“It’s true,” I insisted. “When he went to kiss me, I actually sent him away.”

“You sent Nick away? That’s a first.”

“Trust me, he was surprised, too.”

On the table between us, my phone vibrated. We both looked down and read the text that popped up from Nick on the screen: How about some real fun tonight?

“Speak of the devil,” Cat muttered.

“God, Nick, take a hint,” I said, rolling my eyes as I dismissed the notification. “Needy is not a good look on him.”

“Audrey,” Cat said slowly. “You don’t think … you don’t think Nick might have left those flowers?”

“Oh, please,” I said, bursting out laughing. “I don’t think Nick even knows how to find a florist. The man has never once sent me flowers.”

“Maybe there’s some poetry in starting with dead flowers.”

“No way. I don’t know who left those flowers, but it couldn’t have been Nick.”

“If you say so,” Cat said, but she still looked doubtful.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT HIM

I’d felt electrified as I used the shears, snipping the head from each orange rose and setting the stems carefully in a box. My hands had been bloody, my body still vibrating with a dangerous mixture of anguish and righteousness as I placed the box in front of her door, and I had walked away certain my message had been conveyed. But then the night had taken a turn, and I was no longer sure it had been the right thing to do. In fact, as I replayed the action on a loop in my mind, I became more and more worried I was only going to drive Audrey away from me.

You know he just drives everyone away. My niece’s mocking words came back to me as I sat before a cheerful blue row house in Capitol Hill on a set of concrete steps I’d climbed dozens of times before.

Across the street, I saw a sandy-haired woman lean over a high-end stroller, cooing at the infant inside. With a start, I realized this was the same woman who used to waddle up and down these streets, her hands cupping her massively pregnant belly. I wanted to rush across the street to congratulate her, peer underneath the awning of the stroller to see whether the baby had its mother’s sharp features, tickle its fat little feet. I restrained myself. The last time I had seen this woman, I had been shouting some things I wasn’t proud of, and I didn’t want to alarm her.

But, oh, how seeing her and her infant made me smile. My body went warm and fuzzy as I imagined Audrey’s slight form swelling with the fruit of our union. Her small face would grow rounder, glow, as she carried our little one within her body, and when our beautiful child finally made its way into the world, she would look up at me from the hospital bed with a bursting smile and say, I love you. I love this life you’ve given me.