“I wanted a baby,” Kiki said, while still holding on to the branch. “I wanted to be pregnant.”

Sarah didn’t dare say anything. If she let her be, Kiki would eventually continue.

“At some point we stopped trying. Then we tried to adopt. We ended up in a foster-to-adopt situation about four years ago in L.A. He was about the same age when he came to us as Sylvie is now. We wanted to adopt him and we thought it was going to happen. It almost happened. But he went back to his mother, who’s a heroin addict.”

Sarah bit the inside of her chewed-up mouth; she felt a flash of searing pain.

“She’s an addict but she’s still his mother,” Kiki added. “I mean, of course.”

Sarah nodded.

“I happen to know she’s still using. He was ours for eleven months. Now he’s living with a drug addict. Can you imagine?”

Of course Sarah could. She imagined Leda’s teeth yellowed and her arms scarred and her toes mangled and her belly a perfect orb. She could imagine being granted Leda’s baby, and she could imagine Leda coming back for that baby and disappearing forever.

Kiki was still holding on to the branch.

“What’s his name?” Sarah asked. “The boy.”

“Joseph. We called him Joe.” Kiki let the branch go, but she didn’t start walking again.

“Oh, Kiki.” Naturally Kiki would be an extraprotective mother—after what she’d gone through, how could she not be? Sarah reached for Kiki’s hand, pulled her into a hug. “I’m just really sorry.”

“I’m so happy now.” Kiki started to cry and pulled away. “I mean, I’m still worried about Joe and it makes me so sad to imagine that maybe I will actually, you know, stop worrying about him one day, but I’m also just … happy.” She sniffled. “And I know it’s not feminist or liberated or whatever to say that my life would be incomplete without my child, but it would be. It would be one hundred percent incomplete without Sylvie.” Kiki’s usually soft demeanor morphed into something fierce and maybe even threatening. Even her rounded cheeks and shoulders took on a sharper form. “I’m sure—somehow I’m just sure—that you understand this. So, you know, I would do it all again. I would. But I messed up. I mean, I really, really, really messed up.”

“You’re in debt?”

Kiki nodded.

“Insurance didn’t cover the IVF?”

Kiki laughed darkly. “It covered the first three times. There were—um—more.”

“I’m so sorry.”

They heard Sylvie crying from far away and picked up their pace, heading back. These weren’t particularly worrying cries, but still, they started to run. When they reached the spit of sand, they were both out of breath. Sarah thought, Two men would never have done that. Why had they run? Before she was even settled in Kiki’s arms, Sylvie immediately went quiet.

“Nice walk?” Arman asked.