In the beginning, before she started carefully tracking her cycle and marking the days that she and Ted were supposed to do it in red ink on the calendar, she bought her pregnancy tests in packs of four, which was cheaper and seemed to make sense. Like a scratch-off lottery ticket, she’d ripped the foil from each one, fully expecting it to be the one. But that was three years ago, when she was thirty-three, and still under the magic fertility number of thirty-five. Now she was thirty-six, almost thirty-seven, and she bought them one at a time, making the trip out to the Duane Reade only after Ted left for work. When the second, crucial line failed to appear on the stick, she would wrap it up in the bag from the drugstore and carry it down the hall of their building to the trash chute. She couldn’t bear to leave it lurking in the trashcan, physical proof of her failure.

When they first started trying, it had been fun. Well, of course the trying had been fun, but so had the planning and the dreaming. It had given her and Ted something to talk about endlessly—a shared project. And as much as she hated to admit it, they’d needed something to bring them together.

Ten years ago, when they were first married, they hadn’t had time to get bored. Ted was working like crazy, leaving each day for his new job at the investment firm Foxfield Barnes like he was heading into battle, and celebrating his wins in the market with round after round of drinks. And Maja was still painting, in addition to working as an assistant at the gallery. When she scanned the calendar on her Mac, it always seemed as if an endless stream of happy hours and gallery events filled every empty weekend. Back then, they were always grateful for the rare free day to spend together, just the two of them.

But after awhile, their state of constant motion had seemed to slow, as their friends had kids and moved to the suburbs, and opening nights at the gallery and office holiday parties had started to feel more like what they really were: work. Her friends complained about sleepless nights and stubborn baby weight, but Maja detected a hint of pride even in their complaints. And as she heard from them less and less often, she told herself that it wasn’t personal. It was only natural that a couple would turn inward in those first tender years as a family. She imagined that it was like being young and in love: the outside world just ceased, for a time, to exist.