I couldn't do that today. I wasn't strong enough yet. I needed the first trimester behind me. Twelve weeks—the rule I'd given a thousand patients. It was sound medical advice. It was also a wall, and I was building it between myself and the woman sitting across from me, and I knew it.
"The frittata is good, Mom."
"It's the gruyère. I switched from the Swiss."
"I can taste it. It's better."
She smiled and refilled my coffee without asking. Two hundred milligrams a day was the guideline. I was already past it, so I wrapped both hands around the mug and brought it to my lips without drinking.
"So," she said. She set her fork down and looked at me. Not the usual look—the one that started at my hair and ended at my hands. This one stopped at my plate.
"You're not eating."
"I'm eating, Mom. I had a big breakfast."
"You haven't touched the eggs."
I picked up my fork and took a bite. The nausea rolled through my stomach, but I chewed, swallowed, and smiled.
"See? Eating."
She watched me for another beat. Then she picked up her coffee.
"So," she said. "Anyone interesting lately?"
It came every Sunday. After the food and before the dishes.
"No, Mom."
"You'd tell me?"
"I'd tell you."
She nodded. She didn't push it.
We did the dishes together—her at the sink, me with the towel, the blue plates going back in the cabinet one at a time. My mother's hands in the water, my hands on the towel, the plates warm from the sink passing between us.
She hugged me at the door. She kissed the side of my head, slightly too hard, and pressed a Tupperware of leftover frittata into my hands.
"Drive safe," she said.
"I always do, Mom."
I hugged her back and held on for a beat longer than usual, and I felt her register it—the extra second that told hersomething she wasn't going to ask about today. She let me have it. She didn't ask.
I walked to my car, put the Tupperware on the passenger seat, and sat behind the wheel for a moment before I turned the key.
Six more weeks of this. The Sunday brunches, the coffee I couldn't drink, the questions I answered with the same answer I'd been giving for two years. Six weeks of sitting across from my mother, carrying something that was going to change what she saw when she looked at me. I was choosing the silence with my eyes open, and if that also meant I got six more Sundays without the weight of her patience on top of everything else, then that was a cost I was willing to pay.
CHAPTER 7
Duke
Summer had settled into Hartsdale slowly, and then completely. The bay doors stayed open from six to sundown now, and the air coming through smelled like the river and cut grass, and the particular sweetness that meant the valley had turned all the way over into the long days. The rig was parked where it always was, backed in with the chrome catching the late-morning light.
Nine months since the wedding. I'd been counting without meaning to, which was not something a man did about a night he'd put behind him.
I was crouched at the engine compartment with the inventory sheet, running a check I didn't need to run. Easton's habit, not mine. He was on a call with Astrid's clinic, some issue with the insurance filing, and wouldn't be in until seven-thirty. So I was the one at the bumper with the clipboard, confirming what was already confirmed, going through motions that belonged to another man because going through motions was something my body understood better than sitting still.
