She flew to London and spent a week with Simon on his farm to talk through it with him. He wouldn’t have the issues her female friends had, but she learned he had his own issues. His father and brother had died in a train accident the previous year, a tragedy that was all over the news because the number of dead was in the dozens. The estate, which was never meant for him as a second son, became his along with the title and the seat in Parliament. All Simon had wanted to do was to live in London and be a music journalist of some acclaim, but now he was back in Ledbury, tending to the apple and pear orchards, like generations of Foxes had before him. He was lost when Alexa arrived. And the minute Alexa told him about having a baby on her own, he was found.

“Let me be the father,” he had begged. “I need some sign of life. I want to give you this. And you’ll give me something, too. I don’t need to be a couple and I don’t think you want to be either. And I know that you don’t want to live here on the outskirts of humanity worrying about the bee population, like I do. This is my duty, Alexa. This estate and these people. But I’d love to know that my child was out there in California, free to choose whatever they want to be. Please, Alexa.”

It was a nondecision. Of course this was the solution. Maybe it was why she had made the journey in the first place, knowing that this was where their relationship would lead them, after years of dancing around the edges of romance. She and her best friend spent the week eating, drinking, walking through the apple trees, and trying at least once a day to conceive a child. Like it was the most normal situation in the world.

They weren’t kids anymore, depending upon the potent fuel of youth, drinking, loud bands, and dark clubs to spark their interactions. Nor were they hardened twentysomethings squeezing in sex between intense work obligations, like it was a high-impact aerobics class. For this week, which Simon kept referring to as the Maculata Conceptionis, a bastardization of his schoolboy Latin and a reflection of his misunderstanding of the Immaculate Conception, they were both conscious and self-conscious of being together. They eased into the daily ritual, trying to find the balance between fertility and fun. All it took was a few glasses of a good white burgundy at lunch, a rainy afternoon, and the call of the pressed Irish linen sheets in Simon’s bedroom. They could laugh at the folly of it all and then get down to business, but in between there were moments of such tenderness. Yes, these were two dear friends.