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Rachelle told them she had everything set up for their dinner—four courses with non-alcoholic wine, which came specially recommended by the restaurant’s wine connoisseur.
“It’s amazing how different things are,” Sophie explained as Rachelle returned to the kitchen. “When I first got sober at age twenty, there wasn’t any non-alcoholic wine. Not that I can remember, anyway.”
“Rachelle tells me that her generation isn’t so keen on partying,” Sam explained.
“It’s proof the kids are smarter than the rest of us,” Sophie said. “They see the generational trauma in the past and ask themselves, ‘Can we be better?’ Whereas I only asked myself, ‘How do I escape this?’”
“It’s incredible how things have changed,” Hilary agreed. “My Aria says the same thing.”
Sophie took a bite of buttered bread and closed her eyes at the intensity of flavors. As she chewed, she touched her stomach under the table and smiled.
“Sophie,” Hilary sighed, shaking her head, her long black hair shimmering in the restaurant’s candlelight. “Ever since you announced your pregnancy, I’ve had the most startling case of baby fever. It’s my first case ever since having Aria.”
Sam and Ida cackled in unison as Hilary nodded, deathly pale.
“I’m going crazy,” Hilary said. “Now that Marc spends so much time in Nantucket rather than San Francisco, I’ve been weighing up whether to bug him about it, you know?” She chewed her lower lip. “He missed so much fatherhood with Aria. He never saw her take her first steps or say her first words. And I know that devastates him.”
“Hilary?” Sam whispered, her smile falling. “Are you serious about this?”
“I’m forty-four,” Hilary said, tugging her hair. “Which means I don’t have a lot of time left. But the doctor says we could make it work. There’s a window.”
“You’ve already asked the doctor!” Ida cried.
The server appeared with their non-alcoholic wine, interrupting the sharp tension at the table to pour them glasses and wish them well. As soon as he was gone, Sophie raised a glass toward Hilary and said, “I can’t imagine raising my baby alongside anyone else. He or she will certainly need a playmate. And I need another mother by my side, pushing me along. Reminding me that I’m not old yet.”
Hilary’s eyes shimmered. She looked relieved, as though she’d had this thought circling her mind for ages. She clinked her glass with Sophie’s and laughed at herself.
“You think I can really do it?” she asked the table, her voice cracking.
“My darling sister,” Sam said, “is there anything you can’t do?”
After a wonderful dinner of balsamic chicken, feta cheese foldovers, brussels sprouts with parmesan cheese, and a wonderful potato dish with plenty of garlic, Sophie hugged her family goodbye, hopped in her car, and headed back home to Patrick. She felt girlish and euphoric, and she sang (badly) along to the radio, her voice out of tune, the words all wrong. Still, she felt like a star.
The sound of the television led Sophie into the living room, where she found Patrick asleep on the couch with a book propped up on his chest and his eyes flickering behind his lids. Sophie felt an inexplicable surge of love for him. Tenderly, she removed his book, placed a bookmark where he’d stopped, and set it on the side table. She then sat on the chair beside him, turned down the volume on the television, and flicked around the channels, looking for nothing in particular. Patrick let out a light snore, and Sophie smiled to herself.
How many nights had she spent in this living room over the years? Hundreds. Thousands. But now that Patrick was making the living room partially his, these nights were different. They were cozy and slightly messy. Two teacups sat on the coffee table. Patrick had left a candy wrapper beside them. If Jared had seen the slight chaos, he would have snapped—telling Sophie what an incompetent housewife she was.
Sophie flinched at the memories. Despite Hilary’s remarkable interior design changes, this home would always feel partially like Jared’s. She would always feel haunted by his ghost.
It embarrassed her to admit that Jared still had such a hold over her psyche. She’d read online that codependent relationships had a stronghold over your body that you couldn’t just shake off.
Even her love for Patrick wasn’t enough to chase Jared’s darkness away.
Suddenly, a strange pain trickled down her chest and into her lower abdomen. Sophie collapsed against the cushions and clutched her stomach, gasping for breath. It was just a cramp. It would pass. It had to. But a moment later, the pain twisted and intensified, and she cried out, sweat billowing on her neck and forehead.
“Not this again. Not this again,” Sophie muttered, echoing what her mother had said. She felt frantic. Still, Patrick remained fast asleep, his chest rising and falling. She didn’t want to wake him.
Sophie stood and tiptoed to the bathroom. Her stomach writhed with pain. When she entered, she gripped either side of the sink and spoke to her reflection angrily. “Nothing bad is happening. It’s just one of those things. A mysterious pregnancy thing.”
But after another wave of pain crashed through her, Sophie dared to check herself. And what she found there left her shuddering.
Candy-red blood. It was gushing down her leg.
The next few minutes were a blur of panic. Sophie remembered barreling from the bathroom, crying Patrick’s name. She shook him awake, then she screamed into her hands. Before she knew it, she was in the back seat of Patrick’s truck, writhing with pain as he rocketed them to the hospital. The only soundtrack of the drive was him telling her, over and over again, that she was going to be fine, that he was going to take care of it. But Sophie had been around the block enough to know that once a terrible thing like this was off to the races, there was very little anyone could do to stop it. She just had to brace herself and hold on.
Chapter Eighteen
Twenty-Two Years Ago
