“We’re done with this conversation.” I reach for the laptop’s keyboard.
“Hold up there, K-Dog,” she drawls.
It’s enough like hearing Edward—right down to the nickname—that I pause and drop my hand.
“After Mo died,” she goes on, “you gave me great advice on how to do my job better when a thousand new things were being thrown at me. You taught me to ignore the noise and see the essential content so I could problem-solve better. As an engineer, I thought I was already a total badass at problem-solving, but you showed me the human mechanics, the skill of dealing with a large team of people who all want different things, many not expressing it in a clear way.”
“I’m glad my guidance was helpful,” I manage stiffly.
“So I want you to mentally go back to the last conversation with Nat and look at it again. Cut out the noise of all the fear bullshit you were both feeling, and focus on the reality… not the story your anxieties and assumptions were writing.” She leans closer to the camera. “Who’s driving here?”
“Talia is,” I say automatically.
“That’s not what I mean. Okay, so you got a crash course on how not to be a patronizing douche-canoe. Huzzah. Believe me, it’ll make everyone’s life easier, especially yours. I mean, are you going to let your past mistakes dictate what happens next… what happensforever?”
I have at the ready a half-dozen retorts to what she’s saying, but they all drop away. A taunting view of what’s possible stops me in my tracks.
Phaedra sits back, folding her arms. “But don’t letmetell you what to do—this isn’t my life, it’s yours. And Nat’s and that kid’s.”
Long shadows are stretched across the garden as I wander toward the statue of Aphrodite. My fingers are loose around the contents of my hand. As I sit on the brick ledge, my gaze falls to the small tributes at the goddess’s feet, in various states of age. A flower from a month ago, now brown and flat. A fig that has split and been partially hollowed by wasps. A lemon still so perfect it might as well be made of wax.
I collect the flower and fig and toss them onto the grass, then set down three items: a long pin with a teardrop-shaped plastic pearl head, a one-koruna coin, and the glass mati charm. Minutes ago, I stared at the pin and coin inside my dresser drawer for a long time. Now I place them at the base of the statue quickly, before I can change my mind about letting them go.
I’m not particularly spiritual, so I don’t imagine that Sofia sees me. I can see and hearherin my mind’s eye, and that’s enough. Part of me wishes I could put more into this moment, a ritualin which the right words might be a spell to free me. But that wouldn’t be accurate. I don’t feel trapped. Sofia simply is, and will always be, a part of who I am.
She’s now a beloved memory of something that shaped me. So many joys along the path of my youth: my mother’s cooking, rowing on Lake Neusiedl, being able to climb a tree with the same speed it took to jump down, hearing a new song on the radio as a teenager and falling in love with it, racing motorbikes, making Sofia blush for the first time, flirting behind her father’s back.
I study the pearl-tipped silver pin, which affixed a white calla lily to my lapel on our wedding day, and remember how Sofia’s hands shook when she took it off me that night. The way she laughed with joy and covered her face when she came, looking at me with shock and saying,My friends told me it would take years of practice!and then shyly asking how long we’d have to wait before doing it again.
And the Czech koruna she found on the street the last day of our honeymoon in Prague. It was crown-side up, and she claimed it was a good luck sign.See?she said, displaying it between her fingers.My grandmother says if you find a coin on the ground on your honeymoon, the denomination tells you how many children you will have.As she tucked the little silver coin into my pocket, she asked,Are you disappointed we will only have one?I pulled her close and kissed her, teasing,I’m delighted with one, and evenmoredelighted you didn’t find fifty koruna!
I turn it over now so the side with the lion is showing, hiding the numeral.
I imagined, before Natalia told me of the pregnancy, that Iwouldn’t be able to father children. This likely contributed to my lack of caution.
The first time I took someone to bed, a year or so after Sofia died, I wondered how I might feel if I ever did have a child—whether there would be guilt that this joy found me in Sofia’s absence. There is, admittedly, a small pang. But in the mingled warmth and coolness of the statue’s shadow, draped half across me, there’s also the open happiness Sofia would feel for me if she could know.
Part of me may always grieve for the fact that she never had something she dearly wished for—one of the few things I was unable to give her. But it doesn’t pain me in the way I feared it might, because this is a different time and place.Iam different. Natalia is Natalia. This experience is not fungible.Apologies to me are inappropriate, I know Sofia would say.You have taken nothing away from us. Now go be the father I always knew you could be.
This child is real and right, andnow. A sovereign small person who is owed to no one, belongs to no one other than themself, and for a time that may seem too short in retrospect, will gift us with the treasure of raising them.
I’m going to be there for it.
I head back into the cottage, steeling myself for the conversation with Natalia’s formidable aunt.
25
KENTUCKY
TWO DAYS LATER
KLAUS
I booked my own flight since the trip wasn’t work-related, and with foolish optimism assumed six hours extra would be enough. But my connection from New York to Lexington was delayed, then trouble with my last-minute reservation consumed another hour at the hotel. As I rushed south, staying a safe five miles over the speed limit so as not to risk a ticket, I came upon a traffic snarl after a truck spilled its cargo across the highway. It seems everything is conspiring to make me late.
At the time of Natalia’s appointment, I’m still thirty miles north of the birthing center. My only hope is that she will be delayed too, with the doctor running behind. But as I turn into the car park, Natalia is walking out the double doors, heading down the stairs as she gazes at a small square of paper in her hand, a coat slung over her left arm.
My heart tumbles in a tug-of-war, both lifting to see her and falling when I realize the appointment is already over. I swoop into a parking slot and climb out, jogging a half-dozen spaces down, where she’s standing beside an older Jeep with wood-paneled sides.
