“I imagined sitting in the driver’s seat of my own life,” says Saul.

“So did I,” says Sofia. “That’s why I want this.”

“You can’t see everything you already have,” says Saul. “You can’t see that the world is laid out in front of you. You can’t see that you have everything. Julia—your family.” Your life has been so easy, he almost says.

“You can’t see everything you have either.” Sofia longs to walk out of her front door and have no one know where she is going. She longs to be watched, but not corralled, not limited, not contained. She longs to swing from the rudder that steers the world and change its direction. But she does not know how to say this to Saul without blaming him.

“I lost everything. How could you say that. I lost everything.”

“You have us,” said Sofia. “You have this job.” And then, before she can stop herself, “Will that always be an excuse for everything that isn’t the way you want it?”

She and Saul look at one another over the blood and butter remains of their dinner. There is surprise and reproach in Saul’s eyes. “I would give anything,” he says, carefully, “not to have this—excuse.”

“I want this,” Sofia says, from her belly. “I want this.”

The night ends in silence. Sofia and Saul curl away from one another in their bed.

—

The want grows inside Sofia like mold. First a little dot of it, inconspicuous, but before she knows it, it is everywhere.

Chapter 20

Julia and Robbie hardly fit together in a pram any longer, but Antonia slides them in like cannelloni against one another and tucks a blanket around both of them. They are both tired, and their limp bodies and half-closed eyelids rock gently as Antonia walks.

It is May 9, 1945. The radio and the newspapers have announced that the war is won. But in three months, the United States will drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Millions of people have already died: a faraway abstraction on most days, or, on the days Antonia lets herself expand out into the worlds around her, an unbelievable aching undercurrent. A whirring, gnashing, stone and razor-blade storm; a sickness rushing and wailing across the globe. It makes Antonia sick. It makes her sleepless. It makes her fearful, so she avoids the radio, even as she cannot help but glance at the front pages displayed in newsstands. She returns her focus to the children in front of her.