“Most of them. I walked the long way here, so the round trip should do it.” They used the same fitness tracker app, Sela focused on getting in her prescribed thirty minutes of daily activity and Leigh aiming to lose the baby weight. Neither had seen the desired results—Sela did usually meet her goals, but her disease didn’t seem to care, and her friend was wearing maternity pants even now—but they cheered each other on nonetheless.
“Dizzy at all?” Leigh had dealt with anemia in college, when they’d met as randomly assigned roommates, though hers was self-inflicted by overcorrecting to avoid the freshman fifteen. Neither necessary nor wise for someone burning mad calories on an athletic scholarship. Her extreme diet ended the day Sela dragged her, pale and trembling, to the student health center.
“Leigh,” she said gently, “no need to parent me. I think you have enough kids to worry about.”
The words held only affection, but Leigh dropped the sandwich into her lap and burst into tears.
“Oh, no. You know I didn’t mean—”
“I’m pregnant,” she said through her sobs.
Sela blinked, her gaze falling to the little face peering up at her from Leigh’s carrier, oblivious to her mother’s distress. Though her name, Piper, was as whimsical and sweet as her demeanor, she’d come along so soon after her sister that she was more often referred to as merely “the baby.” As in, I barely sleep, between Annie and the baby.
Only now, there was going to be another one.
“Wow. Um…” The thing to do was congratulate her. But she wasn’t sure how to go about it while her friend was weeping over the news.
While a part of herself that she despised was struggling not to join her.
“I didn’t even think it was possible yet.” Leigh’s words spilled out in a rush that sounded too much like a protest. “I’m nursing around the clock. I could count on one hand the number of times Van and I’ve had sex since Piper was born—hell, practically since Annie was born. Yet every test I pee on says it’s true.” She dissolved again into tears, and Sela’s eyes went to Annie. The fearless ball of moxie was on her fifth attempt at climbing up the spiral slide, a feat she had yet to manage more than halfway. Brody had worn himself out and plopped down in the mulch, which he was busy scooping into piles, paying Annie about as much attention as she was paying him. Sela knew this parallel-play stage was developmentally normal, but Annie was an attentive big sister to Piper. In months, the baby would be out there trailing after her—and another would be on the way. The most natural cycle there was.
But not for Sela. Her doctors not only cautioned against another pregnancy, they forbade it. A danger to both her and the fetus, which would likely not make it to term and, regardless of that outcome, endanger her own life in the process. The fact that she was already blowing through late stage three owed a great deal, she’d been told, to that shift in hormones and bodily function, a nine-month-long high-risk complication that could not be avoided unless it was, well, avoided.
For Sela, there would be only Brody.
“I was not going to tell you this”—Leigh sniffed—“until I was prepared to pretend to be happy about it.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
“I sound like a callous bitch.” She covered Piper’s ears with her hands, too late. “Not only am I resistant to what I know will be a blessing, but I’m selfish enough to cry about it in front of you of all people.”
“Leigh, look at me.” She’d seen this anguish in her friend before. When the giddy road they’d been traveling in carrying Brody and Annie at the same time—weekly prenatal yoga dates and shared registry links and even the same childbirth class—abruptly forked. Sela’s routine urine tests coming back abnormal, leading to diagnosis. The pregnancy itself escalating the decline of her kidney function before anyone could stop it. Brody coming much too soon, the long hospital stay that followed. She’d been left to navigate sharp turns at the top of a steep, deadly cliff while Leigh’s road continued straight and smooth, and then even Doug had stopped walking beside her, while Leigh and Van were nesting into a new stage of love with their baby miracle.
Both she and Leigh had tried, earnestly, but neither had known how to bridge the widening chasm between them when the forces quaking their worlds apart were so visceral and raw. The crevasse had grown almost impassably wide before they finally found a way across.
Sela had no interest in going back to that lonely place. No one, least of all Sela, liked someone who couldn’t see past their own misfortune to be glad for a friend. And she was through with not liking herself. She’d never meant to resent Leigh before, and the difference now was that she was self-aware enough to push back against the reflex. Her eyes flicked to Brody. Small, yes, and weak, maybe, but every bit as fierce as Annie beneath the surface. He was what no one else could ever be: the child of her heart.
“It’s just…” Poor Leigh was still trying to explain. “When you said I have enough—”
“Poor word choice. I hadn’t guessed, I swear.”
“But it’s not fair.” Leigh’s voice wobbled. “I do have ‘enough.’ And you…” She shook her head. “I know how much you wanted another shot at this.” Sela put an arm around Leigh, overcome with an odd gratitude that even when things got awkward, Leigh didn’t try to brush them under the rug the way Doug had.
Thank goodness Sela hadn’t driven both of them to divorce her.
“I did,” Sela admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be excited for you. And I am. Or will be, whenever you’re ready to feel excited for yourself.” Her own eyes had grown teary, but she smiled and could see her friend’s relief, though something else hid there, too. Fear.
“What if I don’t?” The words were barely audible, but Sela heard.
“You will,” she said with conviction. “What does Van think?”
“You know, I was so busy cussing him out I didn’t get around to asking.” She laughed joylessly. “I’m so tired. The idea of remaining awake at all hours for however many more years…”
“Sleep is probably what you need now. Why don’t I take the girls for the afternoon?”
Leigh’s eyes slid sideways. “I can’t ask that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’d enjoy them—honest.”
She picked up her sandwich from where it had fallen onto her jeans and took a big bite, as if to prove she was better already. “Thanks, but Annie will be so worn out after this, she’ll nap well. I’m just hormonal. And hungry.”
“My mother used to pack salami in my lunch,” Sela heard herself say.
“Really? Rebecca? The same Rebecca who coaxed us off campus with elaborate home-cooked spreads and regaled us with horror tales about processed food?”
“The earlier version. The broke single-parent version. Once her work took off she had the luxury of becoming more of a nag.”
“I never thought I’d miss being nagged.”
“You and me both. Although she’d be super proud of my diet now. I don’t know what she’d find left to concern herself with.” They both laughed. Sela had been about a year into her diagnosis—and a mother herself for only six months—when her mother died unexpectedly, having carried to the end a black leather-bound journal filled with meticulous notes—tracking every symptom, researching every drug, calling Sela first and last thing each day, and recording whatever seemed important. Saw a funny movie—that helped, but misses popcorn. Need to find her a low-sodium sub. Doug called it the Sela Bible, teasing that if his mother-in-law went so far as embossing the cover, he was out of there.