted I had seven dollars and sixteen cents.”

“Willow,” I said slowly. “Your mother didn’t ask you to pay for that wheel.”

“No, but if it doesn’t cost her any extra, she won’t have to get rid of me.”

I was struck silent. “Willow,” I said, “you know your mother loves you.”

You looked up at me.

“Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don’t want their kids…but when you look more closely, you realize that they’re doing those kids a favor. They’re just trying to give them a better life. Do you understand?”

“I guess.” You tipped over the piggy bank again. It sounded as if it were full of broken glass.

“Can I talk to you?” I said as I walked into the study where Charlotte was poring over the results of a search engine.

She jumped up. “I’m sorry. I know. You didn’t come here to film me surfing the Net for wheelchair tire patch kits.”

I closed the door behind me. “Forget about the camera, Charlotte. I was just upstairs with Willow, counting her piggy bank savings. She wants to give it to you. She’s trying to buy her way into your good graces.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Charlotte said.

“Why? What great leap of logic would you make if you were six years old and you knew that your mother had filed a lawsuit because something was wrong when you were born?”

“Aren’t you my lawyer?” Charlotte said. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping me instead of telling me I’m a rotten mother?”

“I am trying to help you. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to cobble together a video for the jury from this footage, to be honest. Because right now, if they saw it, they might feel sorry for Willow-but they’d hate you.”

Suddenly all of the fight went out of Charlotte. She sank back into the chair she’d been sitting on when I came into the room. “When you first mentioned wrongful birth, I felt like Sean did. Like it was the most disgusting term I’d ever heard in my life. All these years I’ve just gone along doing what needed to be done. I knew people watched me with Willow and thought, That poor girl. That poor mother. But you know, I never really pictured it that way. She was my baby and I was going to take care of her, and that was that.” Charlotte looked up at me. “Then, you and Robert Ramirez started talking, asking me questions. And I thought, Someone gets it. It felt like I’d been living underground, and for a moment, I’d been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you’ve seen that, how can you go back where you came from?”

I felt my cheeks burn. I knew exactly what Charlotte was talking about, and I did not like thinking I had anything in common with her. But I remembered the day when I’d been told I was adopted, when I realized there was another mother, another father out there somewhere I had never met. For years, even when it wasn’t in the forefront of my mind, it was still present, an itch just beneath the skin.

Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damages awards. But was the dissolution of this family really my fault? Had Bob and I created a monster?

“My mother’s in a nursing home now,” Charlotte said. “She can’t remember who I am, so I’ve become the keeper of the memories. I’m the one who tells her about the time she baked brownies for the entire senior class when I ran for student council, and how I won by a landslide. Or how she used to collect sea glass with me during the summer and put it in a jar next to my bed. I wonder what memories Willow will have to tell me, if it comes to that. I wonder if there’s a difference between being a dutiful mother and being a good mother.”

“There is,” I said, and Charlotte looked up at me, expectant.

Even if I couldn’t articulate the difference as an adult, as a child, I had felt it. I thought for a moment. “A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes,” I said.

“And a good mother?”

I lifted my gaze to Charlotte’s. “Is someone whose child wants to follow her.”

Interfering Agents: A substance added to sugar syrup in order to prevent it from crystallizing.

We’ve all had a crystallizing moment, when suddenly everything begins to come together…whether we want it to or not. The same thing happens in the production of candy-there’s a time when the mixture starts to turn into something it wasn’t moments before. A single unincorporated sugar crystal can change the texture from smooth to grainy, and eventually, if you don’t prevent it, you get rock candy. But ingredients added to sugar syrup before boiling can keep that moment of crystallization from occurring. Common interfering agents are corn syrup, glucose, and honey; cream of tartar, lemon juice, or vinegar.

If it’s not candy you’re trying to prevent from becoming crystal clear-but, instead, your life-well, the best interfering agent is always a lie well told.

CARAMEL

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup water

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

¼ teaspoon lemon juice

CUSTARD

1½ cups whole milk

1½ cups light whipping cream

3 large eggs

2 large egg yolks

2/3 cup sugar

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

You can make one large crème caramel, but I like to make individual ones in ramekins. To make the caramel, mix the sugar, water, corn syrup, and lemon juice in a medium nonreactive saucepan (a light-colored one, so you can see the color of the syrup). Simmer over medium-high heat, wiping the sides of the pan with a wet cloth to make sure there are no sugar crystals lurking that might cause crystallization. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the syrup turns from clear to gold, swirling the pan to make sure browning occurs evenly. Continue to cook for another 4 to 5 minutes, swirling the pan constantly, until large bubbles on the mixture’s surface turn honey-colored. Remove the pan immediately from the heat and pour a portion of the caramel into each of eight ungreased 5-or 6-ounce ovenproof ramekins. Allow the caramel to cool and harden, about 15 minutes. (Ramekins can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to two days, but return them to room temperature before you move on to the next step.)

To make the custard, heat the milk and cream in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until a thermometer in the liquid reads 160 degrees F. Remove the mixture from the heat. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar in a large bowl until just combined. Whisk the warm milk mixture, vanilla, and salt into the egg mixture until just mixed but not foamy. Strain the mixture through a mesh sieve into a large measuring cup and set it aside.

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. Meanwhile, fold a dish towel to fit the bottom of a large roasting pan. Divide the reserved custard mixture among the ramekins and place the filled ramekins in the pan, making sure they do not touch. Set the pan on the center rack of a preheated 350 degree F oven. Fill the pan with boiling water to reach halfway up the ramekins and cover the entire pan loosely with aluminum foil, so that steam can escape. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until a paring knife inserted halfway between the center and edge of the custard comes out clean.

Transfer the custards to a wire rack and cool to room temperature. To unmold, slide a paring knife around the outer edge of each custard, hold a serving plate over the top of the ramekin, invert, and shake gently to release the custard. Serve immediately.

Charlotte

August 2008

The 2008 Biennial Osteogenesis Imperfecta Convention was being held in Omaha, at a huge Hilton with a conference center, a big pool, and over 570 people who looked like you. As we walked into the registration area, I suddenly felt like a giant, and you turned to me from your wheelchair with the biggest smile on your face. “Mom,” you said, “I’m normal here.”

We’d never been to a conference before. We’d never been able to find the money to come to one. But Sean had not slept at our house in months-and although you hadn’t asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer. Frankly, neither did I. Sean and I had not used the word separation, but just because you didn’t put a name to something did not mean it wasn’t there. Sometimes, I caught myself wondering what Sean would like for dinner, or picking up the phone to call his cell before I remembered not to. Your face lit up when he came to visit you; I wanted to give you something else to look forward to. So when the flyer for this conference came via email from the OI Foundation, I knew that I’d found the perfect prize.

Now, as I watched you eyeing a phalanx of girls your age roll by in their own wheelchairs, I realized we should have done this earlier. Even Amelia wasn’t making any sarcastic remarks-just taking in the small groups of people in wheelchairs, walkers, or on their own two feet, greeting each other like long-lost relatives. There were preteen girls-some who looked like Amelia, others who were short of stature, like you-taking pictures of each other with disposable cameras. Boys the same age were terrorizing the escalators, teaching each other how to ride their wheelchairs up and down them.

A little girl with black ringlets walked up to you, her braces jingling. “You’re new,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Willow.”

“I’m Niamh. It’s a weird name because there’s no v but it sounds like there is. You’ve got a weird name, too.” She looked up at Amelia. “Is this your sister? Does she have OI?”

“No.”

“Huh,” Niamh said. “Well, that’s too bad for her. The coolest programs are for kids like us.”

There were forty information sessions over a three-day weekend-everything from “Financial Planning for Your Special-Needs Child” to “Writing the IEP” and “Ask a Doctor.” You had your own Kids’ Club events-arts and crafts, scavenger hunts, swimming, video game competitions, how to be more independent, how to improve your self-esteem. I hadn’t been too keen on giving you up for a day’s activities, but they were staffed by nurses. Preteens with OI had Game Night, and The Adventures of Bone Boy and Milk Maid. Even Amelia could attend special talks for non-OI siblings.

“Niamh, there you are!” A teenage girl who looked about Amelia’s age came closer with a pack of kids trailing behind her. “You can’t just run off,” she said, grasping Niamh’s hand. “Who’s your friend?”

“Willow.”

The older girl crouched down so that she was eye level with you in your chair. “Nice to meet you, Willow. We’re just across the lobby over there playing Spit if you want to join us.”

“Can I?” you asked.

“If you’re careful. Amelia, can you push her-”

“I’ve got it.” A boy stepped forward and took the handles of your chair. He had dirty blond hair that swept into his eyes and a smile that could have melted a glacier-or Amelia, at whom he kept staring. “Unless you’re coming?”

Amelia, to my disbelief, blushed.

“Maybe later,” she said.

Although there had been handicapped-accessible rooms blocked out at the hotel, we didn’t book one. Amelia and I didn’t particularly want a roll-in shower, and the idea of using a loaner shower seat for you made my skin crawl. You could easily clean up in the bathtub and wash your hair under the faucet. We’d attended the keynote speech, which was about current research on OI, and gone to a sprawling buffet dinner-one that included low tables so that wheelchair users or very small people could see and reach the food.

“Lights out,” I said, and Amelia buried herself under the covers, the iPod buds still in her ears. The screen glowed beneath the sheets. You rolled onto your side, your face already wreathed in dreams. “I love it here,” you said. “I want to stay here forever.”

I smiled. “Well, it won’t be much fun when all your OI friends go back home.”

“Can we come again?”

“I hope so, Wills.”

“Next time, can Dad come with us?”

I stared at the digital alarm clock as one number bled into the next. “I hope so,” I repeated.

This is how we wound up coming to the convention:

One morning, when you and Amelia were at school, I was baking. It was what I did when you were gone now; there was a Zen rhythm to beating together the sugar and the shortening, to folding in the egg whites, to scalding the milk. My kitchen steamed with the smells of vanilla and caramel, cinnamon and anise. I’d whisk royal icing; I’d roll out perfect pie crusts; I’d punch down dough. The more my hands moved, the less likely I was to let my mind wander.

Back then, it had been March-two months since Sean opted out of the lawsuit. For a few weeks after our row in the middle of the highway, I’d left the pillows and bedding on the fireplace hearth, a just-in-case, as close as I could come to an apology. He came to the house every now and then to see you girls, but when he did, I felt like I was intruding. I would balance my checkbook, I would clean the bathroom, while listening to your laughter downstairs.

This is what I wish I’d had the guts to say to him: I made a mistake, but so did you. Aren’t we even now?

Sometimes I missed Sean viscerally. Sometimes I was angry at him. Sometimes I just wanted to turn back time, to go back to the moment he had asked, What do you think about a vacation to Disney World? But mostly I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet. Even when I felt sure of myself and confident, even when I started to think that you girls and I would be fine on our own, I still loved him. It felt like anything else permanent that has gone missing: a lost tooth, a severed leg. You might know better, but that doesn’t keep your tongue from poking at the hole in your gum, or your phantom limb from aching.

So every morning I baked to forget, until the windows steamed and just breathing felt like sitting down at the finest table. I baked until my hands were red and raw and my nails were caked with flour. I baked until I stopped wondering why a lawsuit could move so exceedingly slowly. I baked until I didn’t wonder where next month’s mortgage payment would come from. I baked until it grew so hot in the kitchen that I wore only a tank top and jogging shorts under my apron, until I imagined myself under the golden dome of a flaky crust of my own making, wondering if Sean would break through before I suffocated.

Which is why I was stunned when the doorbell rang in the middle of a fleet of beignets. I was not expecting anyone-I had nothing to expect anymore, period. On the porch stood a stranger, making me even more aware of the fact that I was only half dressed and my hair was grayed with confectioners’ sugar.

“Are you Ms. Syllabub?” the man asked.

He was short and round, with a double chin and a matching curve to his receding hairline. He was holding a plastic bag full of my shortbread, tied with a green ribbon.

“That’s just a name,” I said. “But it’s not mine.”

“But-” He glanced at my attire. “You’re the baker?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m the baker.” Not the gold digger, not the bitch, not even the mother. Something separate and apart, an identity as bright and clear as stainless steel. I held out my hand. “Charlotte O’Keefe.”

He planted his feet squarely on the doormat. “I’d like to buy your pastries.”

“Oh, you didn’t need to come up here for that,” I said. “You can just leave a couple of dollars in the honesty box.”

“No, you don’t understand. I want to buy all of them.” He handed me a card, the kind with raised lettering. “My name’s Henry DeVille. I run a chain of Gas-n-Get convenience stores in New Hampshire, and I’d like to feature your baked goods.” He flushed. “Mostly because I can’t stop eating them.”

“Really?” I said, a slow smile breaking over my face.

“I was visiting my sister one day last month-she lives two roads up from here, but I had gotten lost, and I was starving. And since then I’ve made eight two-hour treks just to get whatever it is you’re selling on a particular day. I may not be the best judge of business, but I’m pretty much a Ph.D. when it comes to good desserts.”

It had taken me a week to agree. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to drive all over New Hampshire delivering muffins in the morning; I didn’t know how much I could promise to produce. For every caveat I raised, Henry had a solution, and within a week I had run a draft contract past Marin that was sweet enough to get me to agree. To celebrate, I baked Henry an almond-blueberry coffeecake. He sat at my kitchen table, drinking coffee, eating cake with a newly minted businesswoman. “I’ve tried to pinpoint it,” he mused, watching me sign the contract. “There’s a certain something in your cooking that’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted. It’s addictive, really.”

I smiled at him as best I could and pushed the paper across the table before he could change his mind. Because Henry DeVille was correct-there was an ingredient in my baking more concentrated than any extract, more pungent than any spice; an ingredient that everyone would recognize and no one was able to name: it was regret, and it rose when one least expected.

The next morning, as part of the Be Fit! campaign that headed this year’s festival, you and I headed down to the exercise course, where participants could wheel or walk a quarter or a half mile. When you finished, clutching a certificate close to your chest, we had a quick breakfast before the day’s small group sessions. Amelia was sleeping in, but I was planning to attend a workshop on body image for young girls with OI.

As soon as you were welcomed back to the Kids’ Zone-the nurse who gave you a high five, I noticed, had gotten you to lift your right arm higher than any physical therapist in the past four months-I headed to the ladies’ room to wash my hands before the session began. Like every thing else at the hotel, the restrooms were OI-friendly: the outer door was propped open for easy access; a low table held extra soap and towels.

As I ran the faucet, another woman entered, carrying a glass of milk-it was being served as part of the overall theme of keeping healthy; the problem with OI is a deficiency in collagen, not calcium. “I love this,” she said, grinning. “It’s got to be the only conference that serves milk between the sessions instead of coffee and juice.”

“It was probably cheaper than shots of pamidronate,” I said, and she laughed.

“I don’t think we’ve met yet. I’m Kelly Clough, mother of David, Type V.”

“Willow, Type III. I’m Charlotte O’Keefe.”

“Is Willow having fun?”

“Willow’s in heaven,” I said. “She can barely wait to go to the zoo tonight.” The Henry Doorly Zoo was opening their facility after hours for the convention participants tonight; during breakfast, you had made a list of what animals you wanted to see.

“For David it’s all about swimming.” She glanced at me in the mirror. “There’s something about you that’s really familiar.”

“Well, I’ve never been to a convention before,” I said.

“No, your name…”

There was a flush, and a moment later, a woman our age came out of a room stall. She positioned her walker in front of the handicap-accessible sink and turned on the water. “Do you read Tiny Tim’s blog?” she asked.

“Sure,” Kelly said. “Who doesn’t?”

Well. Me, for one.

“She’s the one who’s suing for wrongful birth.” The woman turned, wiping her hands on a towel before facing me. “I think it’s disgusting, frankly. And I think it’s even more disgusting that you’re here. You can’t play both sides. You can’t sue because a life with OI isn’t worth living and then come here and talk about how excited your daughter is to be with other kids like her and how great it is that she can go to the zoo.”

Kelly had taken a step backward. “That’s you?”

“I didn’t mean-”

“I can’t believe any parent would think that way,” Kelly said. “We all have to scrape the bottoms of our bank accounts to make things work. But I never, ever would wish I hadn’t had my son.”

I felt myself shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to be a mother, like Kelly, who took her son’s disability in stride. I wanted you to grow up like this other woman, forthright and confident. I just also wanted the resources for you to be able to do it.

“Do you know what I’ve spent the past six months doing?” the woman with OI said. “Training for the Paralympics. I’m on the swim team. If your daughter came home with a gold medal one day, would that convince you her life wasn’t a waste?”

“You don’t understand-”

“Actually,” Kelly said, “you don’t.”

She turned on her heel, walking out of the restroom with the other woman trailing behind. I turned the water on full blast and splashed some onto my face, which felt as if it had gone up in flames. Then, with my heart still hammering, I stepped into the hallway.

The nine o’clock sessions were filling. My cover had been blown; I could feel the needles of a hundred eyes on me, and every whisper held my name. I kept my gaze trained on the patterned carpet as I pushed past a knot of wrestling boys and a toddler being carried by a girl with OI not much bigger than himself. A hundred steps to the elevators…fifty…twenty.

The elevator doors opened, and I slipped inside and punched a button. Just as the doors were closing, a crutch jammed between them. The man who had signed us in yesterday was standing on the threshold, but instead of smiling at me in welcome, like he had twelve hours earlier, his eyes were dark as pitch. “Just so you know-it’s not my disability that makes my life a constant struggle,” he said. “It’s people like you.” Then, with a rasping of metal, he stepped back and let the elevator doors close.

I made it to the room and slid the key card inside, only to remember that Amelia was probably still sleeping. But-thank God-she was gone, downstairs eating breakfast or AWOL, and right now I didn’t care which. I lay down on the bed and pulled the covers over my head. Then, finally, I let myself burst into tears.

This was worse than being judged by a jury of my peers. This was being judged by a jury of your peers.

I was, pure and simple, a failure. My husband had left me; my moth ering skills had been warped to include the American legal system. I cried until my eyes had swollen and my cheeks hurt. I cried until there was nothing left inside me. Then I sat up and walked to the small desk near the window.

It held a phone, a blotter, and a binder listing the services offered by the hotel. Inside this were two postcards and two blank fax cover sheets. I took them out and reached for the pen beside the telephone.

Sean, I wrote. I miss you.

Until he moved out, Sean and I had never spent any time apart from each other, unless you counted the week before our wedding. Although he’d moved into the house where Amelia and I lived, I had wanted to create at least the semblance of excitement, so he’d bunked on the couch of another police officer in the days leading up to the ceremony. He’d hated it. I’d find him driving by in his cruiser while I was at work at the restaurant, and we’d sneak into the cold room in the kitchen and kiss intensely. Or he’d stop by to tuck Amelia in at night and then pretend to fall asleep on the couch watching TV. I’m onto you, I told him. And this isn’t going to work. At the ceremony, Sean surprised me with vows he’d written himself: I’ll give you my heart and my soul, he said. I’ll protect you and serve you. I’ll give you a home, and I won’t let you kick me out of it ever again. Everyone laughed, including me-imagine, mousy little Charlotte being the kind of sultry seductress who’d have that much control over a man! But Sean made me feel like I could fell a giant with a single word or a gentle touch. It was powerful, and it was a me I had never imagined.

Somewhere, in the deep creases of my mind-the folds where hope gets caught-I believed that whatever was wrong between Sean and me was reparable. It had to be, because when you love someone-when you create a child with him-you don’t just suddenly lose that bond. Like any other energy, it can’t be destroyed, just channeled into something else. And maybe right now I’d turned the full spotlight of my attention on you. But that was normal; the levels of love within a family shifted and flowed all the time. Next week, it could be Amelia; next month, Sean. Once this lawsuit was over, he’d move back home. We’d go back to the way we used to be.

We had to, because I couldn’t really swallow the alternative: that I would be forced to choose between your future and my own.

The second letter I had to write was harder. Dear Willow, I wrote.

I don’t know when you’ll be reading this, or what will have happened by then. But I have to write it, because I owe you an explanation more than anyone else. You are the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to me, and the most painful. Not because of your illness, but because I can’t fix it, and I hate seeing those moments when you realize that you might not be able to do what other kids do.

I love you, and I always will. Maybe more than I should. That’s the only reason I can give for all this. I thought that if I loved you hard enough, I could move mountains for you; I could make you fly. It didn’t matter to me how that happened-just as long as it did. I wasn’t thinking of who I might hurt, only who I could rescue.

The first time you broke in my arms, I couldn’t stop crying. I think I’ve spent all these years trying to make up for that moment. That’s why I can’t stop now, even though there are times I want to. I can’t stop, but there isn’t a moment I don’t worry about what you’ll remember in the long run. Will it be the arguments I had with your father? The way your sister turned into someone we didn’t recognize? Or will you remember the way you and I once spent an hour watching a snail cross our porch? Or how I cut your lunch-box sandwiches into your initials? Will you remember how, when I wrapped you in a towel after your bath, I held you a moment longer than it took to dry you?

I have always had a dream of you living on your own. I see you as a doctor, and I wonder if that’s because I’ve seen you with so many. I imagine a man who will love you like crazy, maybe even a baby. I bet you’ll fight for her as fiercely as I tried to fight for you.

What I could never puzzle out, however, was how you’d get from where you are to where you might one day be-until I was given the materials to make a bridge. Too late I learned that that bridge was made of thorns, that it might not be strong enough to hold us all.

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance. I am not sure how I came to measure your life by the mo ments when it’s fallen apart-surgeries, breaks, emergencies-instead of the moments in between. Maybe that makes me a pessimist, maybe it makes me a realist. Or maybe it just makes me a mother.

You will hear people saying things about me. Some are lies, some are truth. There’s only one fact that matters: I don’t want you to ever suffer another break.

Especially one between you and me, because that might never set properly.

Sean

I was hemorrhaging money.

Not only was my paycheck being stretched to cover the mortgage and the car payment and the credit card finance charges but now any cash I might have been able to sock away was being poured, forty-nine dollars per night, into the Sleep Inn motel, where I’d been living since the day Charlotte came to ream me out at the highway construction detail.

This is why, when Charlotte told me she was leaving one Friday to take the girls to an OI convention for the weekend, I checked out of the Sleep Inn and let myself into my own house.

It’s a weird thing, coming back home as a stranger. You know how, when you go into someone else’s house, it smells-sometimes like fresh laundry, sometimes like pine needles, but distinct from any other? You don’t notice it where you live until you haven’t been there for a while. The first night, I’d walked around soaking in the familiar: the newel post on the banister that still popped off because I’d never gotten around to fixing it; the herd of stuffed animals on your bed; the baseball I’d caught while on a trip to Fenway with a bunch of other cops back in ’90, a Tom Brunansky homer to center field in a game that put the Sox in first place over Toronto for the season.

I went into my bedroom, too, and sat down on Charlotte’s side of the bed. That night, I slept on her pillow.

The next morning, as I packed up my toiletries, I wondered if Charlotte would go to wash her face and be able to smell the scent of me on the towels. If she’d notice that I’d finished off the loaf of bread and the roast beef. If she’d care.

It was my day off, and I knew what I had to do.

The church was quiet at this time on a Saturday morning. I sat down in a pew, looking up at a stained-glass window that reached long, blue fingers down the aisle.

Forgive me, Charlotte, for I have sinned.

Father Grady, who was close to the altar, noticed me. “Sean,” he said. “Is Willow all right?”

He probably thought the only time I’d willingly set foot in a church was if I had to pray hard for my daughter’s failing health. “She’s doing okay, Father. I actually was hoping I could talk to you for a minute.”

“Sure.” He sank down into the pew in front of me, turning sideways.

“It’s about Charlotte,” I said slowly. “We’re having some problems seeing eye to eye.”

“I’m happy to talk to both of you,” the priest said.

“It’s been months. I think we’re past that point.”

“I hope you’re not talking about divorce, Sean. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church. It’s a mortal sin. God made your marriage, not some piece of paper.” He smiled at me. “Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God onboard.”

“God’s got to make exceptions every now and then.”

“No way. If He did, people would go into marriage thinking there was a way out when the going got tough.”

“My wife,” I said flatly, “plans to swear on a Bible in court and then say she wishes she’d aborted Willow. Do you think God would want me married to someone like that?”

“Yes,” the priest said immediately. “The biggest purpose of marriage, after having children, is to support and help your spouse. You might be the one who manages to make Charlotte see she’s wrong.”

“I tried. I can’t.”

“A sacrament-like marriage-means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you’re modeling God. And God never gives up.”

That, I thought to myself, wasn’t entirely true. There were plenty of places in the Bible where God backed Himself into a corner and, instead of toughing it out, simply started over. Look at the great flood, at Sodom and Gomorrah.

“Jesus didn’t get to drop that Cross,” Father Grady said. “He carried it all the way uphill.”

Well, in one respect the priest was right. If I stayed in this marriage, either Charlotte or I was going to wind up being crucified.

“How about you and Charlotte come see me together sometime next week?” Father Grady said. “We’ll figure this out.”

I nodded, and he patted my hand and headed toward the altar again.

Lying to a priest was a sin, too, but that was the least of my worries.

Adina Nettle’s office was nothing like Guy Booker’s, although they apparently had gone to law school together. Adina, Guy said, was the one you wanted if you were getting a divorce. He’d used her twice now himself.

She had overstuffed couches with those lacy things that look like they belong on valentines draped over the backs. She served tea but not coffee. And she looked like everybody’s grandmother.

Maybe that’s why she got what she wanted in settlements.

“You’re not too cold, Sean? I can turn down the air-conditioning…”

“I’m fine,” I said. For the past half hour, I’d drunk three cups of Earl Grey and told Adina about our family. “We go back and forth to different hospitals, depending on what the problem is,” I said. “Omaha, for orthopedics. Boston, for pamidronate. Local hospitals for most breaks.”

“It must be very difficult, not knowing what’s going to happen.”

“No one knows what’s going to happen,” I said soberly. “We just have emergencies more often than most folks.”

“Your wife must not be able to work, then,” Adina said.

“No. We’ve been trying to make ends meet ever since Willow was born.” I hesitated. “And I can’t say it’s any easier with me living in a motel.”

Adina made a note on her legal pad. “Sean, divorce is financially devastating to most people, and it’s going to be even more so for you, because you and Charlotte are living from paycheck to paycheck-plus you’ve got the added stressor of your daughter’s illness. And there’s a strange catch-22 here, too-if you want custody, that means you’re going to be working less, making even less money. When you’re not working, your children are with you. You won’t have any free time anymore.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said.

Adina nodded. “Does Charlotte have job skills?”

“She used to be a pastry chef,” I said. “She hasn’t worked since Willow was born, but last winter she started a little stand at the end of the driveway.”

“A stand?”

“Like a vegetable stand. But with cupcakes.”

“If you cut back on your hours to be with the children, will you be able to afford to keep the house? Or will it have to be sold so that you can have two smaller households?”

“I…I don’t know.” Our savings were shot to hell, that much was clear.

“Based on what you’ve told me, with all of Willow’s adaptive equipment and her schedule, it seems that keeping her in one location would be easier for everyone involved…even when it comes to visitation…” Adina glanced up at me. “There is one other option. You could live at the house until the divorce is finalized.”

“Wouldn’t that be-a little uncomfortable?”

“Yes. It’s also cheaper, which is why a majority of couples who are in the process of divorcing choose to do it. And it’s easier on the children.”

“I don’t get it-”

“It’s very simple. We draw up a negotiated plan, so that you’re in the house when your wife isn’t and vice versa. That way you each have time with the girls while the divorce is pending, and the household expenses are no greater than they are right now.”

I looked down at the floor. I didn’t know if I could be that generous. I didn’t know if I could stand to see Charlotte in the thick of this lawsuit and not want to kill her for the things she said. But then again, I would be right there, a call away, if you needed someone to hold you in the middle of the night. If you needed reinforcement to believe that the world would not be anywhere near as bright without you in it.

“There’s only one catch,” Adina said. “It’s not ordinary in New Hampshire for a father to get physical possession of a child, especially in a case where the child has special needs and the mother has been a stay-at-home caretaker the child’s whole life. So how are you going to convince a judge that you’re the better parent?”

I met the lawyer’s eye. “I’m not the one who started a wrongful birth lawsuit,” I said.

After I walked out of the attorney’s office, the world seemed different. The road looked too clear, the colors too jarring. It was like getting a pair of glasses that were overcorrected, and I felt myself moving more carefully.

At a stoplight, I looked out the window and saw a young woman crossing the street with a cup of coffee in her hand. She caught my eye and smiled. In the past, I would have looked away, embarrassed-but now? Were you allowed to smile back, to look, to acknowledge other women, if you’d taken the first steps to ending your marriage?

I had two hours before my shift started, and I headed toward Aubuchon Hardware. The irony didn’t escape me-I was shopping at a home improvement mecca, although I didn’t currently have a home. But while staying in the house this weekend, I’d noticed that the ramp I’d built for your wheelchair three years ago was rotting out in one spot where we had some standing water this spring. My plan was to build you a new one today, so you’d see it when you returned from your conference.

The way I figured it, I’d need three or four sheets of three-quarter-inch pressure-treated plywood, plus a stretch of indoor-outdoor carpeting to give traction under the wheels of your chair. I headed for the service desk to try to estimate the cost. “You’re talking about $34.10 a sheet,” the employee said, and I found myself backpedaling through the math. If the wood alone cost over a hundred bucks, I’d have to work more overtime, and that wasn’t even counting the cost of the carpet material. The more hours I spent at work, the less I would have with you girls. The more money I spent on the ramp, the less I’d have for another night’s motel room.

“Sean?”

Piper Reece was standing three feet away.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, but before I could answer, she held up her hands, revealing a packet of wire connectors and a GFCI receptacle. “I’m replacing one. I’ve been pretty handy lately, but this is the first time I’ve fooled around with electricity.” She laughed nervously. “I keep seeing the headline: ‘Woman Found Electrocuted in Her Own Kitchen. Counter was not clean at the time of death.’ It’s supposed to be easy, right? Like, the chances of being zapped during a do-it-yourself project can’t be nearly as high as the chances of getting into a car accident on your way to the hardware store, right?” She shook her head and blushed. “I’m babbling.”

I’ve got to go. The words were in my mouth, smooth and round like cherry pits, but what came out was this: “I could help you.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid ass. That’s what I kept telling myself I was, once the back of my truck was loaded with three sheets of pressure-treated plywood and carpeting and I was headed to Piper Reece’s house. There was no real explanation for why I hadn’t simply turned my back and walked away from her except for this: in all the years I’d known Piper, I’d never seen her as anything but confident and self-assured-to the point where she was too sharp, too arrogant. Today, though, she’d been completely flustered.

I liked her better this way.

I knew the way to her house, of course. When I pulled onto her street, I experienced the slightest panic-would Rob be home? I didn’t think I could handle both of them at once. But his car was gone, and as I turned off the engine, I took a deep breath. Five minutes, I told myself. Install the freaking GFCI and get out of there.

Piper was waiting at the front door. “This is really so nice of you,” she said as I stepped inside.

The hallway hadn’t always been this color. And when I walked into it, I saw that the kitchen had been remodeled. “You’ve had some work done in here.”

“Actually, I did it myself,” Piper admitted. “I’ve had a lot more time lately.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over us like a shroud. “Well. Everything looks completely different.”

She stared at me. “Everything is completely different.”

I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “So the first thing you have to do is cut off the power at the circuit box,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s in the basement?”

She led me downstairs, and I switched off the breaker. Then I walked into the kitchen. “Which one is it?” I asked, and Piper pointed.

“Sean? How are you doing?”

I deliberately pretended to hear her incorrectly. “Just taking out the busted one,” I said. “Look, it’s that easy, once you unscrew it. And then you have to take all the white wires and pigtail them together into one of these little caps. After that, you take the new GFCI and use your screwdriver to connect the pigtail over here-see where it says ‘white line’?”

Piper leaned closer. Her breath smelled of coffee and remorse. “Yes.”

“Do the same thing with the black wires, and connect them to the terminal that says ‘hot line.’ And last of all, you connect the grounding wire to the green screw and stuff it all back into the box.” With the screwdriver, I reattached the cover plate and turned to her. “Simple.”

“Nothing’s simple,” she said, and she stared at me. “But you know that. Like, for example, crossing over to the dark side.”

I put the screwdriver down gently. “It’s all the dark side, Piper.”

“Well, still. I feel like I owe you a thank-you.”

I shrugged, looking away. “I’m really sorry this all happened to you.”

“I’m really sorry it happened to you,” Piper answered.

I cleared my throat, took a step backward. “You probably want to go down and throw the breaker, so you can test the outlet.”

“That’s all right,” Piper said, and she offered me a shy smile. “I think it’s going to work.”

Amelia

Okay, let me just tell you that it’s not easy to keep a secret in close quarters. My house was bad enough, but have you ever noticed how thin the walls of a hotel bathroom are? I mean, you can hear everything-which meant that when I needed to make myself sick, I had to do it in the big public restrooms in the lobby, which required sitting in a stall until I could peek left and right and not see any other pairs of shoes.

After I’d gotten up this morning and found a note from Mom, I’d gone downstairs to eat and then found you in the kids’ area. “Amelia,” you said when you saw me. “Aren’t those cool?” You were pointing to little colored rods that some of the kids had affixed to the wheels of their chairs. They made an annoying clicking sound when you pushed, which to be honest would get awfully old awfully quick, but-to be fair-they were pretty awesome when they glowed in the dark.

I could practically see you taking mental notes as you sized up the other kids with OI. Who had which color wheelchair, who put stickers on their walkers, which girls could walk and which ones had to use a chair, which kids could eat by themselves and which needed help being fed. You were placing yourself in the mix, figuring out where you fit in and how independent you were by comparison. “So what’s on the docket for this morning?” I asked. “And where’s Mom?”

“I don’t know-I guess at one of the other meetings,” you said, and then you beamed at me. “We’re going swimming. I’ve already got on my bathing suit.”

“That sounds kind of fun-”

“You can’t come, Amelia. It’s for people like me.”

I knew you didn’t mean to sound like such a snot, but it still hurt to be cut out. I mean, who else was left to ignore me? First Mom, then Emma, now even my little disabled sister was dissing me. “Well, I wasn’t inviting myself,” I said, stung. “I have somewhere to go anyway.” But I watched you wheel yourself into the pack as one of the nurses called the first group of kids to head toward the pool. You were giggling, whispering with a girl who had a bumper sticker on the back of her chair: HOGWARTS DROPOUT.

I wandered out of the kiddie zone and into the main hallway of conference rooms. I had no idea what presentation my mother was planning to attend, but before I could even think about that, one of the signs outside the doors caught my attention: TEENS ONLY. I poked my head inside and saw a collection of kids my age with OI-some in wheelchairs, some just standing-batting around balloons.

Except they weren’t balloons. They were condoms.

“We’re going to get started,” the woman in the front of the room said. “Hon, can you close the door?”

She was, I realized, talking to me. I didn’t belong here-there were special programs for siblings like me who didn’t have OI. But then again, looking around the room, I could see there were plenty of kids who weren’t as bad off as you were-maybe no one would know my bones were perfectly fine.

Then I noticed the boy from yesterday-the one who’d come over to get that little girl Niamh when we were still registering. He looked like the kind of guy who would play the guitar and make up songs about the girl he loved. I’d always thought it would be amazing to have a guy sing to me; although what on earth could he find interesting enough about me to write a song about? Amelia, Amelia…take off your shirt and let me feel ya?

I stepped into the room and closed the door behind me. The boy grinned, and I lost all sensation in my legs.

I sat down on a stool beside him and pretended I was far too cool to notice the fact that he was close enough for me to feel his body heat. “Welcome,” the woman at the front of the room said. “I’m Sarah, and if you’re not here for Birds and Bees and Breaks, you’re in the wrong place. Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to talk about sex, sex, and nothing but sex.”

There was some edgy laughter; the tips of my ears started to burn.

“Nothing like beating around the bush,” the boy beside me said, and then he smiled. “Oops. Bad metaphor.”

I looked around, but he was very clearly speaking to me. “Very bad,” I whispered.

“I’m Adam,” he said, and I froze. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”

Well, yeah, but if I told it to him, he might know I wasn’t supposed to be here. “Willow.”

God, that smile again. “That’s a really pretty name,” he said. “It suits you.”

I stared down at the table and blushed furiously. This was a talk about sex, not a lab where we got to do it. And yet, no one had ever said anything to me even remotely resembling a come-on, unless Hey, dork, do you have an extra pencil? counted. Was I subliminally irresistible to Adam because my bones were strong?

“Who can guess what your number one risk is if you have OI and you have sex?” Sarah asked.

A girl’s hand inched up. “Breaking your pelvis?”

The boys behind me snickered. “Actually,” Sarah said, “I have talked to hundreds of people with OI who are sexually active. And the only person I’ve ever known to break a bone during sex did it by falling off the bed.”

This time, everyone laughed out loud.

“If you have OI, the biggest risk in sexual activity is acquiring a sexually transmitted disease, which means”-she looked around the room-“you’re no different from someone without OI who has sex.”

Adam pushed a piece of paper across the table to me. I unfolded it: R U Type I?

I knew enough about your illness to understand why he’d think that. There were people who had Type I OI who went through their whole lives not even knowing it-just breaking a few more bones than ordinary folks. Then again, there were other Type I’s who broke as many bones as you did. Often, Type I’s were taller, and they didn’t always have those heart-shaped faces that you saw on Type IIIs, like you. I was normal height; I wasn’t in a wheelchair, I didn’t have any scoliosis-and I was in a session for kids with OI. Of course he thought I had Type I.

I scribbled on the other side of the paper and passed it back: Actually, I’m a Gemini.

He had really nice teeth. Yours were kind of messed up-that hap pened a lot with OI kids, along with hearing loss-but his looked all Hollywood white and perfectly even, like he could have starred in a Disney Channel movie.

“What about getting pregnant?” a girl asked.

“Anyone with OI-any type-can get pregnant,” Sarah explained. “Your risks would vary, though, depending on your individual situation.”

“Would the baby have OI, too?”

“Not necessarily.”

I thought of that picture I’d seen in the magazine, of the lady with Type III who’d had a baby in her arms nearly the same size as she was. The problem wasn’t with the plumbing, though. It was with the partner. Every day wasn’t an OI convention; each of these kids was probably the only one with OI in his or her school. I tried to fast-forward you to my age. If I couldn’t even get a guy to notice my existence, how would you-tiny, freakishly smart, in your wheelchair or walker? I felt my hand rising, as if a balloon were attached to the wrist. “There’s just one problem with that,” I said. “What if nobody ever wants to have sex with you?”

Instead of the laughter I expected, there was dead silence. I looked around, stunned. Was I not the only person my age absolutely positively sure I was going to die a virgin?

“That,” Sarah said, “is a really good question. How many of you had a boyfriend or girlfriend when you were in fifth or sixth grade?” A smattering of hands rose. “How many of you have had a boyfriend or girlfriend after that?”

Two hands, out of twenty.

“A lot of kids who don’t have OI will be put off by a wheelchair, or by the fact that you don’t look the same way they do. And it’s totally clichéd, but believe me, those are the kids you don’t want to be with anyway. You want someone who cares about who you are, not what you are. And even if you have to wait for that, it’s going to be worth it. All you have to do is look around you at this convention to see that people with OI fall in love, get married, have sex, get pregnant-not necessarily in that order.” As the room broke up laughing again, she began to walk among us, handing out condoms and bananas.

Maybe this was a lab after all.

I had seen couples here who clearly both had OI; I’d seen couples where one partner did and one didn’t. If someone able-bodied fell in love with you, maybe it would take some of the stress off Mom, eventually. Would you come back to a convention like this and flirt with a kid like Adam? Or one of the wild boys who rode his wheelchair up and down the escalator? I couldn’t imagine that was easy on any account-not practically, on a daily basis, and not emotionally, either. Having another person with OI in your life meant you had to worry about yourself and about someone else.

Then again, maybe that had nothing to do with OI, and everything to do with love.

“I think we’re supposed to be partners,” Adam said, and just like that, I couldn’t breathe. Then I realized he was talking about the stupid banana and condom. “You want to go first?”

I tore open the foil packet. Can you see someone’s pulse? Because mine was certainly banging hard enough under my skin.

I started to unroll the condom along the length of the banana. It got all bunched up on top. “I don’t think that’s right,” Adam said.

“Then you do it.”

He peeled off the condom and tore open a second foil packet. I watched him balance the little disk at the top of the banana and smooth it down the length in one easy motion. “Oh, my God,” I said. “You are way too good at that.”

“That’s because my sex life consists entirely of fruit right now.”

I smirked. “I find that hard to believe.”

Adam met my gaze. “Well, I find it hard to believe you have a hard time finding someone who wants to have sex with you.”

I grabbed the banana out of his hand. “Did you know a banana is a reproductive organ of the plant it grows on?”

God, I sounded like an idiot. I sounded like you, spouting off your trivia.

“Did you know grapes explode if you put them in the microwave?” Adam said.

“Really?”

“Totally.” He paused. “A reproductive organ?”

I nodded. “An ovary.”

“So where are you from?”

“New Hampshire,” I said. “How about you?”

I held my breath, thinking maybe he was from Bankton, too, and in the high school, which was why I hadn’t met him yet. “Anchorage,” Adam answered.

It figured.

“So you and your sister both have OI?”

He’d seen me with you in the wheelchair. “Yeah,” I said.

“That must be kind of nice. To have someone in the house who gets it, you know?” He grinned. “I’m an only child. My parents took one look at me and broke the mold.”

“Or the mold broke.” I laughed.

Sarah passed by our table and pointed to the banana. “Wonderful,” she said.

We were. Except for the fact that he thought my name was Willow and I had OI.

A makeshift game of condomball had broken out, as groups of kids batted the inflated condoms around the room. “Hey, isn’t Willow the name of that girl whose mom is suing because of her OI?” Adam asked.

“How did you know that?” I said, stunned.

“It’s all over the blogs. Don’t you read them?”

“I’ve…been busy.”

“I thought the girl was way younger-”

“Well, you thought wrong,” I interrupted.

Adam tilted his head. “You mean, it’s you?”

“Could you just kind of keep it quiet?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not something I feel like talking about.”

“I bet,” Adam said. “It must suck.”

I imagined how you must be feeling. You’d said a few things in our room, in those gray minutes before we fell asleep, but I think you kept a lot to yourself. I considered what it would be like to be noticed for only one trait-like being left-handed, or brunette, or double-jointed-instead of for the whole of you. Here was Sarah talking about finding someone who loved you for who you were, not what you appeared to be-and your own mother couldn’t even seem to manage it. “It’s like tug-of-war,” I said quietly, “and I’m the rope.”

Underneath the table, I felt Adam squeeze my hand. He threaded our fingers together, his knuckles locking against mine. “Adam,” I whispered, as Sarah started to speak about STDs and hymens and premature ejaculation, and we continued to hold hands under the table. I felt as if I had a star in my throat, as if all I had to do was open my mouth for light to pour out of me. “What if someone sees us?”

He turned his head; I felt his breath on the curve of my ear. “Then they’ll think I’m the luckiest guy in this room.”

With those words, my body became electric, with all the power generating from the place our palms touched. I didn’t hear another word Sarah said for the next thirty minutes. I couldn’t think of anything but how different Adam’s skin was from mine and how close he was and how he wasn’t letting go.

It wasn’t a date, but it wasn’t not a date, either. We were both planning on going to the zoo for that evening’s family activity, so Adam made me promise to meet him at the orangutans at six o’clock.

Okay, he asked Willow to meet him there.

You were so excited about going to the zoo that you could barely sit still the whole minibus ride over there. We didn’t have a zoo in New Hampshire, and the one near Boston was nothing to write home about. We’d been planning to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom during our vacation at Disney World, but you remember how that turned out. Unlike you, my mother was practically a china statue. She stared straight ahead on the minibus and didn’t try to talk to anyone, as opposed to yesterday, when she was Miss Chatty. She looked like she might shatter if the driver hit a speed bump too fast.

Then again, she wouldn’t be the only one.

I kept checking my watch so often that I felt like Cinderella. Actually, I felt like Cinderella for a lot of reasons. Except instead of wearing a glittery blue dress, I was borrowing your identity and your illness, and my prince happened to be someone who’d broken forty-two bones.

“Apes,” you announced as soon as we crossed through the gates of the zoo. They’d opened the place for the OI convention after normal business hours, which was cool because it felt like we’d been trapped here after the gates had been locked for the night, and practical because I’m sure it was-well-a zoo during the day, and most people with OI would have been bobbing and weaving to avoid being knocked by the crowds. I grabbed your chair and started to push you up a slight incline, which was when I realized there was something really wrong with my mother.

She normally would have looked at me as if I’d grown a second head and asked why I was volunteering to push your chair when usually I whined bloody murder if she even asked me to unlatch your stupid car seat.

Instead, she just marched along like a zombie. If I’d asked her what animals we passed, I bet she would have just turned to me and said Huh?

I pushed you up close to the wall to see the orangutans, but you had to stand to see over it. You balanced yourself against the low concrete barrier, your eyes lighting when you saw the mother and her baby. The mother orangutan was cradling the teeniest little ape I’d ever seen, and another baby that was probably a few years old kept pestering her, pulling at her tail and swinging a foot in front of them and being a total pain in the butt. “It’s us,” you said, delighted. “Look, Amelia!”

But I was busy glancing all around for Adam. It was six o’clock on the dot. What if he was blowing me off? What if I couldn’t even keep a guy interested in me when I was pretending to be someone else?

Suddenly he was there, a fine sweat shining on his forehead. “Sorry,” he said. “The hill was killer.” He glanced at my mother and you, facing the orangutans. “Hey, that’s your family, right?”

I should have introduced him. I should have told my mother what I was doing. But what if you said my name-my real name-and Adam realized I was a total liar? So instead I grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled him off to a side path that wound past a flock of red parrots and a cage where there was supposed to be a mongoose, but apparently it was an invisible one. “Let’s just go,” I said, and we ran down to the aquarium.

Because of where it was tucked in the zoo, it wasn’t crowded. There was one family in there with a toddler in a spica cast-poor kid-looking at the penguins in their fake formal wear. “Do you think they know they’ve got a raw deal?” I asked. “That they’ve got wings, and can’t fly?”

“As opposed to a skeleton that keeps falling apart?” Adam said. He tugged me into another room, a glass tunnel. The light was blue, eerie; all around us, sharks were swimming. I looked up at the soft white belly of a shark, the ridged diamond rows of its teeth. At the hammerheads, wriggling like Star Wars creatures as they passed us by.

Adam leaned against the glass wall, staring up at the transparent ceiling. “I wouldn’t do that,” I said. “What if it breaks?”

“Then the Omaha zoo has a huge problem.” Adam laughed.

“Let’s see what else there is,” I said.

“What’s your rush?”

“I don’t like sharks,” I admitted. “They freak me out.”

“I think they’re awesome,” Adam said. “Not a single bone in their body.”

I stared at him, his face blue in the aquarium light. His eyes were the same color as the water, a deep, pure cobalt.

“Did you know that they hardly ever find shark fossils, because they’re made of cartilage, and they decompose really fast? I’ve always kind of wondered if that’s true of people like us, too.”

Because I am a moron, and destined to live alone my whole life with a dozen cats, at that very moment I burst into tears.

“Hey,” Adam said, pulling me into his arms, which felt like home and totally strange all at once. “I’m sorry. That was a really stupid thing to say.” One of his hands was on my back, rubbing down each pearl of my spine. One was tangled in my hair. “Willow?” he said, tugging on my ponytail so that I’d look up at him. “Talk to me?”

“I’m not Willow,” I burst out. “That’s my sister’s name. I don’t even have OI. I lied, because I wanted to sit in on that class. I wanted to sit next to you.”

His fingers curled around the back of my neck. “I know.”

“You…what?”

“I Googled your family, during the break after the sex class. I read all about your mom and the lawsuit and your sister, who’s just as young as they said she was on the OI blogs.”

“I’m a horrible person,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry I’m not the person you wanted me to be.”

Adam stared at me soberly. “No, you’re not. You’re better. You’re healthy. Who wouldn’t want that for someone you really, really like?”

And then, suddenly, his mouth was touching mine, and his tongue was touching mine, and even though I’d never done this and had only read about it in Seventeen, it wasn’t wet or gross or confusing. Somehow, I knew which way to turn and when to open and close my lips and how to breathe. His hands splayed on my shoulder blades, on the spot you’d once broken, on the place where I’d have wings if I had been born an angel.

The room was closing in around us, just blue water and those bone less sharks. And I realized that Sarah had gotten part of her sex talk wrong: it wasn’t fractures you had to worry about, it was dissolving-losing yourself willingly, blissfully, in someone else. Adam’s fingers were warm on my waist, skirting the bottom of my shirt, but I was afraid to touch him, afraid that I would hold him too tightly and hurt him.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispered, and he put my hand over his heart so that I could feel it beating.

I leaned forward and kissed him. And again. As if I were passing him all those silent words I could not say, the ones that explained my biggest secret: that I might not have OI but I knew how he felt. That I was breaking apart, too, all the time.

Charlotte

On the flight home from the convention, I formulated a plan. When I landed, I would call Sean and ask him if he could come over to talk. I would tell him that I wanted to fight for what we had between us, just as hard as I wanted to fight for your future. I would say that I needed to finish what I had started but that I didn’t think I could do it without his understanding, if not his support.

I’d tell him I loved him.

It was a strange trip. You were exhausted after three days of interaction with other OI kids, and you fell asleep immediately, still clutching the piece of paper that listed the email addresses of your new friends. Amelia had been brooding ever since we had gone to the zoo-although I assumed it was a residual effect of my frantic reprimand there after she disappeared for two full hours. Once we had landed and collected our luggage, I told you girls to use the restroom, since it was a long ride back from Logan Airport to Bankton. I instructed Amelia to help you if you needed it, and I stood guard over our luggage cart outside. I watched a few families pass by, little kids wearing Mickey Mouse ears, mothers and daughters with matching cornrows and deep tans, fathers dragging car seats. Everyone in an airport is either excited to be going somewhere or relieved to be back home.

I was neither.

I took out my cell phone and dialed Sean. He didn’t pick up, but then again, he rarely did when he was at work. “Hi,” I said. “It’s me. I just wanted to tell you we landed. And…I’ve been doing some thinking. Do you think you might be able to come over tonight? To talk?” I hesitated, as if I expected an answer then and there, but this was a one way conversation-not unlike all the others we’d had recently. “Well, anyway. I hope the answer’s yes. Bye,” I said, and I hung up the phone as you girls came out of the restroom, waiting for me to take the lead.

Mailboxes made the best breeding grounds: I was certain, sometimes, that in that dark, cozy tunnel bills multiplied exponentially. As soon as we got home, I sent you and Amelia up to your rooms to unpack your suitcases while I sorted through the mail.

It had not been in the box but, instead, left neatly in a pile on the counter for me. There was fresh milk and juice and eggs in the fridge, and the ramp you used to wheel yourself up to the front door had been rebuilt. Sean had been here while we were gone, and that made me think that maybe he was trying to wave a white flag, too.

There was a bill from the credit card company, with its astronomical finance charge. Another one from the hospital-copayments for a visit six months ago. There was an invoice for our insurance premium. A mortgage payment. A phone bill. A cable bill. I began to sort the stack into bills and nonbills, and you could probably guess which stack was taller.

In the nonbill pile were a few catalogs, some junk mail, a belated birthday card for Amelia from an ancient aunt who lived in Seattle, and a letter from the Rockingham County Family Court. I wondered if this had something to do with the trial, although Marin had told me that would take place in superior court.

I opened the letter and started to read.

In the Matter of Sean P. O’Keefe and Charlotte A. O’Keefe; Case Number 2008-R-0056

Dear Ms. Charlotte A. O’Keefe,

Please be advised that we have received in this office a Petition for Divorce in the above named matter. If you wish, you or your attorney may come to Rockingham County Family Court within ten days and accept service.

Until further order of the court, each party is restrained from selling, transferring, encumbering, hypothecating, concealing, or in any manner whatsoever disposing of any property, real or personal, belonging to either or both parties except (1) by written agreement of both parties or (2) for reasonable and necessary living expenses or (3) in the ordinary and usual course of business.

If you do not accept service within the ten days, the Petitioner may elect to have you served by alternate means.

Very truly yours,

Micah Healey, Coordinator

I did not realize I’d cried out until Amelia skidded into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

Amelia snatched the letter out of my hand before I could recover. “Dad wants a divorce?”

“I’m sure this is some kind of mistake,” I said, getting to my feet and retrieving the letter. Of course I had known it was coming, hadn’t I? When your husband moves out of the house for months, you cannot fool yourself into thinking all is normal. But still…I folded the letter in half, then folded it again. A magic trick, I thought desperately. And when I unfold it, all the writing will have disappeared.

“Where’s the mistake?” Amelia snapped. “Wake up, Mom. That’s a pretty clear way of saying he doesn’t feel like having you in his life anymore.” She hugged her arms tight across her middle. “Come to think of it, there’s a lot of that going around lately.”

She whirled around to storm upstairs, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t tell Willow,” I begged.

“She’s not nearly as dumb as you think. She can tell what’s going on, even when you try to hide it.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want her to know. Please, Amelia.”

Amelia yanked free. “I don’t owe you anything,” she muttered, and she fled.

I sank into a kitchen chair. Huge patches of my body seemed to have gone numb. Was that what Sean had felt? That I’d lost all sense-both literally and figuratively?

Oh, God. He’d get my voice message on his cell phone, which-in light of this document-turned me into the world’s biggest fool.

I had no idea how divorces worked. Could he get one if I said I didn’t want to? Once the complaint was filed with the court, could you change your mind? Could I change Sean’s?

With shaking hands, I reached for the telephone and called Marin Gates’s private line. “Charlotte,” she said. “How was the convention?”

“Sean’s suing for divorce.”

The line went silent.

“I’m sorry,” Marin finally said, and I think she really was. But a moment later, she was all business. “You need a lawyer.”

“You are a lawyer.”

“Not the kind who can help you with this. Call Sutton Roarke-she’s listed in the yellow pages. She’s the best divorce attorney I know.”

I drew in my breath. “I feel…like such a loser. Like a statistic.”

“Well,” Marin said quietly. “No one likes to hear they’re not wanted.”

Her words made me think of Amelia’s, and felt like the snap of a whip. And they made me think of my testimony in court, which Marin and I had been practicing. But before I could respond, she spoke again. “I truly wish it hadn’t come to this, Charlotte.”

I had so many questions: How did I tell you without hurting you? How could I possibly keep forging ahead with this lawsuit, knowing another one was pending? When I heard my voice, though, I was asking something entirely different. “What happens next?” I said, but Marin had already hung up the phone.

I made an appointment with Sutton Roarke, and then went through the motions of cooking and feeding you girls dinner. “Can I call Daddy?” you asked as soon as we sat down. “I want to tell him about this weekend.”

My head was throbbing, my throat felt like it had been beaten from the inside with fists. Amelia looked at me and then down at her peas. “I’m not hungry,” she said. Moments later, she asked to be excused, and I didn’t even try to keep her at the table. What was the point, when I didn’t feel like being there, either?

I set the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. I wiped down the table. I put up a load of laundry, all with the motions of an automaton. I kept thinking that, if I did these ordinary things, maybe my life would bounce back into normal.

As I sat on the lip of the tub, helping you with your bath, you talked enough for both of us. “Niamh and me, we’ve both got Gmail accounts,” you chattered. “And every morning at six forty-five, when we wake up before school, we’re going to get online and talk to each other.” You twisted around to look at me. “Can we invite her over sometime?”

“Hmm?”

“Mom, you’re not even listening. I asked about Niamh-”

“What about her?”

You rolled your eyes. “Just forget it.”

We dressed you in your pajamas, and I tucked you in, kissed you good night. An hour later, when I went to check on Amelia, she was already under the covers, but then I heard her whispering and pulled back the sheets to find her on the telephone. “What!” she said, as if I’d accused her of something, and she curled the receiver into her chest like a second heart. I backed out of the room, too emotionally wrecked to wonder what she was hiding, distantly aware that she’d most likely learned that skill from me.

When I went downstairs, a shadow moved in the living room, nearly scaring me to death. Sean stepped forward. “Charlotte-”

“Don’t. Just…don’t, okay?” I said, my hand still covering my hammering heart. “The girls are already in bed, if you’ve come to see them.”

“Do they know?”

“Do you even care?”

“Of course I do. Why do you think I’m doing this?”

A small, desperate sound rose in my throat. “I honestly don’t know, Sean,” I said. “I realize things haven’t been great between us-”

“That’s the understatement of the century-”

“But this is like having a hangnail and getting your arm amputated as treatment, isn’t it?”

He followed me into the kitchen, where I poured powder into the dishwasher and stabbed at the buttons. “It’s more than a hangnail. We’ve been bleeding out. You can tell yourself what you want to about our marriage, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth.”

“So the only answer is a divorce?” I said, shocked.

“I really didn’t see any other way.”

“Did you even try? I know it’s been hard. I know you’re not used to me sticking up for something I want instead of what you want. But, my God, Sean. You accuse me of being litigious, and then you go file for di vorce? You don’t even talk about it with me? You don’t try marriage counseling or going to Father Grady?”

“What good would that have done, Charlotte? You haven’t listened to anyone but yourself for a long time. This isn’t overnight, like you think. This has been a year. A year of me waiting for you to wake up and see what you’ve done to this family. A year of wishing you’d put as much effort into our marriage as you do into taking care of Willow.”

I stared at him. “You did this because I’ve been too busy to have sex?”

“No, see, that’s exactly what I mean. You take everything I say, and you twist it. I’m not the bad guy here, Charlotte. I’m just the one who never wanted anything to change.”

“Right. So instead we’re just supposed to sit in a rut, trying to keep afloat for how many more years? At what point do we face foreclosure on the house or declare bankruptcy-”

“Stop making this about money-”

“It is about money,” I cried. “I just spent a weekend with hundreds of people who have rich, happy, productive lives, and who also have OI. Is it a crime to want the same opportunities for Willow?”

“How many of their parents sued for wrongful birth?” Sean accused.

I saw, for a blink of an eye, the faces of the women in the restroom who’d judged me just as harshly. But I wasn’t about to tell Sean about them. “Catholics don’t get divorced,” I said.

“They don’t think about aborting babies, either,” Sean said. “You’re conveniently Catholic, when it suits you. That’s not fair.”

“And you’ve always seen the world in black and white, when what I’m trying to prove-what I’m certain of-is that it’s really just a thousand shades of gray.”

“That,” Sean said softly, “is why I went to a lawyer. That’s why I didn’t ask you to go to counseling, or to the priest. That world of yours, it’s so gray you can’t see the landmarks anymore. You don’t know where you’re headed. If you want to get lost in there, go ahead. But I’m not letting you take the girls down with you.”

I could feel tears streaking down my face; I wiped them away with my sleeve. “So that’s it? Just like that? You don’t love me anymore?”

“I love the woman I married,” he said. “And she’s gone.”

That was when I broke down. After a moment of hesitation, I felt Sean’s arms come around me. “Just leave me alone,” I cried, but my hands clenched his shirt even more tightly.

I hated him, and at the same time, he was the one I had turned to for comfort for the past eight years. Old habits, they died hard.

How long until I forgot the temperature of his hands on my skin? Until I didn’t remember the smell of his shampoo? How long until I could not hear the sound of his voice, even when he wasn’t speaking? I tried to store up every sensation, like grain for the winter.

The moment cooled, until I stood uncomfortably in the circle of his embrace, awkwardly aware that he didn’t want me there. Bravely, I took a step backward, putting inches between us. “So what do we do now?”

“I think,” Sean said, “we have to be adults. No fighting in front of the girls. And maybe-if you’re okay with it-I could move back in. Not into the bedroom,” he added quickly. “Just the couch. Neither of us can afford to take care of two places, and the girls. The lawyer told me most people who are in the middle of a divorce stay in the same house. We just, you know, figure out a way so that if you’re here, I’m not. And vice versa. But we both get to be with the kids.”

“Amelia knows. She read the letter from the court,” I said. “But not Willow.”

Sean rubbed his chin. “I’ll tell her we’re working some things out between us.”

“That’s a lie,” I said. “That suggests there’s still a chance.”

Sean was quiet. He didn’t say there was a chance. But he didn’t say there wasn’t, either.

“I’ll get you an extra blanket,” I said.

That night in bed I lay awake, trying to list what I really knew about divorce.

1. It took a long time.

2. Very few couples did it gracefully.

3. You were required to divide everything that belonged to both of you, which included cars and houses and DVDs and children and friends.

4. It was expensive to surgically excise someone you loved from your life. The losses were not just financial but emotional.

Naturally, I knew people who had been divorced. For some reason, it always seemed to happen when their kids were in fourth grade-all of a sudden, that year in the school phone directory, the parents would be listed individually instead of linked with ampersands. I wondered what it was about fourth grade that was so stressful on a marriage, or maybe it was just hitting that ten-to fifteen-year mark. If that was the case, Sean and I were precocious for our marital age.

I had been a single mother for five years before I met and married Sean. Although I truly considered Amelia the one good element of a disastrous relationship, and never would have married her father, I also knew what it was like to have other women scan your left hand for an absent ring, or never to have another adult in the house to talk to after the kids were asleep. Part of what I loved about being married to Sean was the ease of it-letting him see me when my hair was Medusa-wild in the mornings and kiss me when my teeth weren’t brushed yet, knowing which television show to click on when we sat down with a mutual sigh on the couch, instinctively recognizing which drawer housed his underwear or T-shirts or jeans. So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I’d forgotten to communicate?

Divorced. I whispered the word out loud. It sounded like a snake’s hiss. Divorced mothers seemed to have evolved into their own breed. Some went to the gym incessantly, hell-bent on getting remarried as soon as possible. Others just looked exhausted all the time. I remembered Piper once having a dinner party and not knowing whether to invite a woman who had recently been divorced because she didn’t know whether it would be uncomfortable to be the only single in a room full of doubles. “Thank God that’s not us. Can you imagine having to date again?” Piper had shuddered. “It’s like being a teenager twice.”

I knew there were couples who mutually decided that relationships were past repair, but it was still always one partner who brought up the solution of divorce. And even if the other spouse went along with it, she’d secretly be stunned at how quickly someone who claimed to care about you could imagine a life that didn’t include you.

My God.

What Sean had done to me was exactly what I’d done to Piper.

I reached for the telephone receiver on my nightstand and, although it was 2:46 in the morning, dialed Piper’s number. The phone was next to her side of the bed, too, although she slept on the left and I slept on the right. “Hello?” Piper said, her voice thick and unfamiliar.

I covered the base of the receiver. “Sean wants a divorce,” I whispered.

“Hello?” Piper repeated. “Hello!” There was an angry, muffled sigh, and the sound of something being knocked over. “Whoever the hell this is, you shouldn’t be calling this late.”

Piper used to be accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night; as an OB, she was on call most of the time. Much in her life must have changed if this was her reaction, instead of the assumption that someone was in labor.

Much in everyone’s life had changed, and I had been the catalyst.

The canned voice of the operator filled my ear. If you want to make a call, please hang up and try again.

I pretended instead it was Piper. Oh, God, Charlotte, she would say. Are you all right? Tell me everything. Tell me every last little thing.

The next morning I woke up with the panic of someone who knows she’s overslept because the sun is too high and bright in the sky. “Willow?” I called, leaping out of bed and running to your room. Every morning, you’d sing out to me, so that I could help you transition from bed to the bathroom and then back into your room to dress. Had I slept through it? Or had you?

But your bedroom was empty, the sheets and comforters pulled tidy. Near Amelia’s bed were your unpacked suitcases, zipped up and ready to be carried to the attic.

As I went downstairs, I heard you laughing. Sean was standing at the stove with a dish towel wrapped around his head, flipping pancakes. “It’s supposed to be a penguin,” you said. “Penguins don’t have ears.”

“Why couldn’t you have just asked for something normal, like your sister did?” Sean said. “She’s got a perfect bear over there.”

“Which would be cool,” Amelia said, “if I hadn’t asked for a lizard.” But she was smiling. When was the last time I’d seen Amelia smile before noon?

“One penguin-slash-donkey, coming right up,” Sean said, sliding a pancake onto your plate.

You both noticed me standing in the kitchen. “Mom, look who woke me up today!” you said.

“I think maybe you’ve got that backward, Wills,” Sean said. His smile did not quite reach his eyes as he met my gaze. “I figured you could probably use a few extra hours of sleep.”

I nodded and wrapped my robe tighter. Like origami, I thought. I could fold myself in half and then in half again, and so on, until I was someone else entirely. “Thank you.”

“Daddy!” you cried. “The pancake’s on fire!”

Not on fire, exactly, but charred and smoking. “Oh, shoot,” Sean said, whirling around to scrape it off the pan.

“And here I thought you’d gone and learned how to cook.”

Sean looked up over the open trash can. “It’s amazing what desperation-and a box of Bisquick-can do for a guy,” he admitted. “I thought, since I’ve got the day off, I’d hang out with the girls. Finish up the wheelchair ramp for Willow.”

What he was telling me, I realized, was that this was the first step in our informal shared custody-shared household-split marriage situation. “Oh,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I guess I’ll just run some errands then.”

“You should go out and have fun,” he suggested. “See a movie. Visit a friend.”

I didn’t have any friends, anymore.

“Right,” I said, forcing a smile. “Sounds great.”

There was a fine line, I thought an hour later as I pulled out of the driveway, between being kicked out of your house and not being welcome there, but from my vantage point, they looked pretty much the same. I drove to the gas station and filled up, and then just…well…began to aimlessly tool around in the car. For all of your life, I’d either been with you or been waiting for a phone call to tell me you had broken; this freedom was almost overwhelming. I didn’t feel relieved, just untethered.

Before I realized it, I had driven to Marin’s office. This would have made me laugh if it wasn’t so blatantly depressing. Grabbing my purse, I went inside and took the elevator upstairs. Briony, the receptionist, was on the phone when I entered, but she waved me back down the hallway.

I knocked on Marin’s door. “Hi,” I said, peeking around the corner.

She looked up. “Charlotte! Come on in.” As I sat down in one of the leather chairs, she stood up and came around to lean against the desk. “Did you talk to Sutton?”

“Yes, it’s…overwhelming.”

“I can imagine.”

“Sean’s at my house now,” I blurted out. “We’re trying to work out a schedule, so that we’re both taking care of the girls.”

“That sounds awfully mature.”

I glanced up at her. “How can I miss him more when he’s two feet away from me than when he’s not around?”

“You’re not really missing him. You’re missing the idea of what she could have been.”

“He,” I corrected, and Marin blinked.

“Right,” she said. “Of course.”

I hesitated. “I know it’s office hours and everything, but would you want to go grab a cup of coffee? I mean, we could pretend that it’s an attorney-client thing…”

“It is an attorney-client thing, Charlotte,” Marin said stiffly. “I’m not your friend…I’m your lawyer, and to be perfectly honest, that’s already required putting aside some of my personal feelings.”

I felt a flush rise up my neck. “Why? What did I ever do to you?”

“Not you,” Marin said. She looked uncomfortable, too. “I just-This is not the kind of case I would personally endorse.”

My own lawyer thought I shouldn’t sue for wrongful birth?

Marin stood up. “I’m not saying you don’t have a good chance of winning,” she clarified, as if she’d heard me out loud. “I’m just saying that morally-philosophically-well, I understand where your husband is coming from, that’s all.”

I stood up, reeling. “I can’t believe I’m arguing with my own attorney about justice and accountability,” I said, grabbing my purse. “Maybe I should be hiring another firm.” I was halfway down the hallway when I heard Marin call after me. She was standing in the doorway, her fists clenched at her sides.

“I’m trying to find my birth mother,” she said. “That’s why I’m not thrilled about your case. It’s why I won’t be having coffee with you or hoping that we’ll have a sleepover and do each other’s hair. If this world existed the way you want, Charlotte, with babies being disposable if they aren’t exactly what a woman wants or needs or dreams of, you wouldn’t even have a lawyer right now.”

“I love Willow,” I said, swallowing hard. “I’m doing what I think is best for her. And you’re judging me for that?”

“Yes,” Marin admitted. “The same way I judge my mother for doing what she thought was best for me.”

For a few moments after she went back into her office, I stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall for support. The problem with this lawsuit was that it didn’t exist in a vacuum. You could look at it theoretically and think, Hm, yes, that makes perfect sense. But no real thought occurred in such sterile conditions. When you read a news article about me suing Piper, when you saw A Day in the Life of Willow on video, you brought with you preconceived notions, opinions, a history.

It was why Marin had to swallow her anger while she worked on my case.

It was why Sean couldn’t understand my reasoning.

And it was why I was so afraid to admit that one day, looking back on this, you might hate me.

Wal-Mart became my playground.

I wandered up and down the aisles, trying on hats and shoes, looking at myself in mirrors, stacking Rubbermaid bins one inside the other. I pedaled an exercise bike and pushed buttons on talking dolls and listened to sample tracks from CDs. I couldn’t afford to buy anything, but I could spend hours looking.

I didn’t know how I would support you kids by myself. I knew that alimony and child support figured into that somehow, but no one had ever explained the math to me. Presumably, though, I would have to be able to provide for you if any court was going to find me a fit parent.

I could bake.

The thought snaked into my mind before I could dismiss it. No one made a living with cupcakes, with pastries. True, I had been selling for a few months now; I’d made enough money to fly to the Omaha OI convention and to attract the attention of a string of service stations. But I couldn’t work for a restaurant or expand my market past the Gas-n-Get. At any moment, you might fall and need me.

“Pretty sweet, huh?”

I turned to find a Wal-Mart employee standing beside me, staring up at a trampoline that had been half erected to show actual size. He looked to be about twenty, and he had such severe acne that his face looked like a swollen tomato. “When I was a kid, I wanted a trampoline more than anything else in the world.”

When he was a kid? He was still a kid. He had a lifetime of mistakes left to make.

“So, you got children who like to jump?” he asked.

I tried to picture you on this trampoline. Your hair would fly out behind you; you’d somersault and not break. I glanced at the price tag, as if this item was actually something I would consider. “It’s expensive. I think I may have to browse a little more before I decide.”

“No prob,” he said, and he sauntered off, leaving me to trail my hands over shelves full of tennis racquets and stubbled skateboards, to smell the acrid wheels of the bicycles, strung overhead like haunches in a butcher’s shop, to envision you bouncing and healthy, a girl you would never be.

The church I went to later that day was not my own. It was thirty miles north, in a town I knew only from the highway road sign. It smelled overpoweringly of beeswax, and the morning Mass had recently let out, so a number of parishioners were praying quietly in the pews. I slipped into one and said an Our Father under my breath and stared up at the Cross on the altar. All my life I’d been told that if I fell off a cliff, God was there to catch me. Why wasn’t that true, physically, for my daughter?

There was a memory I’d been having lately: a nurse on the birthing ward looked at you in your foam-lined bassinet, with tiny bandages wrapped around your limbs. “You’re young,” she said, patting my arm. “You can have another one.”

I could not recall whether you had just been born or if this was several days later. If anyone else was there to hear her, or if she’d even been real or just a trick of the drugs I was taking for pain. Did I make her up, so that she could say aloud what I had been thinking silently? This is not my baby; I want the one I’ve dreamed of.

I heard a curtain open, and I stepped up to the empty confessional. I slid open the grate between me and the priest. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said. “It has been three weeks since my last confession.” I took a deep breath. “My daughter is sick,” I said. “Very sick. And I’ve started a lawsuit against the doctor who treated me when I was pregnant. I’m doing it for the money,” I admitted. “But to get it, I have to say that I’d have had an abortion, if I’d known about my baby’s illness earlier.”

There was a viscous silence. “It’s a sin to lie,” the priest said.

“I know…that’s not what brought me to Confession today.”

“Then what did?”

“When I say those things,” I whispered, “I’m afraid I might be telling the truth.”

Marin

September 2008

Jury selection was an art, combined with pure luck. Everyone had theories about how best to select juries for different kinds of cases, but you never really knew if your hypothesis was right until after the verdict. And it was important to note that you didn’t really get to pick who was on your jury-just who was off it. A subtle difference-and a critical one.

There was a pool of twenty jurors for voir dire. Charlotte was fidgeting beside me in the courtroom. Her living arrangement with Sean, ironically, made it possible for her to be here today; otherwise, she would have been stressing over child-care arrangements for you-which was going to be challenging enough during the trial.

Usually when I tried a case, I hoped for a certain judge-but this time around it had been hard to know what to wish for. A female judge who had children might have sympathy with Charlotte-or might find her plea absolutely revolting. A conservative judge might oppose abortion on moral grounds-but also might agree with the defense’s position that a doctor shouldn’t be the one to determine which children were too impaired to be born. In the end, we had drawn Judge Gellar, the justice who’d sat the longest on the superior court in the state of New Hampshire and who, if he were to have it his way, would die on the bench.

The judge had already called the potential jurors to order and explained the nuts and bolts of the case to them-the terminology of wrongful birth, the plaintiff and the defendant, the witnesses. He’d asked if anyone knew the witnesses or parties in the case, had heard about the case, or had personal or logistical problems with sitting on the case-like child-care issues or sciatica that made it impossible to sit for hours at a time. Various people raised their hands and told their stories: they’d read all the news articles about the lawsuit; they’d been pulled over for a traffic ticket by Sean O’Keefe; they were scheduled to be out of town for their mother’s ninety-fifth birthday celebration. The judge gave a little canned speech about how, if we chose to dismiss them, they shouldn’t take it personally and how we all truly appreciated their service-when, I bet, most of those jurors were hoping they would be allowed to leave and go back to their real lives. Finally, the judge called us up to the bench to conference about whether anyone should be dismissed. In the end, he struck two jurors for cause: a man who was deaf and a woman whose twins had been delivered by Piper Reece.

That left a pool of thirty-eight individuals, who had been given questionnaires that Guy Booker and I had slaved over for weeks. Used to get a sense of the people in the pool-and to either strike jurors based on their answers or formulate further questions during the individual interviews-the survey we’d created had involved a complicated tango. I’d asked:

Do you have small children? If so, did you have a positive birthing experience?

Do you do any volunteer work? (Someone who volunteered at Planned Parenthood would be great for us. Someone who volunteered at the church home for unwed mothers-not so much.)

Have you or any family member ever filed a lawsuit? Have you or any family member ever been a defendant in a lawsuit?

Guy had added:

Do you believe physicians should make medical decisions in the best interests of their patients or leave the decisions up to them?

Do you have any personal experience with disability or with people who have disabilities?

However, those were the easy ones. We both knew that this case hinged on jurors who could be open-minded enough to understand a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy; to that end, I wanted to rule out pro-lifers, while Guy’s defense would be greatly enhanced if there were no pro-choice folks on the jury. We had both wanted to submit the question Are you pro-life or pro-choice? but the judge had not allowed it. After three weeks of arguing, Guy and I had finessed the question to this instead: Do you have any real-life experience with abortion, either personal or professional?

An affirmative answer meant I could try to have the person stricken. A negative answer would allow us to pussyfoot more tenderly around the issue when it came to individual voir dire.

Which was, finally, where we stood right now. After reviewing the questionnaires, I had separated them into piles of the people I thought I liked for this jury and the people I thought I didn’t. Judge Gellar would put each juror on the stand for questioning, and Guy and I had to either get the witness stricken for cause, accept him or her for the jury, or use one of our three precious peremptory strikes-a Get Off This Jury Now card that allowed us to remove a juror for no reason at all. The catch was knowing when to use these peremptory strikes and when to save them in case a more odious person came along.

What I wanted for Charlotte’s jury were housewives who gave everything and thought nothing of it. Parents whose lives revolved around their kids. Soccer moms, PTA moms, stay-at-home dads. Victims of domestic violence who tolerated the intolerable. In short, I wanted twelve martyrs.

So far, Guy and I had interviewed three people: a graduate student at UNH, a used car salesman, and a lunch lady at a high school cafeteria. I had used the first of my peremptory challenges to strike the grad student when I learned that he was the head of the Young Republicans on campus. Now, we were on our fourth potential juror, a woman named Juliet Cooper. She was in her early fifties, a good age for a juror, someone with maturity and not just hotheaded opinions. She had two teenage children and worked as a switchboard operator at a hospital. When she sat down in the witness stand, I tried to make her feel comfortable by offering up a wide smile. “Thanks for being here today, Mrs. Cooper,” I said. “Now, you work outside the home, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“How have you been able to balance that with child rearing?”

“I didn’t work when they were little. I thought it was important to be at home with them. It’s really only when they reached high school that I got a job again.”

So far, so good-a woman whose children came first. I scanned her questionnaire again. “You said here that you filed a lawsuit?”

I had done nothing more than state a fact she herself had written down, but Juliet Cooper looked like I’d just slapped her. “Yes.”

The difference between witness examinations and jury selection interviews was that, in the former, you only asked questions to which you knew the answers. In the latter, though, you asked completely open-ended questions-because finding out something you didn’t know might help you remove the potential juror. What if, for example, Juliet Cooper had filed her own medical malpractice suit and it had turned out badly for her?

“Can you elaborate?” I pressed.

“It never went to trial,” she murmured. “I withdrew the complaint.”

“Would you have a problem being fair and impartial toward someone who carried through with a lawsuit?”

“No,” Juliet Cooper said. “I’d just think she was braver than me.”

Well, that seemed to bode well for Charlotte. I sat down to let Guy begin his questioning. “Mrs. Cooper, you mention a nephew who’s wheelchair-bound?”

“He served in Iraq and lost both his legs when a car bomb went off. He’s only twenty-three; it’s been devastating to him.” She looked at Charlotte. “I think there are some tragedies that you just can’t get past. Your whole life will never be quite the same, no matter what.”

I loved this juror. I wanted to clone her.

I wondered if Guy would strike this juror. But chances were, he was just as touchy about how disabilities would play for him as I was. Whereas I’d thought at first that mothers of disabled children would be locks for Charlotte, I had reconsidered. Wrongful birth-a term with which Guy was going to slather the courtroom-could be horribly offensive to them. It seemed that the better juror, from my point of view, would be either someone who had sympathy but no firsthand experience with disabilities or, like Juliet Cooper, someone who knew so much about disability that she understood how challenging your life had been.

“Mrs. Cooper,” Guy said, “on the question that asked about religious or personal beliefs about abortion, you wrote something and then crossed it out, and I can’t quite read it.”

“I know,” she replied. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s a very tough question,” Guy admitted. “Do you understand that the decision to abort a fetus is central to making a judgment in this case?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had an abortion?”

“Objection!” I cried out. “That’s a HIPAA violation, Your Honor!”

“Mr. Booker,” the judge said. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“My job, Judge. The juror’s personal beliefs are critical, given the nature of this case.”

I knew exactly what Guy was doing-taking the risk of upsetting the juror, which he’d weighed to be less important than the risk of losing the trial because of her. There had been every chance I’d have had to ask an equally contentious question. I was just glad that it had been Guy instead, because it allowed me to play good cop. “What Mrs. Cooper did or didn’t do in her past is not at all integral to this lawsuit,” I declared, turning to the jury pool. “Let me apologize for my colleague’s invasion of your privacy. What Mr. Booker is conveniently forgetting is that the salient issue here isn’t abortion rights in America but a single case of medical malpractice.”

Guy Booker, as the defendant’s attorney, would be using a combination of smoke and mirrors to suggest that Piper Reece had not made an error in judgment: that OI couldn’t be conclusively diagnosed in utero, that you can’t be blamed for not seeing something you can’t see, that no one has the right to say life’s not worth living if you’re disabled. But no matter how much smoke Guy blew in the jury’s direction, I would redirect them, remind them that this was a medical malpractice suit and someone had to pay for making a mistake.

I was vaguely aware of the irony that I was championing the juror’s right to medical privacy when-on a personal level-it had made my life a nightmare. If not for the sealing of medical records, I would have known my birth mother’s name months ago; as it was, I was still in the great black void of chance, awaiting news from the Hillsborough Family Court and Maisie.

“You can stop grandstanding, Ms. Gates,” the judge said. “And as for you, Mr. Booker, if you ask a follow-up question like this again, I’ll hold you in contempt.”

Guy shrugged. He finished up his questioning, and then we both approached the bench again. “The plaintiff has no objection to Mrs. Cooper sitting on this panel,” I said. Guy agreed, and the judge called up the next potential juror.

Her name was Mary Paul. She had gray hair pulled into a low ponytail and wore a shapeless blue dress and crepe-soled shoes. She looked like someone’s grandmother, and smiled kindly at Charlotte as she took the stand. This, I thought, could be promising.

“Ms. Paul, you say here that you’re retired?”

“I don’t know if retired is really the word for it…”

“What kind of work were you doing previously?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said. “I was a Sister of Mercy.”

It was going to be a very long day.

Sean

When Charlotte finally came home from jury selection, you were soundly kicking my ass in Scrabble. “How did it go?” I asked, but I could tell before she even said a word; she looked like she’d been run over by a truck.

“They all kept staring at me,” she said. “Like I was something they’d never seen before.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say, really. What did she expect?

“Where’s Amelia?”

“Upstairs, becoming one with her iPod.”

“Mom,” you said, “do you want to play? You can just join in, it doesn’t matter if you missed the beginning.”

In the eight hours I’d been with you today, I hadn’t managed to bring up the divorce. We’d taken a field trip to the pet store and had gotten to watch a snake eat a dead mouse; we had watched a Disney movie; we had gone food shopping and bought SpaghettiOs-Chef Boyardee, which your mother called Chef MSG. We’d had, in short, the perfect day. I didn’t want to be the one who took the light out of your eyes. Maybe Charlotte had known this, which was why she’d suggested that I be the one to tell you. And maybe for that reason, too, she looked at me now and sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Sean, it’s been three weeks.”

“It hasn’t been the right time…”

You stuck your hand into the bag of letters. “We’re down to two-letter words,” you said. “Daddy tried to do Oz, but that’s a place and it’s not allowed.”

“There’s never going to be a right time. Honey,” she said, turning to you, “I’m really wiped out. Can I take a Scrabble rain check?” She walked into the kitchen.

“I’ll be right back,” I told you, and I followed her. “I know I have no right to ask you this, but-I’d like you to be there when I tell her. I think it’s important.”

“Sean, I’ve had an awful day-”

“And I am about to make it more awful. I know.” I looked down at her. “Please.”

Wordlessly, she walked back into the family room with me and sat down at the table. You turned, delighted. “So you do want to play?”

“Willow, your mom and I have some news for you.”

“You’re going to move back home for good? I knew it. At school Sapphire said that once her father moved out he fell in love with a dirty whore and now her parents aren’t together anymore, but I said that you’d never do that.”

“I told you so,” Charlotte said to me.

“Wills, your mother and I…we’re getting divorced.”

She looked at each of us. “Because of me?”

“No,” Charlotte and I said in unison.

“We both love you, and Amelia,” I said. “But your mom and I can’t be a couple anymore.”

Charlotte walked toward the window, her back to me.

“You’re still going to see both of us. And live with both of us. We’re going to do everything we can to make things easy for you, so not much has to change-”

Your face was pinching up tighter and tighter as I spoke, becoming a flushed and angry pink. “My goldfish,” you said. “He can’t live in two houses.”

You had a betta that we’d gotten you last Christmas, the cheapest concession to a pet we could provide. To everyone’s shock, it had lived longer than a week. “We’ll get you a second one,” I suggested.

“But I don’t want two goldfish!”

“Willow-”

“I hate you,” you shouted, starting to cry. “I hate both of you!”

You were out of your chair like a shot, running faster than I thought you could to the front door. “Willow!” Charlotte called out. “Be-”

Careful.

I heard the cry before I could reach the doorway. In your hurry to get away from me, from this news, you had not been cautious, and you were lying on the porch where you’d slipped. Your left femur was bent at a ninety-degree angle, breaking through the bloody surface of your thigh; the sclera of your eyes was an unholy blue. “Mommy?” you said, and then your eyes rolled back in your head.

“Willow!” Charlotte screamed, and she knelt down beside you. “Call an ambulance,” she ordered, and then she bent closer to you and began to whisper.

For a fraction of a second, as I looked at the two of you, I believed she was the better parent.

Do not, if you can help it, break a bone on a Friday night. Even more important, do not break a femur the weekend of the annual convention of American orthopedic surgeons. Leaving Amelia home alone, Charlotte rode in the ambulance with you, and I followed in my truck. Although most of your serious breaks were handled by the orthopods in Omaha, this one was too severe to simply immobilize until they could assess it; we were headed to the local hospital, only to learn in the emergency room that the orthopedic surgeon called to consult was a resident.

“A resident?” Charlotte had said. “Look, no offense, but I’m not letting a resident rod my daughter’s femur.”

“I’ve done this kind of surgery before, Mrs. O’Keefe,” the doctor said.

“Not on a girl with OI,” Charlotte countered. “And not on Willow.”

He wanted to put a Fassier-Duval rod-one that would telescope as you grew-into your femur. It was the newest rod available, and it threaded into the epiphysis, whatever that was, which kept it from migrating, like the older rods used to. Most important, you wouldn’t be in a spica cast, which was the postoperative care for femur rodding in the past-instead, you’d be in a functional brace, a long leg splint, for three weeks. Uncomfortable, especially during the summertime, but nowhere near as debilitating.

I was stroking your forehead while this battle raged. You had regained consciousness, but you didn’t speak, only stared straight ahead. It scared the crap out of me, but Charlotte said this happened a lot when it was a bad break; it had something to do with endorphins released by the body to self-medicate. And yet, you had started to shiver, as if you were in shock. I’d taken off my jacket to cover you when the thin hospital blanket didn’t seem to work.

Charlotte had badgered and argued; she had dropped names-and finally she got the guy to call his attending at the convention center in San Diego. It was mesmerizing to watch, like an orchestrated battle: the push, the retreat, the turn toward you before the next round. And it was, I realized, something your mother was very, very good at.

The resident reappeared a few minutes later. “Dr. Yaeger can get on a red-eye and be here for a ten o’clock surgery tomorrow morning,” he said. “That’s the best we can do.”

“She can’t stay like this overnight,” I said.

“We can give her morphine to sedate her.”

They moved you onto a pediatric floor, where the murals of balloons and circus animals stood completely at odds with the shrieks of crying babies and the faces of shell-shocked parents wandering the halls. Charlotte watched over you while the orderlies slipped you from the stretcher to the bed-one sharp, hollow cry as your leg was moved-and gave instructions to the nurse (IV on your right side, because you were a lefty) when your morphine drip was set up.

It was killing me, to watch you in pain. “You were right,” I said to Charlotte. “You wanted to put a rod in her leg and I said no.”

Charlotte shook her head. “You were right. She needed time to get up and run around to strengthen her muscles and bones, or this might have happened even sooner.”

At that, you whimpered, and then you started to scratch. You raked at your arms, at your belly.

“What’s wrong?” Charlotte asked.

“The bugs,” you said. “They’re all over me.”

“Baby, there aren’t any bugs,” I said, watching as she scraped her arms raw.

“But it itches…”

“How about we play a game?” Charlotte suggested. “Poodle?” She reached up for your wrist and pulled it down to your side. “Do you want to pick the word?”

She was trying to distract you, and it worked. You nodded.

“Can you poodle underwater?” Charlotte asked, and you shook your head. “Can you poodle while you’re asleep?”

“No,” you said.

She looked at me, nodding. “Um, can you poodle with a friend?” I asked.

You almost smiled. “Absolutely not,” you said as your eyes started to drift shut.

“Thank God,” I said. “Maybe she’ll sleep through now.”

But, as if I’d cursed your chances, you suddenly jumped-an exaggerated full-body tremor that made you come right off the bed, and dislodged your leg. Immediately, you screamed.

We had just managed to calm you down again when the same thing happened: as soon as you began to fall asleep, you startled as if you were falling off a cliff. Charlotte pushed the nurse’s call button.

“She’s jumping,” Charlotte explained. “It keeps happening.”

“Morphine does that to some people,” the nurse said. “The best thing you can do is try to keep her still.”

“Can’t we take her off it?”

“If you do, she’s going to be thrashing around a lot more than she already is,” the nurse replied.

When she left the room, you jerked again, and a low, long moan rose from your throat. “Help me,” Charlotte said, and she crawled onto the hospital bed, pinning down your upper body.

“You’re crushing me, Mom…”

“I’m just going to help you stay good and still,” Charlotte said calmly.

I followed her lead, gently laying myself across your lower body. You whimpered when I touched your left leg, which had the break. Charlotte and I both waited, counting the seconds until your body tensed, your muscles twitched. I had once watched a blast at a building site that was covered with netting made of old tires and rubber so that the explosion stayed contained, manageable: this time, when your body leapt beneath ours, you didn’t cry.

How had Charlotte known to do this? Was it because she’d been with you more times than I could count when a break happened? Was it because she’d learned to be proactive, instead of reactive, in a hospital? Or was it because she knew you better than I ever would?

“Amelia,” I said, remembering that we’d left her behind, that it had been hours.

“We have to call her.”

“Maybe I should go get her-”

Charlotte turned her head so that her cheek was pillowed on your belly. “Tell her to call Mrs. Monroe next door if there’s an emergency. You have to stay. It’ll take both of us to keep Willow quiet all night.”

“Both of us,” I repeated, and before I could censor myself, I touched Charlotte’s hair.

She froze. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, pulling away.

Beneath me, you moved, a tiny earthquake, and I tried to be a blanket, a carpet, a comfort. Charlotte and I rode out the tremors, absorbing your pain. She wove her fingers through mine, so that our hands rested like a beating heart between us. “I’m not,” she said.

Amelia

Once upon a time there was a girl who wanted to put her fist through a mirror. She would tell everyone it was so that she could see what was on the other side, but really, it was so that she wouldn’t have to look at herself. That, and because she thought she might be able to steal a piece of glass when no one was looking, and use it to carve her heart out of her chest.

So when no one was watching, she went to the mirror and forced herself to be brave enough to open her eyes just this one last time. But to her surprise, she didn’t see her reflection. She didn’t see anything at all. Confused, she stretched her hand up to touch the mirror and realized that the glass was missing, that she could fall through to the other side.

That’s exactly what happened.

Things got even stranger, though, when she walked through this other world and found people staring at her-not because she was so disgusting but because they all wanted to look like her. At school, kids at different lunch tables fought to have her sit with them. She always got the answers right when she was picked by a teacher in class. Her email inbox was overflowing with love letters from boys who could not live without her.

At first, it felt incredible, like a rocket was taking off under her skin every time she was out in public. But then, it got a little old. She didn’t want to give out her autograph when she bought a pack of gum at the gas station. She would wear a pink shirt, and by lunchtime, the rest of the school was wearing pink shirts, too. She got tired of smiling all the time in public.

She realized that things weren’t all that different on this side of the mirror. Nobody really cared about her here. The reason people copied her and fawned over her had very little to do with who she was, and far more to do with who they needed her to be, to make up for some gaping hole in their own lives.

She decided she wanted to go back to the other side. But she had to do it when no one was watching, or they’d follow her there. The only problem was, there was never no one watching. She had nightmares about the people who trailed after her, who would cut themselves to pieces on the broken glass as they crawled through the mirror after her; how they’d lie bleeding on the floor and how the look in their eyes would change when they saw her on this side, unpopular and ordinary.

When she couldn’t stand another minute, she started to run. She knew there were people following, but she couldn’t stop to think about them. She was going to fly through the space in the mirror, no matter what it took. But when she got there, she smacked her head against the glass-it had been repaired. It was whole and thick and impossible to break through. She flattened her palms against it. Where are you going? everyone asked. Can we come, too? She didn’t answer. She just stood there, looking at her old life, without her in it.

I was really careful when I sat down on your bed. “Hey,” I whispered, because you were still pretty much out of it and might have been asleep.

Your eyes slitted open. “Hey.”

You looked really tiny, even with the big splint on your leg. Apparently, with the new rod in your femur, a future break wouldn’t be as bad as this one had been. On a TV show once I’d seen an orthopedic surgeon with drills, saws, metal plates, you name it-it was like she was a construction worker, not a doctor, and the thought of all that hammering and banging going on inside you made me feel like I was going to pass out.

I couldn’t tell you why, too, this break had scared me the most. I guess maybe I was getting it confused with the other things that brushed up against it that were equally as terrifying: the letter about divorce, the phone call from Dad at the hospital telling me I’d have to stay home alone overnight. I hadn’t told anyone, because obviously Mom and Dad were completely wrapped up in what was hap pening to you, but I never actually slept. I stayed awake at the kitchen table holding the biggest knife we had, just in case someone broke into the house. I’d kept myself awake on pure adrenaline, wondering what would happen if the rest of my family never actually made it home.

But instead, the opposite happened. Not only were you back but so were Mom and Dad-and they weren’t just putting on a good show for you, they were really together. They took turns watching over you; they finished each other’s sentences. It was as if I’d smashed through that fairy-tale mirror and wound up in the alternate universe of my past. There was a part of me that believed your latest break had linked them again, and if that was true, it was worth whatever pain you’d gone through. But there was another part of me that thought I was only hallucinating, that this happy family unit was just a mirage.

I didn’t really believe in God, but I wasn’t above hedging my bets, so I had prayed a silent bargain: if we can be a family again, I won’t complain. I won’t be mean to my sister. I won’t throw up anymore. I won’t cut.

I won’t I won’t I won’t.

You, apparently, weren’t feeling quite as optimistic. Mom said that since you’d come through the surgery, you kept crying and you didn’t want to eat anything. It was supposed to be the anesthesia in your system that was making you weepy, but I decided to make it my personal mission to cheer you up. “Hey, Wiki,” I said, “you want some M &M’s? They’re from my Easter candy stash.”

You shook your head.

“Want to use my iPod?”

“I don’t want to listen to music,” you murmured. “You don’t have to be nice to me just because I won’t be around here much longer.”

That sent a chill down my spine. Had someone not told me something about your surgery? Were you, like, dying? “What are you talking about?”

“Mom wants to get rid of me because things like this keep happening.” You swiped the tears from your eyes with your hands. “I’m not the kind of kid anyone wants.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not like you’re a serial killer. You don’t torture chipmunks or do anything revolting, except try to burp ‘God Bless America’ at the dinner table-”

“I only did that once,” you said. “But think about it, Amelia. Nobody keeps things that get broken. Sooner or later, they get thrown away.”

“Willow, you are not being sent off, believe me. And if you are, I’ll run away with you first.”

You hiccuped. “Pinkie promise?”

I hooked your pinkie with mine and tugged. “Promise.”

“I can’t go on a plane,” you said seriously, as if we needed to plot our itinerary now. “The doctor said I’ll set off metal detectors at the airport. He gave Mom a note.”

One that I would probably forget, like I forgot the other doctor’s note on our last vacation.

“Amelia,” you asked, “where would we go?”

Back, I thought immediately. But I couldn’t begin to tell you how to get there.

Maybe Budapest. I didn’t really know where Budapest was, but I liked the way the word exploded on my tongue. Or Shanghai. Or the Galápagos, or the isle of Skye. You and I could travel the globe together, our own little sisterly freak show: the girl who breaks, and the girl who can’t hold herself together.

“Willow,” my mother said. “I think we need to have a talk.” She’d been standing at the threshold of the bedroom, watching us, I wondered for how long. “Amelia, can you give us a minute?”

“Okay,” I said, and I slunk outside. But instead of going downstairs, which was what she meant, I hovered in the hallway, where I could hear everything.

“Wills,” I heard my mother say, “no one’s throwing you away.”

“I’m sorry about my leg,” you said, teary. “I thought if I didn’t break anything for a long time, you’d think I was just like any other kid-”

“Accidents happen, Willow.” I heard the bed creak as my mother sat down on it. “Nobody is blaming you.”

“You do. You wish you’d never had me. I heard you say it.”

What happened after that-well, it felt like a tornado in my head. I was thinking about this lawsuit, and how it had ruined our lives. I was thinking of my father, who was downstairs for maybe only seconds or minutes longer. I was thinking of a year ago, when my arms were scar-free, when I still had a best friend and wasn’t fat and could eat food without it feeling like lead in my stomach. I was thinking of the words my mother said in response to you, and how I must have heard them wrong.

Charlotte

“Charlotte?”

I had come to the laundry room to hide, figuring that the load of clothes spinning in the dryer would mask any sound I made while I was crying, but Sean was standing behind me. Quickly I wiped my eyes on my sleeves. “Sorry,” I said. “The girls?”

“They’re both fast asleep.” He took a step forward. “What’s wrong?”

What wasn’t wrong? I’d just had to persuade you that I loved you, breaks and all-something you’d never questioned until I undertook this lawsuit.

Didn’t everyone lie? And wasn’t there a difference between, for example, killing a person and telling the police you hadn’t and smiling down at a particularly ugly baby and telling her mother how cute she was? There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good?

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. There I went, fibbing again. I couldn’t tell Sean what you’d said to me; I couldn’t bear to hear his I told you so. But, my God, was everything that came out of my mouth a lie? “It’s just been a really hard few days.” I folded my arms tightly across my waist. “Did you, um, did you need me for something?”

He pointed to the top of the dryer. “I just came to get my bedding.”

I knew I should be practicing, but I didn’t understand formerly married couples who remained congenial. Yes, it was in the best interests of the children. Yes, it was less stressful. But how could you forget that this particular “friend” had seen you naked? Had carried your dreams when you were too tired to? You could paint your history over any way you liked, but you’d always see those first few brushstrokes. “Sean? I’m glad you were here,” I said, honest at last. “It made everything…easier.”

“Well,” he said simply, “she’s my daughter, too.” He took a step toward me to reach the bedding, and I instinctively backed away. “Good night,” Sean said.

“Good night.”

He started to take the pillows and quilt into his arms and then turned. “If I were like Willow, and I needed someone to fight hard for me when I couldn’t? I’d pick you.”

“I’m not sure Willow would agree,” I whispered, blinking back tears.

“Hey,” he said, and I felt his arms come around me. His breath was warm on the crown of my hair. “What’s this?”

I tilted my face up to his. I wanted to tell him everything-what you had said to me, how tired I was, how much I was wavering-but instead we stared at each other, telegraphing messages that neither one of us was brave enough to speak out loud. And then, slowly, so that we both knew the mistake we were making, we kissed.

I could not tell you the last time I had kissed Sean, not like this, not beyond a see-you-later-honey peck over the kitchen sink. This was deep and rough and consuming, as if we both meant to be left in ashes when we were through. His beard stubble scraped my chin raw, his teeth bit down, his breath filled my lungs. The room glittered at the edge of my vision, and I broke away for air. “What are we doing?” I gasped.

Sean buried his face against my throat. “Who gives a damn, as long as we keep doing it.”

Then his hands were slipping underneath my shirt, branding me; my back was touching the humming metal-and-glass fishbowl of the dryer as Sean pushed me against it. I heard the clink of his belt buckle striking the floor and only then realized I had been the one to throw it aside. Wrapping myself around him, I became a vine, thriving, tangled. I threw back my head and burst into bloom.

It was over as quickly as it had started, and suddenly we were what we had been going into this: two middle-aged people who were lonely enough to be desperate. Sean’s jeans were puddled at his ankles; his hands were supporting my thighs. The handle of the dryer was cutting into my back. I let one leg fall to the floor and wrapped a sheet from his pile of bedding around my waist.

He was blushing, a deep, rootless red. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” I heard myself say.

“Maybe not,” he admitted.

I tried to finger-comb my hair back from the tangle on my face. “So what do we do now?”

“Well,” Sean said. “There’s no rewind button.”

“No.”

“And you’re wearing my top sheet around your…you know.”

I glanced down.

“And the couch is wicked uncomfortable,” he added.

“Sean,” I said, smiling. “Come to bed.”

I thought that, on the day of the trial, I’d wake up with butterflies in my stomach or a raging headache, but as my eyes slowly adjusted to the sunlight, all I could think was It’s going to be okay. It did not hurt that there were muscles in my body that were deliciously sore, that left me rolling over and stretching to hear the music of the shower running, and Sean in it.

“Mom?”

I slipped on a robe and ran into your bedroom. “Wills, how do you feel?”

“Itchy,” you said. “And I have to pee.”

I positioned myself to carry you. You were heavy, but this was a blessing compared with a spica cast, which was the alternative. I helped you lift up your nightgown and settled you on the toilet seat, then waited for you to call me back in so that I could help you wash your hands. I decided that I would buy you a big bottle of Purell on the way home from court today. Which reminded me-you weren’t going to be happy about the arrangements I’d made for you. After much debate with Marin about leaving you home while I was in the courtroom, she had let me interview and choose a private pediatric nurse to be with you for the duration of the trial. The astronomical cost, she said, would be deducted from whatever damages we won. It was not ideal, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about your safety. “Remember Paulette?” I said. “The nurse?”

“I don’t want her to come…”

“I know, baby, but we don’t have a choice. I have to go somewhere important today, and you can’t be by yourself.”

“What about Daddy?”

“What about me?” Sean said, and he plucked you out of my arms and carried you downstairs as if you didn’t weigh anything.

He was dressed in a coat and tie instead of his uniform. He’s coming to court with me, I thought, beginning to smile from the inside out.

“Amelia’s in the shower,” Sean said over his shoulder as he settled you on the couch. “I told her she has to take the bus in today. Willow-”

“A nurse is coming to stay with her.”

He looked down at you. “Well, that’ll be fun.”

You grimaced. “Yeah, right.”

“How about pancakes for breakfast, then, to make it up to you?”

“Is that all you can cook?” you asked. “Even I know how to make ramen noodles.”

“Do you want ramen noodles for breakfast?”

“No-”

“Then stop complaining about the pancakes,” Sean said, and then he looked up at me soberly. “Big day.”

I nodded and pulled the tie of my robe tighter. “I can be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

Sean stilled in the process of covering you with a blanket. “I figured we’d take separate cars.” He hesitated. “I have to meet with Guy Booker beforehand.”

If he was meeting with Guy Booker, it meant that he was still planning to testify for Piper’s defense.

If he was meeting with Guy Booker, it meant nothing had changed.

I had been lying to myself, because it was easier than facing the truth: sex wasn’t love, and one single, stopgap Band-Aid of a night couldn’t fix a broken marriage.

“Charlotte?” Sean said, and I realized he’d asked me a question. “Do you want some pancakes?”

I was sure he did not know that pancakes were among the oldest types of baked goods in America; that in the 1700s, when there had been no baking powder or baking soda, they’d been leavened by beating air into the eggs. I was sure he did not know that pancakes went as far back as the Middle Ages, when they were served on Fat Tuesday, before Lent. That if the griddle was too hot, pancakes would get tough and chewy; if it was too cool, they’d turn out dry and tough.

I was also sure he did not remember that pancakes were the very first breakfast I ever cooked for him as his wife, when we returned from our honeymoon. I had made the batter and spooned it into a Baggie, cut off a bottom corner, and used it to shape the pancakes. I’d served Sean a stack of hearts.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

Amelia

So let me tell you why I didn’t take the bus that morning: no one had bothered to check outside the front door, and it wasn’t until Paulette the nurse arrived and totally freaked out when she had to beat off an army of photographers and reporters that we realized how many people had gathered to snap the coveted picture of my parents leaving for court.

“Amelia,” my father said tightly, “in the car. Now!”

For once, I just did what he said.

That would have been bad enough, but some of them followed us to my school. I kept an eye on them in the passenger mirror. “Isn’t this how Princess Diana died?”

My father hadn’t spoken a word, but his jaw was set so tight I thought he might crack a tooth. At a red light, he faced me. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you have to pretend this is any other normal day.”

I know what you’re thinking: this is the point where Amelia inserts a really snarky, inappropriate comment, like That’s what they said about 9/11, too, but I just didn’t have one in me. Instead, I found myself shaking so hard I had to slip my hands underneath my thighs. “I don’t know what normal is anymore,” I heard myself say, in the tiniest voice ever.

My father reached out and brushed my hair off my face. “When this is all over,” he said, “do you think you might like to live with me?”

Those words, they made my heart pump triple time. Someone wanted me; someone was choosing me. But I also sort of felt like throwing up. It was a nice fantasy, but if we were being totally realistic, what court would grant custody to a man who wasn’t even related to me by blood? That meant I’d be stuck with my mother, who would know by then that she was my second choice. And besides, what about you? If I lived alone with Dad, maybe I’d finally get some attention, but I’d also be leaving you behind. Would you hate me for it?

When I didn’t answer and the light turned green, my father started driving again. “You can think about it,” he said, but I could tell he was a little bit hurt.

Five minutes later, we were at the circular driveway of my school. “Are the reporters going to follow me in?”

“They’re not allowed,” my father said.

“Well.” I pulled my backpack onto my lap. It weighed thirty-three pounds, which was a third of my body weight. I knew this for a fact because last week the school nurse had a scale set up where you could weigh your bag and yourself, since kids my age weren’t supposed to be hauling around bags that were too heavy. If you divided your backpack weight by your body weight and got more than 15 percent, you were going to wind up with scoliosis or rickets or hives or God knew what. Everyone’s pack had been too heavy, but that didn’t keep teachers from assigning the same amount of homework.

“Um, good luck today,” I said.

“Do you want me to come in and talk to the guidance counselor or the principal? Tell them you might need extra attention today…?”

That was the last thing I needed-to stand out like even more of a sore thumb. “I’m fine,” I said, and I opened the truck door.

The cars peeled off after my dad’s truck, which made it a little easier for me to breathe. At least that’s what I thought, until I heard someone call my name. “Amelia,” a woman said, “how do you feel about this lawsuit?”

Behind her was a man with a TV camera on his shoulder. Some other kids walking into the school threw their arms around me, as if I were their friend. “Dude!” one of them said. “Can you do this on TV?” He held up his middle finger.

Another journalist materialized from behind the bushes on my left. “Does your sister talk to you about how she feels, knowing her mother’s suing for wrongful birth?”

Was this a family decision?

Are you going to testify?

Until I heard that, I’d forgotten: my name was on some stupid list just in case. My mother and Marin had said that I’d probably never testify, that it was just a precaution, but I didn’t like being on lists. It made me feel like someone was counting on me, and what if I let them down?

Why weren’t they following Emma? She went to this school, too. But I already knew the answer: in their eyes, in everyone’s eyes, Piper was the victim. I was the one related to the vampire who’d decided to suck her best friend dry.

“Amelia?”

Over here, Amelia…

Amelia!

“Leave me alone!” I shouted. I covered my ears with my hands and shoved my way into the school, blindly pushing past kids kneeling at their lockers and teachers navigating with their mugs of coffee and couples making out as if they wouldn’t see each other for years, instead of just the next forty-five minutes of class. I turned in to the first doorway I could find-a teachers’ bathroom-and locked myself inside. I stared at the clean porcelain rim of the toilet.

I knew the word for what I was doing. They showed us movies about it in health class; they called it an eating disorder. But that was completely wrong: when I did it, everything fell into place.

For example, when I did it, hating myself made perfect sense. Who wouldn’t hate someone who ate like Jabba the Hutt and then vomited it all up again? Someone who went to all the trouble to get rid of the food inside her but was still just as chubby as ever? And I understood that whatever I was doing wasn’t nearly as bad as the girl in my school who was anorexic. Her limbs looked like toothpick and sinew; no one in their right mind would ever confuse me with her. I wasn’t doing this because I looked in the mirror and saw a fat girl even though I was skinny-I was fat. I couldn’t even starve myself the right way, apparently.

But I had sworn that I’d stop. I had sworn that I’d stop making myself sick, in return for a family that stayed together.

You promised, I told myself.

Less than twelve hours ago.

But suddenly there I was, sticking my finger down my throat, throwing up, waiting for the relief that always came.

Except this time, it didn’t.

Piper

I learned from Charlotte that baking is all about chemistry. Leavening happens biologically, chemically, or mechanically, and creates steam or gases that make the mixture rise. The key to great baked goods is to pick the right leavening agent for the batter or dough, so that bread has a smooth texture, popovers pop, meringue foams, and soufflés rise.

This, Charlotte said to me one day, while I was helping her bake a birthday cake for Amelia, is why baking works. She wrote on a napkin:

I got a B-in Orgo, I told her.

Cream of tartar plus sodium bicarbonate gives you carbon dioxide gas and potassium sodium tartrate and water, she said.

Show-off, I replied.

I’m only saying it’s not as simple as beating eggs and flour together, Charlotte said. I’m trying to make this a teachable moment here.

Pass me the damn vanilla extract, I said. Do they really teach that in culinary school?

They don’t just hand over scalpels to med students, do they? You have to learn why you’re doing what you’re doing first.

I shrugged. I bet Betty Crocker wouldn’t know a scientific equation if it flew out of her oven.

Charlotte began to mix the batter. She knew it in principle: one ingredient in a bowl is a start. But two ingredients in a bowl, well, that’s a whole story.

Here’s what Charlotte didn’t mention: that sometimes even the most careful baker can make a mistake. That the balance between the acid and the soda might be off, the ingredients not mixed, the salts trapped behind.

That you’d be left with a bitter taste in your mouth.

On the morning of the trial, I stayed in the shower for a very long time, letting the water strike my back like a punishment. Here it was: the moment I would face Charlotte in court.

I had forgotten the sound of her voice.

Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you’d start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

Once the shock had worn off when I was served, I had gotten furious. Who the hell did Charlotte think she was, ruining my life in order to bolster her own? Anger, though, is too fierce a flame to last for long, and when it burned out, I was left numb and wondering. Would she get what she wanted from this? And what did she want? Revenge? Money? Peace of mind?

Sometimes I woke up with words weighing down my tongue like stones, left over from a recurring nightmare where Charlotte and I met face-to-face. I had a thousand things to say to her, and not one of them ever came out. When I looked at her, to see why she wasn’t speaking, either, I noticed that her mouth had been sewn shut.

I had not gone back to work. The one time I’d tried, I had been shaking so hard when I got to the front door that I never went inside. I knew of other doctors who had been sued for malpractice and went back to their routines, but this lawsuit went beyond the question of whether or not I could have diagnosed osteogenesis imperfecta in utero. It wasn’t skeletal breaks I had not seen in advance but rather the wishes of a best friend whose mind I’d thought I knew inside out. If I had not been able to read Charlotte correctly, how could I trust myself to understand the needs of patients who were virtual strangers?

I had wondered for the first time about the terminology of running your own office as a doctor. It was called a practice. But shouldn’t we have gotten it right by the time we opened one?

We were, of course, taking a huge financial hit. I had promised Rob that I would go back to work by the end of the month, whether or not the trial was over. I had not specified, however, what sort of work I’d go back to. I still could not imagine myself shepherding a routine pregnancy. What about pregnancy was routine?

In the course of preparing with Guy Booker, I had gone back over my notes and my memories a thousand times. I almost believed him when he said that no physician would be blamed for not diagnosing OI at the eighteen-week ultrasound; that even if I had an inkling about it, the recommended course of action would have been to wait several weeks to see if the fetus was Type II or Type III. I had behaved responsibly as a doctor.

I just hadn’t behaved responsibly as a friend.

I should have been looking more closely. I should have pored over Charlotte’s records with the same thoroughness with which I would have pored over my own, had I been the patient. Even if I was in the right in a courtroom, I had failed her as a friend. And in a roundabout way, that was how I’d failed her as a doctor, too-I should have declined when she asked me to treat her in my practice. I should have known that somehow, some way, the relationship we had outside the examination room would color the relationship we had inside it.

The water in the shower was running cold now; I turned it off and wrapped a towel around myself. Guy Booker had given me very specific instructions on what I should wear today: no business suits, nothing black, hair loose around my face. I’d bought a twinset at T.J. Maxx because I never wore them but Guy said that it would be perfect. The idea was to look like an ordinary mom, a person any woman on the jury might identify with.

When I came downstairs, I heard music in the kitchen. Emma had left for the bus stop before I’d even gotten into the shower, and Rob-well, Rob had been at work by seven thirty every morning for the past three weeks. It was less of a burgeoning work ethic, I believed, than a burning desire to be out of the house by the time I awakened, just in case we’d have to have a civil conversation without Emma there to serve as a buffer.

“It’s about time,” Rob said as I walked into the kitchen. He reached over to the radio and turned down the volume, then pointed to a plate on the table that was piled high with bagels. “The store only had one pumpernickel,” he said. “But there’s also jalapeño-cheddar, and cinnamon-raisin-”

“But I heard you leave,” I said.

Rob nodded. “And I came back. Veggie cream cheese, or regular?”

I didn’t answer, just stood very still, watching him.

“I don’t know if I ever got around to telling you,” Rob said, “but the kitchen? It’s so much brighter, now that you painted it. You’d be a hell of an interior designer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think you’re better suited to be an obstetrician, but still…”

My head was starting to pound. “Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but what are you doing here?”

“Toasting a bagel?”

“You know what I mean.”

The toaster popped, Rob ignored it. “There’s a reason we have to say ‘for better or for worse.’ I’ve been a total asshole, Piper. I’m sorry.” He looked down at the space between us. “You didn’t ask for this lawsuit; it was lobbed at you. I have to admit, it made me think about things I thought I’d never have to think about again. But regardless of all that, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t provide any less than the standard of care for Charlotte and Sean. If anything, you went above and beyond.”

I felt a sob rise in my throat. “Your brother,” I managed.

“I don’t know how different my life would have been if he’d never been born,” Rob said quietly. “But I do know this: I loved him, while he was here.” He glanced up at me. “I can’t take back what I said to you, and I can’t erase my behavior these past few months. But I was hoping, all the same, that you might not mind me coming to court.”

I didn’t know how he’d cleared his schedule, or for how long. But I looked up at Rob and saw behind him the new cabinets I’d installed, the track of blue lighting, the warm copper paint on the walls, and for the first time I did not see a room that needed perfecting; I saw a home. “On one condition,” I hedged.

Rob nodded. “Fair enough.”

“I get the pumpernickel bagel,” I said, and I walked right into his open arms.

Marin

An hour before the trial was supposed to start, I really didn’t know whether or not my client was planning to show up. I’d tried to call her all weekend, and had not been able to reach her landline or her cell. When I reached the courthouse and saw the news crews lining the steps, I tried to phone her again.

You’ve reached the O’Keefes, the message machine sang.

That wasn’t exactly true, if Sean was proceeding with a divorce. But then, if I had learned anything about Charlotte, it was that the sound bite offered to the public might not be what was true behind the scenes, and to be honest, I didn’t particularly care, as long as she didn’t confuse her rhetoric when I had her on the witness stand.

I knew when she arrived. The roar on the steps was audible, and when she finally breached the door of the courthouse, the press poured in after her. I immediately hooked my arm through hers, muttering “No comment” as I dragged Charlotte down a hallway and into a private room, locking the door behind me.

“My God,” she said, still stunned. “There are so many of them.”

“Slow news day in New Hampshire,” I reasoned. “I would have been happy to wait for you out in the parking lot and take you through the back way, but that would actually have meant you’d returned my seven thousand messages this weekend, so that we could arrange a time to meet.”

Charlotte stared blankly out the window at the white vans and their satellite dishes. “I didn’t know you called. I wasn’t home. Willow broke her femur. We spent the weekend at the hospital, having a rod surgically implanted.”

I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Charlotte hadn’t been ignoring my calls; she’d been putting out a fire. “Is she all right?”

“She broke it running away from us. Sean told her about the divorce.”

“I don’t think any kid wants to hear something like that.” I hesitated. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, but I wanted to have a few minutes to talk to you about what’s going to happen today-”

“Marin,” Charlotte said. “I can’t do this.”

“Come again?”

“I can’t do this.” She looked up at me. “I really don’t think I can go through with it.”

“If this is about the media-”

“It’s about my daughter. It’s about my husband. I don’t care how the rest of the world sees me, Marin. But I do care what they think.”

I considered the countless hours I’d spent preparing for this trial, all the expert witnesses I’d interviewed and all the motions I’d filed. Somehow, in my mind, it was tangled up with the fruitless search for my mother, who had finally responded to Maisie the court clerk’s phone call, asking her to send along my letter. “Now’s a little late to break this news to me, don’t you think?”

Charlotte faced me. “My daughter thinks I don’t want her, because she’s broken.”

“Well, what did you think she’d believe?”

“Me,” Charlotte said softly. “I thought she’d believe me.”

“Then make her. Get up on that witness stand and say that you love her.”

“That’s sort of at odds with saying I’d have terminated the pregnancy, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” I said. “You don’t want to lie on the stand. I don’t want you to lie on the stand. But I certainly don’t want you judging yourself before a jury does.”

“How can’t they? You even did it, Marin. You as much as admitted that, if your mother had been like me, you wouldn’t be here today.”

“My mother was like you,” I confessed. “She didn’t have a choice.” I sat down on a desk across from Charlotte. “Just a few weeks after she gave birth to me, abortion became legal. I don’t know if she would have made the same decision if I’d been conceived nine months later. I don’t know if her life would have been any better. But I do know it would have been different.”

“Different,” Charlotte repeated.

“You told me a year and a half ago that you wanted Willow to have opportunities to do things she might not otherwise be able to do,” I said. “Didn’t you deserve the same?”

I held my breath until Charlotte lifted her face to mine. “How long before we start?” she asked.

The jury, which had looked so disparate on Friday, seemed to be a unified body already first thing Monday morning. Judge Gellar had dyed his hair over the weekend, a deep black Grecian Formula that drew my eyes like a magnet and made him look like an Elvis impersonator-never a good image to associate with a judge you are desperate to impress. When he instructed the four cameras that had been allowed in to report on the trial, I almost expected him to break out in a resounding chorus of “Burning Love.”

The courtroom was full-of media, of disability-rights advocates, of people who just liked to see a good show. Charlotte was trembling beside me, staring down at her lap. “Ms. Gates,” Judge Gellar said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I squeezed Charlotte’s hand, then stood up to face the jury. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “I’d like to tell you about a little girl named Willow O’Keefe.”

I walked toward them. “Willow’s six and a half years old,” I said, “and she’s broken sixty-eight bones in her lifetime. The most recent one was Friday night, when her mom got home from jury selection. Willow was running and slipped. She broke her femur and had to have surgery to put a rod inside it. But Willow’s also broken bones when she’s sneezed. When she’s bumped into a table. When she’s rolled over in her sleep. That’s because Willow has osteogenesis imperfecta, an illness you might know as brittle bone syndrome. It means she has been and always will be susceptible to broken bones.”

I held up my right hand. “I broke my arm once in second grade. A girl named Lulu, who was the class bully, thought it would be funny to push me off the jungle gym to see if I could fly. I don’t remember much about that break, except that it hurt like crazy. Every time Willow breaks a bone, it hurts just as much as it would if you or I broke a bone. The difference is that hers break more rapidly, and more easily. Because of this, from her birth, osteogenesis imperfecta has meant a lifetime of setbacks, rehabilitation, therapy, and surgeries for Willow, a lifetime of pain. And what osteogenesis imperfecta has meant for her mother, Charlotte, is a life interrupted.”

I walked back toward our table. “Charlotte O’Keefe was a successful pastry chef whose strength was an asset. She was used to hauling around fifty-pound bags of flour and punching dough-and now every movement of hers is done with finesse, since even lifting her daughter the wrong way can cause a break. If you ask Charlotte, she’ll tell you how much she loves Willow. She’ll tell you her daughter never lets her down. But she can’t say the same about her obstetrician, Piper Reece-her friend, ladies and gentlemen-who knew that there was a problem with the fetus and failed to disclose it to Charlotte so that she could make decisions every prospective mother has the right to make.”

Facing the jury again, I spread my palms wide. “Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, this case is not about feelings. It’s not about whether Charlotte O’Keefe adores her daughter. That’s a given. This case is about facts-facts that Piper Reece knew and dismissed. Facts that weren’t given to a patient by a physician she trusted. No one is blaming Dr. Reece for Willow’s condition; no one is saying she caused the illness. However, Dr. Reece is to blame for not giving the O’Keefes all the information she had. You see, at Charlotte’s eighteen-week ultrasound, there were already signs that the fetus suffered from osteogenesis imperfecta-signs that Dr. Reece ignored,” I said.

“Imagine if you, the jury, came into this courtroom expecting me to give you details about this case, and I did-but I held back one critical piece of information. Now imagine that, weeks after you’d rendered your verdict, you learned about this information. How would that make you feel? Angry? Troubled? Cheated? Maybe you’d even find yourself losing sleep at night, wondering if this information, presented earlier, might have changed your vote,” I said. “If I withheld information during a trial, that would be grounds for appeal. But when a physician withholds information from a patient, that’s malpractice.”

I surveyed the jury. “Now imagine that the information I withheld might affect not just the outcome of the jury trial you sat on…but your whole future.” I walked back to my seat. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what brings Charlotte O’Keefe here today.”

Charlotte

I could feel Piper staring.

As soon as Marin stood and started talking, she had a direct view of me from across the room, where she sat at a table with her attorney. Her gaze was blazing a hole in my skin; I had to turn away to stop it from burning.

Somewhere behind her was Rob. His eyes were on me, too, like pin-pricks, like lasers. I was the vertex, and they were the rays of the angle. Acute, somewhat less than the whole.

Piper didn’t look like Piper anymore. She was thinner, older. She was wearing something we would have made fun of while we were shopping, an outfit we would have consigned to the Skating Moms crowd.

I wonder if I looked different, too-or if that was even possible, given that, the very moment I’d sued her, I’d become someone she never thought I could be.

Marin slipped into her seat beside me with a sigh. “Off and running,” she whispered as Guy Booker rose and buttoned his suit jacket.

“I wouldn’t doubt that Willow O’Keefe’s had-what was it Ms. Gates said?-sixty-eight broken bones. But Willow also had a mad scientist birthday party in February. She’s got a poster of Hannah Montana hanging over her bed, and she got the highest grade on a districtwide reading test last year. She hates the color orange and the smell of cooked cabbage and asked Santa for a monkey last Christmas. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, in many ways Willow O’Keefe is no different from any other six-and-a-half-year-old girl.”

He walked toward the jury box. “Yes, she is disabled. And yes, she has special needs. But does that mean she doesn’t have a right to be alive? That her birth was a wrongful one? Because that’s what this case is really about. The tort is called wrongful birth for a reason, and believe me, it’s a tough one to wrap your heads around. But yes indeed, this mother, Charlotte O’Keefe, is saying that she wishes her own child had never been born.”

I felt a shock go through me, as sure as lightning.

“You’re going to hear from Willow’s mother about how much her daughter suffers. But you’ll also hear from her father about how much Willow loves life. And you’ll hear him say how much joy that child’s brought into his life, and just what he thinks about this so-called wrongful birth. That’s right. You’re not misunderstanding me. Charlotte O’Keefe’s own husband disagreed with the lawsuit his wife started and refused to be part of a scheme to milk the deep pockets of a medical insurance company.”

Guy Booker walked toward Piper. “When a couple first find out that they’re pregnant, they immediately hope the child will be healthy. No one wants a child to be born less than perfect. But the truth is, there are no guarantees. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that Charlotte O’Keefe is in this for two reasons, and two reasons only: to get some money, and to point the finger at someone other than herself.”

There were times when I was baking that I opened the oven at eye level and was hit by a wave of heat so strong and severe that it temporarily blinded me. Guy Booker’s words had the same effect at that moment. I realized that Marin was right. I could say that I loved you and that I wanted to sue for wrongful birth and not contradict myself. It was a little like telling someone, after she’d seen the color green, to completely forget its existence. I could never erase the mark of your hand holding mine, or your voice in my ear. I couldn’t imagine life without you. If I’d never known you, the tale would be different; it would not be the story of you and me.

I had never allowed myself to think that someone might have been responsible for your illness. We had been told that your disease was a spontaneous mutation, that Sean and I weren’t carriers. We had been told that nothing I might have done differently during my pregnancy would have saved you from breaking in utero. But I was your mother, and I had carried you under the umbrella of my heart. I was the one who had summoned your soul to this world; I was the reason you’d wound up in this broken body. If I hadn’t worked so hard to have a baby, you wouldn’t have been born. There were countless reasons, as far as I could see, that I was to blame.

Unless it was Piper’s fault. If that was the case, then I was off the hook.

Which meant that Guy Booker was also right.

This lawsuit, which I’d filed because of you, which I’d sworn was all about you, was actually all about me.