Then, when Juliet was eleven, that magical age when she was starting to ask questions about the world, as we started to be able to really talk about life, and our relationship began to bloom with that added gift of friendship, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It had already spread to her intestines and liver, and she didn’t have long to live.

It surprised me—that panicky sensation, the primal yearning for my mother, no matter how mediocre she’d been. I found myself crying uncharacteristically, and eating at all hours, something I’d never done. My mother was dying in slow agony, and when she was gone, I’d lose the chance to ever win her approval.

By the time I visited in March, the cancer had spread to her brain and bones, and she was thrashing around on the bed like a trapped animal. Oh, I cried and cried when I saw her—that poor skinny body, her skin bruised, face sallow. The hospice nurses said it could happen anytime, but that tough old bird just wouldn’t die, as much as she wanted to. She lasted and lasted, in constant, grueling pain, and it was torture. There was just no other word for it.

I ate my emotions. My period was light, then stopped for a month or so, which I attributed to stress. It had happened to Caro when her husband was deployed. Then Mom finally did die, and I went back for the funeral with John and Juliet.

So I didn’t suspect pregnancy, not after all the trouble I’d had. I was old enough to start flirting with menopause. Nancy had hit it at thirty-nine, Elaine at forty-three. Besides, John and I had only had two very mediocre . . . couplings . . . this entire year.

Well, I was pregnant, turns out. No signs this time. No flash of knowing. I had no idea until I saw a chiropractor for back spasms.

“How many weeks are you?” she asked, and I actually laughed.

“I’m not pregnant,” I said. “My mom died recently, and I stress-ate. I . . . oh.”

Oh, no. The crying. The hunger. I hadn’t been eating my emotions; I’d been eating for two. I went from the chiropractor to my regular doctor, and yep. I was pregnant. Almost halfway along.

Juliet was in sixth grade, high school and teenage years just around the corner, not a time I wanted to be distracted by an infant. My god, an infant! Middle-of-the-night feedings, spit-up, dragging around a diaper bag for two years, ever in need of a shower. What had been a privilege with Juliet now seemed like a terrible burden.

Surprisingly, John was thrilled. Even more so than when I was pregnant with Juliet. “It’ll be a second chance,” he said, and I snapped back with, “A second chance at what?”

“At family life,” he answered, and I may have hissed at him.