In the first couple of years after Mom died, he watched me, his ice-blue eyes somehow both soft and probing. He would ask questions that required long answers, or at least longer than “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t care.” The first time I answered one of these detailed questions with a vacant moan, too tired from swim practice, and homework, and the dull tedium of dealing with persistently dramatic friends, Dad called a real estate agent and demanded she find us the perfect weekend home in Healdsburg, California.

We first saw it at an open house, shown by the local Realtor, who let us in with a wide smile and a tiny, judgmental slant of her eyes toward our big-city San Francisco agent. It was a four-bedroom wood-shingled and sharply angled cabin, chronically damp and potentially moldy, tucked back into the shade of the woods and near a creek that would continually bubble outside my window. It was bigger than we needed, with more land than we could possibly maintain, and neither Dad nor I would realize at the time that the most important room in the house would be the library he would make for me inside my expansive closet.

Nor could Dad have known that my whole world would end up next door, held in the palm of a skinny nerd named Elliot Lewis Petropoulos.

now

tuesday, october 3

If you drew a straight line from my apartment in San Francisco to Berkeley, it would only be ten and a half miles, but even in the best commuting window it takes more than an hour without a car.

“I caught a bus at six this morning,” I say. “Two BART lines, and another bus.” I look down at my watch. “Seven thirty. Not too bad.”

Sabrina wipes a smudge of foamy milk from her upper lip. As much as she understands my avoidance of cars, I know there’s a part of her that thinks I should just power through it and get a Prius or Subaru, like any other self-respecting Bay Area resident. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not a saint.”

“I really am. You made me leave my bubble.” But I say it with a smile, and look down at her tiny daughter on my lap. I’ve only ever seen the princess Vivienne twice, and she seems to have doubled in size. “Good thing you’re worth it.”

I hold babies every day, but it never feels like this. Sabrina and I used to live across a dorm room from each other at Tufts. Then we moved into an apartment off-campus before quasi-upgrading to a crumbling house during our respective graduate programs. By some magic we both ended up on the West Coast, in the Bay Area, and now Sabrina has a baby. That we are old enough now to be doing this—birthing children, breeding—is the weirdest feeling ever.

“I was up at eleven last night with this one,” Sabrina says, looking at us fondly. Her smile turns wry at the edges. “And two. And four. And six . . .”