I reached the bathroom just as another wave of nausea consumed me, and I grabbed a white plastic stick from underneath the cabinet. I removed Katie’s potty seat from the lid of the toilet and squatted and peed over the stick as instructed. I’d done this a few times over the past several months but nothing so far.
This time around, unlike with Katie, it had been my idea to try for another child, and it felt unfamiliarly powerful to be in command. I tried to do that more often these days—to listen to my internal cues and honor them. So when Katie turned two, and I realized that we’d both be okay, that we’d both emerge from this whole mother-daughter thing without permanent damage, I also realized that I’d like to try it again, only this time without the self-doubt and the self-loathing and the self-induced need for perfection.
I finished peeing, and plopped the stick down on the sink, then tried to busy myself by tweezing my eyebrows while I waited. And soon enough, there. There it was. The literal sign of my future. Though I’d been expecting it, still, I was shocked, breathless even. And more surprising than the plus sign was my initial inclination to panic, to flee like hell straight out of there.
But no. I caught my breath and I exhaled and I remembered how far I’d come, how I’d tripped down a rocky path and so nearly lost my grip on everything that mattered, and then I thought of Katie and my unbreakable love for her, and how I could already feel that same love growing inside of me.
I looked in the mirror and saw blood running flush through my cheeks. Soon, the beat slowed inside of my neck, and my hand fluttered down to cup my abdomen, and I gazed at myself—so changed and yet so not—and all I could do was smile.
Yes, truly, now, I was home.
Acknowledgments
If there is such a thing as publishing heaven, Shaye Areheart Books is it, and I can’t believe my good fortune to have landed here. Most writers are lucky to have one fabulous editor. I was lucky enough to have two, both of whom are worthier than I deserved. I will always be grateful to Sally Kim, who with kindness, genius, and dedication, nurtured this book long after her responsibilities had expired, and to Shaye Areheart, who gave me more attention, support, and wisdom than surely her schedule allowed. My team at Shaye Areheart Books—Kira Walton, Annsley Rosner, Rowena Yow, Karin Schulze, Sarah Knight, and Anne Berry, among others—was more than I could have ever hoped for: the perfect trifecta of intelligence, talent, and wit.
Most writers are also lucky to have an agent who advocates on their behalf, but I’m lucky to have one who goes way beyond just being my advocate: Elisabeth Weed, as if I haven’t told you this a thousand times before, you rock, and I’m thankful each and every day that you responded to my introductory email. Soon we shall conquer the world! (Yes, readers, she knows that I’m joking. Sort of. We’re always both sort of joking.)
To Michelle Winn and Andrea Mazur: Thank you for your friendship and for talking endlessly with me about our own “what ifs.” You made this a better book, and you make my life a better place to live.
To Amy Stanton, Melissa Brecher, and Paula Pontes: Thank you for our girls’ nights, which keep me sane, and for reminding me that where you come from is as important as where you’re going.
To Laura Dave: Thank you for the perfect epigraph.
To my friends at FLX: Thank you for providing companionship during my solitary days in my office, and thank you for sharing in my triumphs every step of the way.
To Randy and Tamara Winn, Barbara and Barry Scotch, Matthew Scotch, Molly Scotch, Linda Childers, Debra Netschert, Larramie, Rachel Weingarten, Jennifer Lancaster, Sarah Self, Meryl Poster, and Kate Schumaecker: Thank you for the various unsolicited ways that you offered help, support, critiques, cheerleading, shoulders, and friendship these past few years. I’m constantly indebted.
To my parents: Thank you for your pride in my success and for the knowledge that you’d be proud of me whether I was published or not. Thank you also for those last-minute babysitting fill-ins that I usually forget to thank you for.
To my husband, Adam: Thank you for your good humor and your wry smile when I told you about the subject matter of the book; thank you for not caring if people will confuse this fiction with our real life; thank you for occasionally putting your dishes in the dishwasher and every once in a while picking up your socks from the floor.
Finally, to Campbell and Amelia: Thank you for providing more unfiltered joy and untouchable love than I have ever known. I might have written a book about “what ifs,” but with you, I have my answers.
About the Author
Allison Winn Scotch is a frequent contributor to numerous national magazines and is the author of The Department of Lost and Found. She lives in New York City with her husband and their son, daughter, and dog.
ALSO BY ALLISON WINN SCOTCH
The Department of Lost and Found
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Allison Winn Scotch
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scotch, Allison Winn.
Time of my life : a novel / by Allison Winn Scotch.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction.
3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.C64T56 2008
813’.6—dc22 2008010628
eISBN: 978-0-307-45006-7
v3.0
Time of My Life Page 25