As Emily sat in the deli feeding Zoe, waiting for her sandwich, a ballad she’d never heard before came on the radio, but the melody somehow felt familiar. So did the voice. She listened to the lyrics.

I build you a castle in my dreams

With towers

With turrets

With everything always how it seems

I thought my love for you would die

Would wither

Would fade

But it beats strong inside me still

So I build you that castle on a hill

A crystal castle on a hill

The artist sang, his baritone strong and full, with a rasp that gave it added warmth. It felt familiar but at the same time, new. With a jolt, Emily thought she recognized the singer, but then she wasn’t sure. So much time had passed. She hadn’t heard his voice in years.

There was so much emotion in the performance that Emily found herself blinking back tears. She felt ridiculous, crying in a deli because of a song on the radio, and quickly wiped her eyes with Zoe’s burp cloth.

“It’s just pregnancy hormones,” she told Zoe. “That’s all. That’s all it is.”

After burping Zoe, Emily slipped the sandwich into the diaper bag and walked back to her office. But she couldn’t get the song out of her head. It beats strong inside me still. So I build you that castle on a hill. A crystal castle on a hill. The melody was familiar. And that voice. With those lyrics. Could it really be him?

11

The next week, while Ezra was on call, Ari came over to help Emily go through the piles of stuff in the second bedroom. She walked into Emily and Ezra’s apartment with a hiking backpack, the one she’d carried on a family trip to the Grand Canyon the year before.

“Are you staying the night?” Emily asked when her sister came through the door.

“I wish,” Ari said. “I brought you all my maternity clothes.”

The women were just about the same size, Ari a little softer around the edges, not quite as muscular as her younger sister.

Emily unzipped the bag. At just shy of seven weeks pregnant, she wasn’t showing. Even Ezra couldn’t see the difference in her body. She could feel it, though.

“Did you vacuum-pack these or something?” Emily asked, pulling out what looked liked a compressed plastic-wrapped cube of clothing.

Ari nodded. “It saves so much space in the attic.”