Nova was fed. Nova was clean. The mother was working. The woman inside the mother was not.
I put on real clothes one morning and took them off before lunch. I left the TV on at night because the silence had gotten louder. I answered Astrid's check-ins with two-word texts. I let my mother's calls go to voicemail.
By day six, I was on the couch in the robe I'd been wearing for three days. Late afternoon. My phone rang on the counter. I let it go. It rang again.
I picked it up.
"Hey." Astrid's voice, gentle. "How are you doing?"
"I'm fine."
"Yeah?" A beat. "Are you eating?"
"Astrid, I'm fine."
She was quiet for a second. I could hear the bungalow behind her, the faint sound of Moose's nails on the hardwood.
"Duke had dinner with us the other night," she said. Like she was setting something down on a table and watching to see if it would hold. "He and Easton. He's not doing well, Aud."
I didn't say anything. My throat closed first, then my chest, then my eyes, and the sound that came out of me was not a word.
"Aud." Quiet. "I'm coming over. Stay on the couch."
She hung up. I stayed on the couch until she knocked.
I opened the door. Astrid was in jeans and one of Easton's sweatshirts stretched over her bump. She looked at my face, and her arms were around me before I could say anything.
I put my face against her shoulder and broke. She held on, one hand on the back of my head, the other across my shoulders, and she stood in the doorway with me until the shaking slowed. She kicked the door shut behind her. She wiped my cheek with her thumb.
"Okay," she said. "I'm going to make coffee."
She walked past me to the kitchen and started the kettle. She made two cups without asking if I wanted one.
She set both cups on the island. She sat on the stool closest to the window. She patted the one beside her.
I sat.
Astrid picked up her coffee. She drank. She set it down. She looked at me over the rim.
I told her.
I told her about the email on Duke's phone, the morning in the kitchen, the speech I gave him about not wanting to be the thing he resented. I told her about the “I love you” he said in the doorway, and the “I know” I gave back. I told her about the knock four days ago, his breathing through the wood, my hand on the door. I told her I didn't open it.
Astrid listened. She drank her coffee.
When I was done, she sat with it for a beat. Then she set her mug down, and her hands went to her lap, and she looked at the counter for a second before she looked at me.
"I have to tell you something," she said.
I recognized what was on her face because I'd seen it on my own. A woman about to say the thing she'd been carrying.
"When Easton left for Queens," she said. "I kissed him on the curb on Maple Avenue. I told him I wasn't ready. I told him to go take the slot, do the thing he needed to do, be the firefighter he was supposed to be. I told myself I was being noble. I told myself I was giving him what he needed." She paused. "The truest thing I said all week was the lie. I let him go because I was scared."
"That's not what I did," I said.
"I know." A beat. "I'm saying I almost lost everything because I thought letting him go was the brave thing. It wasn't brave. I was scared he was going to leave anyway, and I wanted to be the one who chose it first."
I looked at my coffee.
