Oliver’s grimacing at me from over Mom’s shoulder. All I can offer back is a little shrug. I don’t think we’re going to have much luck fighting the current on this one.

I knit my hands together beneath the tabletop.

I just really, really hope my sister starts answering her phone.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Oliver removes the sheets one by one from the linen closet: fitted sheet, top sheet, pillowcases, duvet cover. With his free hand he pushes back his mop of brown, greying-at-the-temples curls.

“I don’t get it, Gillian. Seriously, why can’t Dennis just cancel his business trip?”

I keep my voice patient.

“You know it’s not a ‘business trip,’ Oliver. It’s not like he’s off wining and dining some bankers in Dubai. He’s literally trying to stop kids from dying.”

Oliver’s just always had a chip on his shoulder about Dennis, as far as I can tell. My sister’s husband is what my mother’s generation might call a catch. He’s smart, dresses well, doesn’t drink too much; the kind of guy people vote for to run things. The kind you meet and think, he’s got this. And he comes from a pretty wealthy family, I gather—you don’t get to own a big house in Westchester on a humanitarian aid salary. Meanwhile, Oliver was the student who had to wait tables every night to put himself through college.

“Of course: Dennis the hero.” Oliver raises his hands in the air. “Okay, I get it, Dennis’s work has meaning and ours is just boring old Joe Schmo stuff. But he’s not the only person in the world who does this, right? He has a whole team. Can’t they just send someone else?”

“Apparently not,” I say through gritted teeth.

I wish he wouldn’t act like this whole situation was somehow my idea. I’m nervous about Sam staying with us too. I don’t really know my nephew terribly well, and this is obviously going to be hard on him. Ten is too old to fool him into thinking everything about this is normal.

I follow Oliver into the spare bedroom, dragging the duvet and pillow inserts with me.

The spare bedroom that wasn’t supposed to still be a spare bedroom. I resent everything about this room now: the futon where a crib should be, a mobile hanging overhead, twirling in the breeze. The blinds at the window where there should be white, gauzy curtains. The blank walls that stare flatly back at me.

“I’m just saying”—Oliver apparently doesn’t want to let this go—“in his shoes I would want to be looking after my own child.”

Suddenly I can’t bear for him to keep talking. I can’t bear to hear what kind of a father he thinks he would be in the universe where he actually was someone’s father.