I walk without thinking, on the streets we walked earlier today and other streets I haven’t been down. Streets that are dark and streets that are bright with life, and they all feel dead to me.

Hannah.

A pretty name. I’ve thought plenty of times about what I’d call my daughter—our daughter—if we had one. Hannah was on the list.

But not anymore.

She probably is a nice kid. And smart. She probably graduated high school with flying colors, beloved by all. She’s probably perfect.

It’s just so transparent how invested he already is in her, just the concept of her. How some part of him already wants to take some of that credit. And she’s invested too, isn’t she—why else would she reach out?

Hannah Feldman. What’s she even like? Does she look like him? Smile like him? Does she close one eye like he does when he’s concentrating, and sneeze when the light’s too bright? Does she hate asparagus too; does her hair have red highlights in the sun? Is she the kind of person you can’t help but love?

I know Oliver will meet her—of course he will. And when he meets her, will he love her?

I picture a new version of the years ahead. The small snippets of Hannah Feldman’s life. Will she email him every year at the holidays and tell him about her latest triumphs, and will his eyes shine like they did just now at the hotel? Will he walk a little taller that day, reminding himself: Hannah made captain of the soccer team; Hannah graduated Princeton cum laude; Hannah was valedictorian; Hannah performed her first brain surgery…

And what if she’s it? The only child Oliver will ever have? What if we never have one of our own? And meanwhile, all the time: Hannah Feldman.

Chatter, English and Spanish, spills out of an ice cream parlor on the street. I walk around the entwined young couples, and the giggling kids up past their bedtimes. All that happiness and I feel poisoned; poisonous, like there’s nothing and no one in the world that I care about right now.

I hate that I feel this way. I hate this dead, dark feeling in my heart that I did nothing to earn. I feel like Oliver just put it there with his news and there’s nothing I can do about it. No way to lift this bitterness off of me.

Maybe I’ll just stay numb like this forever, stale and dried-up and sharp-edged.

*

Back in the hotel lobby, jelly-legged from all my walking on an empty stomach, I end up going to the bar. I don’t want to go back to my room. I don’t want to go back there ever.