Maybe it’s about contrast. Because contrast helps me see more clearly the traits I value in myself—being careful, say, or a good listener—and it also reminds me that I don’t always have to be that person. That there are other ways to be. It reminds me that we all have freedom. And that different as we are, we can all belong.

“See?” Abigail says. “I’m right, aren’t I?” She looks at me, her face thoughtful. “Do you get it, now? With Dad?”

The funny thing is, I kind of do.

It’s like an old wound that has been slowly suturing over these past weeks—not all the way and not all at once, but it does feel different than it used to. Talking about him with my sister, I still feel the old, painful tug, but I’m understanding things a little differently these days. Something new comes into view for me now: how Abigail’s personality opened a door for him, a door that only she could be the one to open.

What they had was special. But he loved me; he loved me fiercely. I do know that.

“He thought the world of you, you know.” Abigail readjusts her tote bag on her shoulder, and turns away from the window. “We all did.” She looks at me. “Still do.”

I swallow.

She gestures around us at the white-painted walls. “So, Gillian, be honest with me. What do you think?”

I turn my gaze back to it all, and in the small galley kitchen the mica counter glitters briefly as a ray of February sun comes and goes.

“Put in an offer,” I say.

She looks at me and smiles.

“I think I will, Gillian. I think I will.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Two weeks later

“Wow, Gillian.”

Dinah puts her can of “goji berry” seltzer, as Jeff likes to call it—it’s just raspberry but he insists we’re fancy hipsters—back on the kitchen table.

“I didn’t think you were…” she says. “I didn’t think that was something you were interested in doing.”

I meet her eyes. “I know.”

Josie and Sam are in the living room; he’s teaching her origami, and the house is already littered with wonky paper cranes.

“I wasn’t,” I say. “I wasn’t interested in adoption at all, before. I think…I think it felt too much like failure.”

I clear my throat.

This has been kind of a surprise development for Oliver and me: it’s something we’ve spent a lot of late nights talking about, questioning our feelings, examining them. Checking if we’re coming at this from the right angle. If we’re being too impulsive, or irresponsible.

“But, I mean…” Dinah says carefully. “If the IVF works out…are you still—?”

“Yes,” I say quickly.