Seven Lies (ARC)
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a pickle, and that she’d be much happier if you’d eat yours quickly so
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that she didn’t have to see it sitting there on your plate.
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All of these things are still true.
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And yet that conversation was not at all what I’d expected. I had
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scripted it, both of our parts, perfectly— her concern, her support, the 03
way her attention would be focused on me— and then without warning
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she had improvised.
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I feel disappointed. I feel afraid. I suppose I am confused.
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I know that you’re unwell. And I’m not stupid. I understand that it’s
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her responsibility to ensure that you have the correct medication, to
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care for you, to mother you. But to cut me off in the middle of a sen-
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tence, to move so seamlessly onto something else, to minimize my loss
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so overtly, so insensitively? I don’t think these are things that a best
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friend should do. Do you?
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She sent me a message, more than an hour ago, to say that the phar-
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macy was closed, that there was a sign on the door that said family
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emergency— open on monday and that she was going to find another
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one, and then I turned off my phone because I wanted it to be just us
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and our story, and because I needed space to think, to unravel my an-
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guish alone.
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My father always said that when you fall in love with someone, you 21
should do your very best to love them just a little bit less than they love 22
you. It’s the only way to protect yourself, he would have said.
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But it’s too late for that now. Could I walk out of this flat in a few
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hours’ time and never look back, never call either of you again? I don’t
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think so. It’s too hard to unravel a love this big. I wouldn’t know how to 26
unwind the threads of it that are woven through my ribs and my joints
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and my muscles. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.
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Anyway, my father was wrong. I think that if you love someone too
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much, you should do whatever it takes to make them love you, too.
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And I do love her: her openness, her warmth, her confidence, and the
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brightness that emanates from within her. None of those things have
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changed. But they aren’t enough anymore. She is open— but for you—
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warm— but for you— loving— but for you.
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She shines no light for me anymore.
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Am I allowed to say that I wish your mother loved me as much as
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she loves you?
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Perhaps not.
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But it’s true.
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Because she used to. It was together that we discovered friendship
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and realized that it was different, better than our relationships with
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those who were obliged to love us. We found that it anchored us in our
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own lives. And then, years later, we relinquished it. I wish I could tell 11
you that you weren’t going to make these same mistakes, but you will,
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because we all do. We all sacrifice the best loves in pursuit of something 13
better.
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Oh.
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Oh, no.
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That’s it, isn’t it?
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I didn’t know there was more. I couldn’t see it.
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But I’m right, aren’t I?
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It makes such perfect sense.
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You extricate yourself from your family and then from your friends,
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limb by limb, bone by bone, memory from memory, as your one be-
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comes part of a different two, part of a romantic love. I thought that
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was it: the final stage. I didn’t see that the pattern repeats one last
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time. That it isn’t a thread, but a circle, that one stage feeds into the 25
next, until you end up standing in the spot where you started: that it
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returns, again, to family.
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You craft new limbs and new bones and you are not one person any-
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more because, this time, you truly are two. Your skeleton houses
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another life. It exists within your own. And that can never be undone.
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Those limbs and bones— that new being— will exist beyond your body
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and a part of you will forever live outside yourself. Your heart is now
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two hearts and one of them is always somewhere else.
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I hadn’t seen it before.
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But it is you.
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You have unpicked this friendship, with your tiny legs and tiny arms
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and that tiny heart thundering in your chest. You have created this re-
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lentless, thankless, imbalanced love.
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I thought it was me— something that I had done— but it isn’t; it isn’t
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at all.
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Do you remember the two women at the beginning of this story?
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One tall and fair, one shrunken and dark, entirely comfortable in each
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other’s company. Do you remember their strong branches, their long,
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tangled roots? I’ve been watching that tree wither. But I can revive it. I 14
lost my romantic love and then I crushed hers. I created a way for us to
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fall back into friendship. I need us to be sturdier than we’ve ever been, 16
and there’s only one way to achieve that.
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I need to do it again.
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It seems excessive. Doesn’t it seem excessive? But if I do nothing,
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then I am stuck here in this terrible, awful life in which people volun-
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tarily leave me because I am simply not enough to live for and that is
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just not the life that I want. There is only one path that will take me
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there, to a life worth having. And I’m so sorry, but you’re not on it.
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Call me if there are any problems,” she’d shouted as she disappeared 26
down the corridor, still slipping her other arm into her coat sleeve. She 27
rounded the corner. “Take good care of my baby,” I heard her sing.
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“I will,” I called, and the door slammed shut.
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I guess that was my seventh lie.
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Chapter Forty- Three
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k
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O
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nce upon a time, I almost had a baby of my own.
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I remember the night he died. It’s possible that he was a
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she, but he was always a he to me. I only really knew him for that one
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evening.
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We had been out for dinner with some friends— just a few, not too
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many. I had invited Marnie. Jonathan had invited Daniel and Ben,
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whom he’d known since school, Lucy, Ben’s wife, and Caro, who was
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the only woman in their cycling group. It had been nice. We’d gone to
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our local curry house and ordered far too much food, and bottle after
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bottle of beer, and finished the evening with tumblers of liqueur. We
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had hugged our goodbyes, and Marnie had said that she had exciting
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news, that we needed to catch up, that there was a man and that things
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were going well and when could we talk? Caro and her girlfriend were
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leaving the following morning to cycle through France and she prom-
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ised to send us a postcard. Ben and Lucy were having dinner with both
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pairs of parents the following weekend and we all knew, although none
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of us said it, that he would propose to her in the next few weeks.
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It was a normal evening: an enchanting, wonderful, normal evening.
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I really miss it, you know. When you look around a room or across a
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table and realize that you are surrounded by people who love you, who
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need you, who choose you. I miss that feeling of being wildly, unex-
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pectedly lucky. I haven’t felt that way in so long.
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That night the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I sat on the toilet in our small 06
tiled bathroom and the cramps in my stomach were furious, pulsing
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relentlessly within me. I held my nightdress around my waist and my
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underwear was stretched between my ankles and flushed with a deep
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red stain.
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I remember tears spilling onto my knees, trickling down my calves.
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I hadn’t known that I was pregnant, so I don’t suppose I was grieving,
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but I was frightened, trembling, my entire body quivering. And then
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suddenly I was angry. I remember this terrible noise, this terrible roar, 14
from the depths of my stomach, a noise that thundered through my
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bones and filled that cold, sparse room.
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“Jane?” I can remember him calling for me. I can remember how he
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sounded: I can hear him now as though he were still here. “What is
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it, Jane?”
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I ignored him because there were no words with which to explain it.
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“Jane. Please. Open the door.”
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I said nothing.
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“Jane!” he shouted. “Unlock it. Now.”
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I didn’t. A few seconds later he stumbled into the room accompa-
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nied by noise and chaos as the door shook on its hinges and the wood
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around the lock splintered and fell to the floor. I remember that he was
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wearing dark blue jeans. He wasn’t wearing a belt and so they were
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loose around his waist, hanging on his hips. His gray T- shirt had a stain 28
on the hem: yellow paint, I think. His jaw was clenched and his eyes
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were fixed and focused but his lips were small and scared.
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“Okay,” he said, as he knelt on the floor in front of me. “It’s all going 31S
to be okay.”
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He leaned forward and kissed me on the top of my head. He was a
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good man, the very best. I remember him offering me his hands and
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then registering that mine were wet with blood and instinctively flinch-
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ing but then forcing himself to hold his still. Because he wanted me to
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know that, despite what was happening, he still had me and that ours
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was still a bond— always a bond— that would never for a moment fail.
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He stood and he lifted my nightdress over my head.
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“I’m going to get you some new underwear,” he said. “Is that okay?
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Will you stay here?”
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I nodded, and he smiled, the softest, smallest smile that told me not
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to panic.
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And then I heard him run over to my dresser. I guess he didn’t want
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to be away from me for very long. He returned with an old pair of
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underwear— once white, now gray— and a thick cotton nightdress.
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“Do you need something for . . . ?” He glanced at the clean under-
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wear in his hand.
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I nodded and pointed to the drawer beneath the sink.
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“This?” He held up a sanitary pad packaged in purple plastic.
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I nodded.
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“Do you want to . . . ?” His eyes were begging, saying, Please, you can 19
do this bit yourself, and it makes me smile now to know that he would 20
have done it for me had I asked. He turned away and I wiped between
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my legs, over and over again. I continued until I felt drier, but no cleaner.
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I replaced my underwear and pulled my legs apart to hold the fabric
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taut as I fastened the cotton pad in place. Jonathan held a flannel under 24
the tap. He wiped my hands, one after the other, in between my fin-
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gers, and gently around the ring he had given me. I stood up and he<
br />
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eased the nightdress over my shoulders.
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“I need bottoms,” I said.
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“As well?”
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I nodded again.
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“Okay,” he said. “Get into bed and I’ll find them.”
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I walked into the bedroom, my legs still sticky, the pad already
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damp. I pulled back the duvet and slid beneath, surprised by the sight
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of my hands, how clean they looked, how unaffected.
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Jonathan handed me a pair of his own pajamas. They were red and
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green tartan with an elasticated waistband. He wore them all the time:
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in the mornings as he drank coffee and read the newspaper, in the eve-
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nings when we lolled on the sofa watching films. I still have them.
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“But they’ll get— ” I began.
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He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
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I hadn’t known that I was pregnant. I thought back through our previ-12
ous weekends— the places we’d been and the people we’d seen— and I
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realized that it had probably been a month or two and yet I’d been
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busy, happy, and the passing time hadn’t registered at all.
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I hadn’t known— and I found this difficult to articulate at the
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time— but I felt as though that negated my experience. I was sad, but I
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couldn’t justify that sadness, because how can you miss something that
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never was?
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And yet, at the same time, it really was something: not something
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big, something small, but something all the same. I saw the person those
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few cells might one day have become. I saw a little boy who looked like
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Jonathan. I saw a little boy on a little bike with fair hair and a small
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pointed chin. I saw a little boy who wanted to hold my hand, who swung
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between us, who grew up beneath us, who was loved and knew it always.
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A few weeks later, Jonathan returned from his final run, his last in 28
preparation for the marathon. He was comfortable again around me; he
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had stopped pausing when I entered the room and glancing my way
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every few minutes. We ate dinner from our laps on the sofa and, be-
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cause difficult conversations are often easier side by side, I told him