“I’ve taken steps.”

“And now you’re retreating. Hiding from all you accomplished. Is it because you’re thinking you’d like to have sex with Thaddeus?”

Unity nearly came off her stool. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you’re breathing. You should hear my friends go on about him. It’s not my favorite topic, let me tell you. The man is family. There are things I don’t want to know.” She patted Unity’s arm. “I’m making an exception for you, dear. Talk away.”

“I don’t think about that.” Unity spoke the lie proudly, then felt herself crumble. “I have thought about it. I want to.”

“Have sex or have sex with him? There is a difference.”

“Have sex with him.”

“Interesting. And you’re telling yourself you can’t, and it’s wrong to feel those things. It’s your friend Ellen’s parents, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell me they had all kinds of rules for their daughter and you lived with them for a while after you lost your own parents, so I suppose it makes sense that their provincial attitudes rubbed off on you.”

The words came so fast, Unity didn’t have time to move out of the way, so they slammed against her, right in the head and the heart.

“You think I’m doing what they would want me to do?”

“I think they’re a strong influence. And as I said before, the rules do keep you safe.”

“I don’t feel safe. I feel scared and lost and empty.”

I want a baby. The thought formed before she could stop it and once it breathed life, she couldn’t wish it away. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to imagine the precious weight in her arms or inhale the sweet scent. Even as the image took form, she felt Thaddeus’s warm hands on her shoulders as he stared down at the child they’d created.

Unity scrambled to her feet. Her chest felt tight and her body started shaking.

“I don’t want to love anyone else,” she said, the statement more hope than reality. “I don’t. I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Dagmar whispered.

“For what?”

“For you. That is so sad. Loving people is the best of who we are as a species. Our ability to love and be loved defines us. Without that, we have no purpose, no reason to live. Be careful, darling. You’re in a very dangerous place. If you get much more lost, you might never find your way back.”

Ellen had never considered herself a fish person. She’d been a math major in college, so chemistry had been pretty easy, but the biological sciences had all seemed too squishy for her. Standing in the middle of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, she wondered if it was too late to change her major.

She loved fish and sea creatures. The otters were adorable and the Kelp Forest was so beautiful. She was trying to identify different kinds of fish when Cooper joined her.