My shoulders drop and my mind spins backward to when I was pregnant, how my body grew in strange ways, the heartburn that snaked up from my gut and into my ears, the constant ache in my lower back and the fear that kept me awake at night. What kind of mother would I be? How was I going to do it alone? The waves of loneliness and hormones that spurred thoughts of Tate, happy in his new life with Maria.

My stomach clenches. “What happened to your wife?”

Tate adjusts on the couch, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “She didn’t stay around long enough to learn her name. But it w . . . w-as for the best.” He works his jaw.

I think of his daughter, her fate so similar to my own, and feel my heart ache for this girl whose face I can’t remember.

“Is Maria like my mom, Tate?”

Tate’s face hardens. “She’s n . . . n-othing like Alice, Claire.”

I’m nodding. “I know; Mom’s sober now, right?” I tap my pocket. “And she’s here now.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. “That’s right, Claire, she is. We all are.”

His words add warmth to the room, and I join him on the couch, sitting close enough that our shoulders touch.

“What are we watching?” I say.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

My head cocks back. I know I’ve seen the movie at some point, because it feels familiar, even if I can’t recall the details.

“Do you . . . remember Jeanine?” he says.

My eyebrows meet. I do; she was one of a line of his father’s live-in girlfriends. She’d had platinum-blonde hair and had loved bright-red lipstick, but she’d been around for only a few months when we were nine. “She was the one you really liked, right?”

“She w . . . w-as the only one I liked.” He lightly hits the side of his head, and his smile diffuses the sad truth of his words. “I think I even called her Mom.”

I feel a twinge thinking about him back then—skinny, ill dressed, more alone than me—and I move closer to him on the couch, take his hand in mine, and squeeze.

He squeezes back. “Anyway, she loved this movie and let me watch it with her.” He laughs. “We must have watched it a hundred times.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen it,” I say.

“Good, then it will be like the first time for me too.” He pushes play and Audrey Hepburn lights up the screen, timelessly elegant in all black, hair perfectly coiffed in a beautiful beehive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Thursday, February 21