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“We can use it for another round.” I tried to make the words sound nonchalant, but they came out as a desperate question.
Kyle reached for a piece of garlic bread and dunked it in his gravy. “Or we could pay off some of our debt.”
“We have the rest of our lives to make payments, but time is running out to start a family.” That line, I had rehearsed.
“Do you really want to go through all that again? Start from the beginning? We’re still recovering from the last time.”
“I promise, one last try. No matter what happens.”
Kyle stood and carried his plate across the kitchen. When he opened the dishwasher, a foul odor escaped from inside it. With just the two of us, we rarely had to run it, and dirty dishes sat in it for long periods of time. He loaded his dish and turned to leave. At the doorway, he paused, chewing on his lower lip. “It’s almost like a sign that we should try again.”
My stomach knotted, and my dinner threatened to come back up. “I thought so too.”
“Promise me that no matter what happens, this will be the last time.”
“On my parents’ grave.”
Chapter 11
As soon as I woke up the next morning, I called Dr.Evans’s office to make an appointment. The answering service told me I would have to call back during normal business hours and speak with someone in the office. I set the alarm on my phone for nine o’clock and showered and dressed for work. The buzzer went off while Page and I were brainstorming with the graphic designer about what photographs should accompany an article on the Mount Stapleton Ski Museum. I excused myself from the meeting to call the clinic. The soonest they could see us was in two weeks.
I texted Kyle the date and time of the appointment. He responded with a thumbs-up. Staring down at his response, I grinned, thinking he was as excited as I was to try IVF again. At some point, I would have to tell him where the money for the round really came from, but I would wait until after my pregnancy was confirmed or even until after I delivered. I imagined Kyle holding a baby boy when I finally told him. He would smile and stroke the baby’s cheek.I’m just glad we tried again.In my head, his voice had a lilt as he spoke the words.
That night when I got home after work, Kyle had dinner waiting for me, homemade baked-potato soup with fresh-baked Pillsbury rolls. A vase with a bouquet of red sunflowers sat in the center of the table with a card that saidI’m sorry.
“What are you apologizing for?” I asked.
“I’ve been so cranky about trying again. You need to know—it’s not just the money I’m worried about. It’s you too.”
“Me? I’m fine.”
He stirred his spoon around his bowl. “Each time we do this, you get your hopes up, and then when things go wrong, I can’t console you. No one can. It hurts to see you that way.”
My throat tightened as I saw myself standing over the never-used crib after our last try. I swallowed hard and pushed the image away. “If it doesn’t work this time, I’ll know we gave it all we had, and it just wasn’t meant to be. I can live with that.”
The next day, we rented snowmobiles, a bright-blue one for me and a lime-green one for Kyle. We rode them over a fifty-mile loop of connected trails that wound around enormous pine trees. I took my time navigating across the snow, enjoying the scenery, but Kyle let it rip, going full throttle when the path opened up. At one point, he got so far ahead that I lost sight of him. I caught up to him at an overlook where he had stopped to wait. It was the exact spot where he had proposed the first time we ever went snowmobiling together.
That day, he’d ridden beside me at a slow speed. About a mile from the spot, another snowmobile raced by us, going the other direction. “Pick up the pace,” Kyle hollered.
As we approached the overlook, I noticed red spots dotted over the bright-white snow. We steered closer. I realized the red spots were painted rocks arranged in the shape of a large heart. I braked hard, coming to an abrupt stop. Kyle and I both climbed off our sleds.
He undid his helmet while I unfastened mine. “What do you think is going on here?” he asked.
“No idea.” Weighed down in layers of clothes and numb from the cold, I felt as if I were dreaming. There was no one else around, and all I could see in front of me was a blanket of snow and tall trees, and allI could hear was wind. “Maybe we stumbled across Stapleton’s version of Stonehenge?”
Kyle reached for my arm and guided me away from our snowmobiles. Together, we trudged through the snow to the center of the heart. He inhaled deeply and dropped to one knee. I started to shiver.
“Nikki, the day we got stuck together on that chairlift, I wished it would never start again, because I knew even then I wanted to be with you forever.” He pulled a box from his pocket. “Marry me.” Later, when we started our snowmobiles again, I wore a sparkling diamond ring under the glove on my left hand.
Today, there was no heart, but Kyle did have a thermos of hot chocolate spiked with butterscotch schnapps stowed away in his backpack. He filled two paper cups, and we sipped, looking out at the mountain view. Before he put the thermos away, he rummaged through the knapsack’s outer pocket and pulled out a red rock.
I took it from him. “I can’t believe you kept that in here all this time.”
“It’s my good luck charm.”
I smiled, thinking of him all those years ago collecting and painting each rock and waking up at sunrise on a cold January day to arrange them. He’d told me he had started preparing the rocks in August.
“Would you do it again?” I asked now.
