Later Dora was waiting: You find any good ones? Can I see them? Stood there with hands on hips, expecting. You didn’t find any? There were so many moments she felt like a stranger, but I think that was the first.

Sometimes Stella calls. I told her I didn’t want to talk and she said we didn’t have to. Now we sit in silence for minutes at a time, holding our mouths near the phones. I can hear her breathing and I know she can hear mine too.

“I see you talking on the porch,” Winnie said. “Who’s it with?”

“We’re not talking,” I said. “We’re just quiet.”

I told her it was my daughter. It was something I’d been wanting to say for a while. Not because it felt exactly right but because I wanted to try the shape and size of it. What would it feel like as the truth? In this place it can be.

Winnie comes back and I’m still on the porch. The bottle doesn’t make her flinch or even look twice. It’s nearly empty. She knows about my life, what it’s become.

“I know the feeling,” she said. “I’d drink if I could.”

The truth is, I’ve seen her do it plenty of times, but she swears it off every couple of days. At least she has a reason. I’ve wanted so badly to be stopped, for so many years, but I look at her big round stomach and know there’s not a damn thing stopping me now.

“You need something?” she says. “You want some help getting to bed?”

I’m quiet. I don’t even raise my head.

“You okay?”

I press my temples with my dirty fingers. I start blinking. My eyes get blurry and so does the whole world.

“You want me to call your daughter?”

Maybe her little boy is really a girl. She’ll love it anyway. She’ll get to feel its breath right next to her face, all warm and milky. It’ll break the silence with its crying. Her whole life is going to change. It’s a promise she can’t get away from. Even the other promise—her little girl with her broken bunny—she hasn’t gotten away from her either. She knows that.

“Should I call her?” she said. “I think I should call her.”

I’m not blinking anymore. I’m turning my head from side to side like I’m following a magician’s finger with my eyes. This means no.

“What do you want? Just say something.”

I turn to her. I want her to see the look in my eyes, I know it must be there: how much I want to love her and her little baby too. I want to kneel on all these rusty porch nails and put my cheek against her stomach and feel him kick. I can’t think of a single other thing I want. I say, “I want a drink.”