Some women clutch their momma stories close, the hows and wheres and whens of making another life. Lucy had told me how she’d started drinking water straight from the Atlantic Ocean when she was pregnant with Dora. She’d skimmed waves with her fingers and then cupped her hands to drink. My story was the ugliest one I could think of, vomiting on the highway and waiting to bleed in the desert, eating myself sick between the outsize dresses of another woman’s brokedown dreams.

I knew Abraham was the father. It was the only way the timing worked. But I didn’t want to explain this to him, to say, this other man was too early, this one too late, to admit how many men there’d been. I stopped going to Reno altogether. One day he called me. “Bruce told me,” he said. “I want to know if it’s mine.”

I told him yes, I was sure.

He’d been thinking long and hard, he said, and he wanted to adopt. Only if this was something I wanted also. He thought he could give this kid a decent life. “Not like you couldn’t,” he explained. “Of course you could.” But there was the question of money.

I told him I needed a few days. We got off the phone and I couldn’t think of a single good reason I should raise the baby myself. I wanted him so badly but everywhere I looked, every part of my own life, made me hate the idea of bringing a little person into the middle of it. I was still drinking. I knew it was wrong, and some nights I was good—some nights I ate a plate of pasta and forced myself to fall asleep before I could stay awake long enough to get drunk. Other nights I’d say just one. Just a glass of wine or an inch of gin. And then I’d find myself lying flat on the bed, ceiling gone all swimmy, holding my belly and saying, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

One morning I woke up on the bathroom floor. I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten there. My face was flat against the tiles near the toilet. Had I been throwing up? I couldn’t remember that, either. I called Abe right away. I told him okay. He should raise this baby. I went to Reno every three weeks, and we saw a doctor together. I sat on the paper-covered table, and Abe sat on a chair and watched. There were so many questions. What are you eating and how much and are you feeling sick? Do you feel any cramping any kicking any sudden blood rushes when you stand too quickly? I tried to answer as honestly as I could. But it was hard: Abe was right there, watching. I lied about two cigarettes in the third month and made up a banana for breakfast every day. I lied about the drinking. Of course I lied about the drinking. I couldn’t stand to imagine Abe’s face. If he could have seen the long nights, how I filled the curve of my belly with sweet long pulls of gin until the baby must have nearly drowned. Some mornings I woke up with crusty cheeks and I knew they’d gotten that way from tears. I got so drunk I couldn’t even remember crying.